The statue legislature has announced an extension to a new state law which provides a legal mechanism for survivors of child sexual abuse to report their assault. The extended ‘lookback window’ allows victims of any age to speak about their experience, lengthening the existing opportunity to report. Senator David Wallace of Leachville says this is vital, because children that are abused often don’t want to come forward.
“They don't want to talk about that,” Senator Wallace said. “And they try to put it behind them in their teens and twenties. And this goes on for years. And statistically, throughout the whole country, folks don't really come forward until their mid fifties. Where they've, they've aged enough and experienced enough and have enough life experiences to where they want to come forward and tell folks what happened. This is what happened. The old law shut off the age at which you could claim harm at I think 21. So initially, we moved the age to 55 and gave folks that had been abused two years to come forth if they wanted to follow a law claim they could do it. And 20 did.”
After that initial extension, Senator Wallace says he was contacted by multiple victims outside of the age limit, which inspired him to remove it entirely.
“So we made an amendment in the spring of ‘23, the original bill was written in the spring of ‘21,” Senator Wallace said. “And we opened it up to age unlimited, you could be 99, you could be 120. And if you felt that you had been wronged, you had two years to come forward and claim that. So we reset the clock. And the end date for that, I believe, is January 31st, 2026. It might be February 4th, but it's within a week of those dates. The folks that have been abused now have a new window to confront their abuses. All the way up to include a day in a court of law. There's been 20 lawsuits filed over the last two years. And I don't know of any, but I would assume that there would be a few more over the next two years.”
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