New Florida Law Seeks Justice For Child Sexual Abuse Victims

Via America’s Lawyer: Donna’s Law receives unanimous support from lawmakers, eliminating the statute of limitations for child sex abuse in Florida to help survivors seek justice. Mollye Barrows joins Mike Papantonio to explain more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

One of the few unanimous decisions by the House and Senate in recent passage of Donna's law here in Florida, it's going to seek justice for survivors of child sex abuse for years to come. Legal journalist Mollye Barrows is with me to talk about it. Tell us, first of all, who is Donna? Why they call this the Donna's law? How does it all fit together?

She spearheaded this. Donna Hendrick is from Orlando, and she said she was abused by her choir teacher two weeks after her 15th birthday. And this was in the early 1970s. She didn't tell anybody about it for 40 years. And when she finally came forward, she suspected that there were other victims of this teacher up to five other victims, and she couldn't do anything with her allegations and her accusations because the statute of limitations had passed. So she started a petition and basically got 30,000 signatures that got the attention of victim's advocacy groups, as well as, as you saw the state legislature. And they went ahead and moved forward with bipartisan support and passed this law and bill rather, and then the governor signed it into law.

Yeah. It's similar to other statutes that have been passed around the country.

Yes.

And it's just the logical solution to it. What does, what is, what does this law do for survivors of sexual abuse?

Well, it gives them an option and a voice because it is such a common tragedy actually to happen in this country. And sadly, most of them never really even report it at all, or when they do finally report it other States like Florida until recently had statute of limitations that kept them from being able to come forward. And what we do know also about predators who abuse children, is that they continue to do it. And if you have one child that could potentially report it or a person that's grown up and could report it, you could be preventing this person from abusing other children as well. So this is going to give victims a voice and an option when and if they are abused and are ready to come forward.

When this opened up in other States, the Catholic church got a new 4,400 cases of sexual abuse because it got, you know, it empowered people to say, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to go, go ahead and do something about it. And the impact was startling. So this is a great, this is a big victory, isn't it?

Well, it is a big victory. It'll be interesting though, because the law only applies to offenses that have been committed since July 1st, when this new law went into effect. So, you know, those kids that have been abused as miners up until then are still subject to those statute of limitations. But from here on out, it's going to give victims and victim advocacy groups a lot more power. You know, they're going to have some, some, some meat behind what they, their threats, if you will. They're going to be able to pursue charges against these predators and perhaps take them off the streets for good, but there's still a long way to go. And it's just unbelievable. As you know, our own Kim Lambert is handling human trafficking cases and it is just pervasive worldwide, but the vast majority of children that are abused, it happens before the age of 18. Most of them are girls and it happens that they're being molested or abused by someone that they know, either an acquaintance or a family member.

Yeah. The human trafficking case that we're, cases that we're working all over the country now, it's an eye-opener because you start realizing that there's so much, that it's so organized. That you start seeing the internet sites that know exactly what they're doing.

Yes.

They know exactly that they're part of trafficking.

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