Statute of Limitations on Sexual Molestation

Many people are blaming the Supreme Court for striking down California’s retroactive child molestation law, thereby freeing hundreds of accused abusers (June 27). If any group is to be blamed it is the Legislature, for rubber-stamping the wishes of law enforcement and the child-abuse establishment (social workers, lawyers and others who make their living with victims and perpetrators) when, in 1994, it removed the statute of limitations on molestation prosecutions.

Or perhaps we should blame the framers of the Constitution itself for including that pesky ex post facto clause merely to end centuries of legal manipulation of the weak by the powerful.

And the related story whines that one effect of the Supreme Court’s decision is that the “Burden of Proof Now Falls on Victims in Sex Abuse Civil Suits” (June 28). That’s the way it has always been, and must be. Child abuse is a serious crime and can be dealt with effectively without dismantling our legal traditions.

Gerald Jones

Los Angeles

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The usual “good guys” on the Supreme Court have rendered a kick in the teeth to sexual molestation victims, who have already suffered grievously. It is astounding that the same justices who reacted with compassion and common sense in the Texas sexual privacy case could turn around and throw that same compassion to the winds when faced with the California statute-of-limitations case.

Where is the limitation for the pain and humiliation of these victims? Who benefits (other than those guilty perpetrators) when they are released onto our streets, perhaps to commit the same crimes? Our state was indeed correct to extend the statute so that many molesters could be brought to justice. I never thought I would ever agree with Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and William Rehnquist, but these are strange times.

Linda Winters

Culver City