Missouri, which has a backlog of nearly 5,000 kits, enacted legislation that sets strict timetables for getting future kits to the lab to be tested.
“Sometimes, you know, when you’re licking your wounds it kind of opens the door to some preventive means for the future, and I think that’s exactly what we’ve looked at,” said state Rep. Don Phillips, a Republican and one of the sponsors of the law. “It took somewhat of a tragedy here of how we operated in the past to change how we’ll operate in the future. I don’t think there was any realization that there were that many kits out there that hadn’t been processed.”
Statute of Limitations
States have spent the past several years expanding statutes of limitation for sex crimes. In some states, victims could not seek justice if they didn’t report the assault within a few years of the incident. Now states are lifting or extending the amount of time victims have to file civil suits against their abusers, citing cases such as the revelations of widespread abuse within the Catholic Church. Many people abused as children waited years or decades to come forward.
But such measures remain controversial. In Hawaii, Attorney General Russell Suzuki, a Democrat, opposed efforts to extend the statute of limitations. “Over the passage of time, memories fade, witnesses move or pass away, and documents are lost or destroyed,” he said. “A claimant could conceivably wait to file a lawsuit until the most strategically opportune time to prevent a defendant from defending against the lawsuit.”
State Sen. Maile Shimabukuro, a Democrat, has tried repeatedly to end the statute of limitations in Hawaii. She has succeeded in the past in getting legislators to agree to a two-year window that would lift the statute of limitations for civil suits for sex crimes. But a similar effort failed last year, and she wasn’t expecting any progress this year.
Instead, the bill “glided through,” she said, due to news that at least 34 men, former students of Kamehameha Schools, reached an $80 million settlement after facing years of abuse by the school psychologist.
Kamehameha Schools, a private institution reserved for those with Hawaiian blood, is a point of pride for the state and the alma mater of many of its leaders.
“There’s been so much of a revelation … and I think victims are now feeling like there’s support for them to come forward and speak out,” Shimabukuro said, adding that the process can be particularly difficult for men. “This really brought this into our local consciousness too in Hawaii. It’s not just a Catholic Church thing.”
Within State Legislatures
State legislatures have also been working to police themselves following a wave of resignations of their colleagues following accusations of sexual harassment and abuse.
Nearly every state has some sort of written policy about how to deal with inappropriate sexual behavior, particularly in cases with skewed power dynamics, as is often the case in state legislatures.
Many states approved policies late last year or during this year’s sessions, and some went back and reevaluated existing policies after realizing they weren’t working. That was the case in California.
Despite being one of the more robust policies on misconduct in the workplace, California’s workplace harassment policy wasn’t working.
Late last year more than 140 women signed an open letter to lawmakers saying that California has a pervasive culture of sexual harassment within its political circles.
“A policy really is powerless when set up against a culture that allows sexual harassment to happen,” said state Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, a Democrat. “We seek to come up with policy that also enables culture change, not just about what is written on paper but about peoples’ daily experience and expectations.”
The state plans to use a more dynamic and conversation-based sexual harassment training in the future, along with a separate panel to hear complaints against legislators and staff.
The Legislature also sent out a climate survey to its employees, alerting lawmakers to harassment some staff had been facing at the hands of lobbyists. Legislators are talking about ways to get lobbyists to more seriously examine sexual harassment within their own industry.
Freidman said the climate survey will be conducted yearly to make sure the new policy, unlike the last one, is actually working.
“Sweeping it under the rug is just not an option for people,” she said. “The first [survey] was to find out things but it will also serve as a baseline, so if things are not working well, we’ll hear it from employees.”
Alayna Alvarez contributed to this report.
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