After passage of ‘Scout’s Honor’ bill, child abuse survivors seek expansive legislation

Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Pleasant Grove, listens to debate in the Alabama Senate on a bill to extend immunity to in vitro fertilization programs on Feb. 29, 2024 at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. The House and Senate Thursday both considered bills aimed at restarting IVF programs after many closed following a Feb. 16 Alabama Supreme Court ruling. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)

After the Alabama Senate passed a bill giving survivors of abuse in the Boys Scouts of America the chance to press claims against the group, child abuse survivors and their advocates are hoping to see a more expansive bill get through.

SB 19, sponsored by Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Pleasant Grove, is similar to a bill filed last year.  It would give survivors of any type of child abuse up to 36 years after they turn 19 to file civil suits over their abuse, up from the current six years. That would raise the maximum age for filing claims from 25 to 55. The bill would apply retroactively.

“Civilly, these survivors have the opportunity to sue someone who has harmed them,” Coleman said. “Of course, they have to prove their case in court.” 

According to a March 2020 Child USA report, the average age of disclosure is 52.

Coleman also sponsored SB 18, which passed the Senate last week. The bill would allow people abused in the Boy Scouts of America to file  claims with The Scouting Settlement Trust, a $2.7 billion fund established after the Boy Scouts filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020 amid a pending tide of lawsuits. This Trust allows victims of sexual abuse to claim between $3,500 and $2.7 million.

The bill, as passed the Senate, contains the language from a similar bill filed by Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville. A message was left with Chambliss Monday afternoon.

Survivors say they support both bills.

Gill Gayle, who experienced sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts, said the legislation would allow survivors to receive their payment regardless of the statute of limitations.

In his time in the Boys Scouts, he said, two Scout Masters sexually assaulted him within a week of his meeting them. He said that it took him time to realize that the Boy Scouts had made the decision to handle these cases internally, which meant there were no consequences for the men.

“I thought I was the unluckiest child in the world,” he said. “I thought there was something wrong with me most of my life.”

Gayle said his abuse took place in Alabama, but his case was adjudicated in Delaware. He said the main payouts come from the jurisdiction where the abuse took place.

Stuart Vance was one of the former students who accused a former Randolph School teacher of abusing them in the 1970s and 1980s. The teacher denied the accusations in the 2019 Al.com article.

Vance said that they were prioritizing the Scouts’ Honor bill this year because of the urgency of the bill. SB 18, in its previous iterations, has not passed.

“We knew that it would be a challenge to get it passed, especially passed by the end of March, which is pretty much our deadline for getting a bill to help out our scouting brethren here,” he said. 

Leigh Corfman accused former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore of initiating a sexual encounter with her in 1977, when she was 14 and he was 32. Corfman’s allegations, which Moore denied, became a major story in the 2017 U.S. Senate race in Alabama, which Moore lost to Democratic nominee Doug Jones. 

Corfman later sued Moore for defamation over remarks he made during the campaign, which led to a countersuit from Moore. She said that her trial was millions of dollars in production. A 2022 court case found that neither party defamed each other.

“I’ll repeat at age 25, your brain’s just now getting to where it’s all grown up,” she said Monday. “At the age 25, most people are not financially set to be able to take a court case.”

Lanier Isom, a journalist and author who was a victim of her high school track coach, said that she tried to come forward in her twenties, only to be told it was too late.

“If they don’t speak up early, then they’re blamed for not speaking up. And then, when they do speak up, they’re lying,” she said. “They’re accused of being liars. So it’s like no matter what a victim does, it can be second guessed or attacked or questioned, and silence works to benefit those who abused the individuals and the people that protect them out of fear, out of shame, out of ignorance.”

Isom said that the low statute of limitations and lack of accountability allows abuse to continue.

Kathryn Robb, executive director of Child USAdvocacy, helped draft the legislation. She said many other states had passed similar laws to the one that passed the Senate last week. 

“So what many jurisdictions are scrambling to do right now, Alabama being one of them, is to pass what we’re calling Scouts’ Honor bills, and basically create a revival period, which is what we’re doing in other states for all actions,” she said. 

During a committee discussion of Chambliss and Coleman’s bills in committee on Feb. 21, Sen. Greg Albritton, R-Atmore, spoke against the bill. In a later phone interview, he said that he was concerned about the degradation of evidence.

“So what we’re doing in this matter is simply eliminating that check, if you will, a legal check that we’ve always had and when you do that, you’re creating a system that becomes inherently unfair, because if you reduce the evidence, your convictions is going to be questionable,” he said.

A 2019 report from Wellesley and University of Massachusetts Lowell researchers said that child sex abuses are difficult to prosecute and medical evidence is available in less than 5% of cases.

“It’s always best the closer you have to time frame as to the evidence, but that’s going to have to be something that’s left up to the attorneys for that case and for the the people that file that suit,” said Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne, a former child victims prosecutor in Baldwin County who supports the legislation. “I don’t think that just closing the door and preventing them to file suit because it happened 20 years ago is the right answer.” 

Corfman, who is planning to come to Montgomery this week, said that she would tell the Legislature to “protect us.”

“Allow us to have our day,” she said. “We did not ask for this. None of us. Not the ones that were sexually abused by teachers, coaches, and people in places of power, assistant DAs, Catholic priests, Baptist ministers, youth ministers, you know the list is so long.”

When he tried to bring accountability to one of his abusers years ago, Gayle was told that the statute of limitations kept him from doing so, even though the District Attorneys wanted to because the man was still working with children.

He said there was a for a long time, and he was told when trying to address it in Alabama, that memories would fade.

“Not any amount of alcohol, or drugs will ever make it fade, there’s nothing in your heart, there’s nothing in your mind, with the exception of annihilation, there’s absolutely nothing that can fade those memories,” he said.

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