Allegations supplant due process

Unbelievably, a person can sit on a claim for 20 years (or make it up contemporaneously) and suddenly cause another person to lose his career and ruin his life, all with just an accusation. When did society depart from a founding doctrine that declared a person was “presumed innocent until proved guilty?”

If that is ignored, how can society ignore such allegations that are often settled with thousands of dollars — making such allegations at high risk of being suspect — without due process? Employers who destroy a person’s life without such due process should be taken to court.

How can society ignore the absolute entrapment by people presenting themselves beautifully in a half-dressed state leaving little or nothing to the imagination, and then wonder why they get approached? And such people know well that the Godgiven sexual drive is huge.

How can society ignore the sexual promiscuity that runs rampant for periods in our culture and then suddenly permit it to surface 20 years later when such behavior is clearly unacceptable?

Any accusation withheld for 20 years is immediately suspect — and that possibility makes the doctrine of being innocent until proved guilty an absolute necessity.

Given the present inequitable and unfair outbreaks in this sudden abnormal behavior, we should invoke a statute of limitations of three years relative to such allegations/accusations.

Should the complainant be a minor, then his or her legal guardian has three years from the time of the alleged assault to file a complaint. When said minor turns 21 — and there has been no complaint filed — he or she will assume personal responsibility to the courts, and have another three years to act. Pickerington prostitute and sex-traffic children, as well as those who produce and distribute child pornography, along with their enablers, are protected under a 2005 Republican-sponsored law (passed along party lines) that severely limits the amount of compensation sexually abused children can recover from predators and their enablers.

About a year ago, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law (“Damages for raped girl held to $250K,” Dispatch article, Dec. 15, 2016). In so doing, Justice Judith French, writing for the majority, concluded, in part, that a 15-year-old girl, raped by a male authority figure nearly three times her age, did not suffer a “catastrophic” injury.

In January of this year, state Rep. Anne Gonzales, R-Westerville, introduced House Bill 20, which would change the law.

House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, R-Clarksville, and Rep. Lou Blessing, R-Cincinnati, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, should support and pass Gonzales’ bill. Protecting sexual predators is not a conservative value.

Ivanka Trump is right. There’s a “special place in hell” for those who sexually abuse children.

Ohio Legislature: Protect the child, not the predator. Change the law. Columbus