351 VICTIMS, 35 STATES
Victim’s path to justice blocked by time statute
Dalen Carr wants to finish what he started. But New Mexico’s statute of limitations on child sexual abuse prevents him from doing so.
The 24-year-old Atlanta man alleges that he was sexually abused as a child while living in Albuquerque, N.M., between 2003 and 2007. With the help of his parents, Carr filed a police report in 2012, and an indictment was issued for Carr’s alleged abuser. Soon thereafter, Carr’s alleged abuser — who had worked in a leadership position with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America years earlier — was tracked down and arrested at his new job in Texas, then extradited to New Mexico on multiple criminal charges stemming from Carr’s alleged abuse, including indecency with a child and criminal sexual contact with a minor.
But criminal cases take time to pursue. It took four years before Carr was brought in front of a grand jury to testify about what had happened to him. By that time, he had started college and moved out of state. A victim’s advocate told him it could be another few years before any further progress was made in his case.
When he started making plans to go to China as part of a cultural exchange program, the victim’s advocate told him it was probably safe to accept. A few days after all the travel arrangements had been
made, Carr got a call from the district attorney on his case asking if he could come back to New Mexico for the trial. Carr declined, and the case was put on hold.
Eventually, the district attorney dismissed all the criminal charges in Carr’s case, stating in court papers that the dismissal was “in the best interest of justice” and “due to the unavailability of a necessary witness, who is residing out of the country indefinitely.” The dismissal was without prejudice to potentially reprosecute the alleged crimes in the future.
Carr’s alleged abuser did not respond to a request seeking comment for this story, but throughout the criminal proceeding, he denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
Now living in the United States again, Carr wanted to try for his second chance at justice.
“It’s not necessarily the trauma of what happened, but at the back of my mind, the fact that I didn’t follow through with it,” Carr said. “I could have put the guy in prison.”
When he came across Hearst Connecticut Media’s 2019 investigation into sexual abuse tied to Boys & Girls Clubs that last year had found more than 250 victims in 30 states — and an article specifically mentioning the man he says abused him — it gave him hope. The article featured another victim, who had sued the alleged abuser in another state.
“It was actually sort of a wakeup call,” Carr said about reading the article.
Unfortunately for Carr, by the time he contacted the district attorney in Albuquerque, his case was beyond New Mexico’s statute of limitations. New Mexico’s law — one of the shortest in the country — limits criminal prosecution in child sexual abuse cases like Carr’s to six years. Civil lawsuits in New Mexico must be pursued before the victim’s 24th birthday, or within three years of the victim disclosing the abuse to a health provider.
Lawmakers last year attempted to extend the time frame to pursue criminal cases, but Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham vetoed the bill due to a drafting error that would actually have shortened statute of limitations for some felonies, according to Child USA, a think tank dedicated to stopping child abuse.
Twenty-eight states — including Connecticut — have modified their statutes of limitations related to child sexual abuse in the past two years to make it easier for victims to come forward about past abuse. New York’s Child Victims Act, for example, opened a one-year window for victims of any age to file a lawsuit related to past sexual abuse starting on Aug. 15, 2019. Due to COVID-19, that window has been extended until Aug. 14, 2021.
About 4,000 lawsuits have been filed under the Child Victims Act on behalf of about 4,600 victims since the new law took effect, according to the Office of Court Administration in New York.
But even as states extend their statutes of limitations, not all victims are able to get justice. Six men who have said they were abused by a former teen counselor at the then-Greenwich Boys Club in the 1970s and 1980s were unable to file lawsuits against the alleged abuser or the club due to Connecticut’s statute of limitations.
“These laws exist to help ensure that an accused can receive a fair trial and not have charges brought years later, when evidence and witnesses may be unavailable,” said attorney Christine Perra Rapillo, Connecticut’s chief public defender. “It is important to balance the rights of the accused with the right of a victim to bring an accusation decades later.”
Connecticut’s Act Combatting Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment, in effect since October 2019, extends the statute of limitations for child sex abuse victims to file lawsuits from age 48 to 51. But any survivor of child sexual abuse born before Oct. 1, 1968, who was abused before Oct. 1, 1989, does not qualify for the new statute of limitations.
In criminal cases with DNA evidence, there is no statute of limitations.
“This is just, because the accusation comes from scientific evidence that can still be tested and challenged in court,” Rapillo said. “Allowing expanded statutes of limitations for crimes against children is also just, because the victims in these crimes may need to reach maturity in order to be able to bring the accusations. Eliminating statutes of limitations to allow a complainant to bring an accusation decades after the alleged incident would make it nearly impossible for an accused to mount an effective defense.”
Seven other men who said they were abused at the Greenwich club decades ago have been able to file lawsuits, but their lawyer had petitioned Gov. Ned Lamont to veto the new law as he said it didn’t go far enough to allow all victims a chance to seek justice. The Greenwich Boys & Girls Club has denied any responsibility for actions related to the alleged abuse. Club officials have said the organization remains committed to protecting the health and wellbeing of the children it serves and respects those who have come forward with abuse allegations.
Carr, who was not a Boys & Girls Club member and does not allege abuse at a club but at a then-club official’s home in New Mexico, is thankful his parents made sure he attended therapy after he was molested. He said dealing with the trauma as soon as you remember what happened is the “fastest way to live a normal life again.” But during his time in China, Carr couldn’t let go of the feeling he had unfinished business at home.
“In the absence of justice, it takes a substantial willful effort to let go of what is happening,” he said.
Carr said he was recently diagnosed with autism, and he has spent a lot of time trying to separate the trauma from his abuse with his issues actually related to his autism.
“I realized this sort of model that I had created in my mind for dealing with all this…. Every time I had an issue I somehow needed to revisit all the terrible things that happened when I was a kid,” he said.
While he has spent a lot of time thinking about the abuse he endured, with some effort he is now able to separate his problems and not try to relive everything.
“It’s a lot easier to cope once you separate the two,” he said.
And once he saw the stories about other victims who said they were abused by people who had worked or volunteered at various Boys & Girls Clubs, Carr said he finally felt that his intuition was verified.
“I was right,” he said. “I am not crazy.”
Carr said he will “continue to live his life” and “do whatever I need to do to move on.” The assault itself does not define who he is, he said.
“I’d rather it just be a footnote about what life was like in my 20s — just something that I had to go deal with.”