May 9, 2016 4 min read

Like some bad dream that just won’t be vanquished, Jerry Sandusky has been back in the headlines over the last several days.

First, the 72-year-old convicted child molester, who is a Washington native, is trying to get a new trial and somehow avoid drawing his last breath at SCI-Greene outside Waynesburg. At the same time, there were revelations that Sandusky’s longtime boss, Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno, might have first heard allegations that Sandusky was a child molester as far back as 1976. It also came to light that Penn State’s payouts to victims of Sandusky’s abuse cover at least one incident that happened in 1971, 40 years before Sandusky was arrested and brought to justice.

Meanwhile, former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert has also faced an overdue reckoning. He was branded “a serial child molester” by a federal judge two weeks ago before being sentenced to 15 months in a federal prison for illegally structuring bank withdrawals to pay someone he is alleged to have sexually abused while he was a wrestling coach at a Illinois high school more than 30 years ago. While Hastert cannot be criminally charged with any misdeeds due to the statute of limitations having expired, other apparent Hastert victims have come forward, and Hastert himself apologized to “the boys I mistreated. They looked (up) at me and I took advantage of them.”

That Sandusky was able to operate what was a well-regarded charity, and retain a lucrative, prestigious job in the world of big-time college football while carrying on what amounted to a decadeslong spree of child molestation is shocking enough. That Hastert was able to continue teaching, then win a seat in the Illinois legislature, followed by a congressional seat and then be “two heartbeats from the presidency” as speaker, all with none of his apparent victims uttering a peep, is perhaps even more startling. The transgressions to which Hastert has confessed make the run-of-the-mill dalliances and peccadilloes that have torpedoed other political careers pale in comparison.

There are a whole host of reasons why Sandusky’s and Hastert’s victims concealed what had been done to them – shame, fear, perhaps they blamed themselves, or they figured that Sandusky and Hastert were so widely respected, and so widely perceived as upstanding, that they would never be believed.

They, and other victims of child sexual abuse by less-celebrated figures, should have more legal recourse than they now have.

That’s why a measure that is making its way through Pennsylvania’s Legislature is so important. Crafted in response to disclosures that leaders in the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic diocese covered up and paid off victims of sexual abuse by priests for at least 40 years, it would remove the 30-year cap on the statute of limitations and allow victims to file criminal charges at any point in their lives. It would also allow civil suits to be filed up until a victim’s 50th birthday, rather than the current limit of their 30th. The House approved the bill in April and it is under consideration in the Senate.

The Catholic Church opposes the legislation, saying the payouts could bankrupt some parishes. But it could be that the prospect of hefty financial losses by institutions of any kind, whether it’s a church, university or a sprawling corporation, will act as a spur for abusers to be rooted out more aggressively and encourage victims to come forward.

State Rep. Thomas Caltagirone, a Democrat from Reading, summed it up well. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, he told his colleagues, “We need to enact new laws that will send the strongest message possible: If you commit heinous crimes against children, if you cover up for pedophiles, if you lurk in the shadows waiting for time to run out, we are coming for you.”