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'Hidden Predator Act' could advance in Georgia Senate

The Hidden Predator Act would allow adults up to age 38 to sue organizations for their culpability in sexual abuse cases.
Credit: George Frey
PAYSON, UT - JULY 31: Boy Scouts work on a wood project at camp Maple Dell on July 31, 2015 outside Payson, Utah.

ATLANTA -- The Senate Judiciary Committee was expected to vote Wednesday evening on whether to advance the “Hidden Predator Act,” which would expand the rights of victims of sexual abuse to sue for damages.

The House overwhelmingly approved the bill earlier in the legislative session. The session ends March 29.

"My son’s perpetrator was a deacon in my church," Jackie Holder told the committee last week. She says her son waited thirteen years to tell his story of abuse.

"One of the statements made (by church officials) was, 'we thought we kept those boys from him," Holder said in her testimony.

The Hidden Predator Act would allow adults up to age 38 to sue organizations for their culpability in sexual abuse cases. It would also allow them to sue individuals and increase legal discovery from two to eight years.

In the state Capitol, powerful lobbyists have weighed in against the bill – including lobbyists representing the Boy Scouts of America.

Thirty years ago, the Boy Scouts employed a man named Fleming Weaver and as 11Alive’s investigators reported last spring, Weaver sexually abused Rob Lawson and other scouts.

"What he did was sexual assault. He assaulted me," Lawson told 11Alive News.

"People's memories fade. People's memories get distorted," said former state representative Ed Lindsey, now a lobbyist against the bill working on behalf of the Boy Scouts of America.

He told lawmakers the Scouts pay for counseling for scouts who make allegations about sexual abuse, even if years have passed.

But he said litigation is different.

"You wait twenty, thirty, forty years -- you make it very difficult for a defendant to defend himself," Lindsey told the committee.

Lindsey told the lawmakers the Scouts could back a less sweeping Hidden Predator Act. Lawmakers have about a week to figure it out.

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