ATLANTA — The Georgia Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to push Senate Bill 287 forward at the state capitol on Thursday.
The bill would eliminate the 15-year statute of limitations for rape cases lacking DNA evidence, as well as the 7-year deadline for cases of aggravated sexual battery and aggravated sodomy.
During the committee meeting, Patti Kelly testified in support of the bill and described herself as a rape survivor.
"He was never charged, arrested or prosecuted," Kelly said of her attacker.
According to Kelly, police identified a suspect in the case, but prosecutors worried she couldn't withstand questioning during a trial. Prosecutors didn't take up her case.
Kelly said the attack happened while she was in college and it took 16 years before she sought counseling and spoke publicly about the attack. Kelly testified on Thursday that by the time she opened up about the rape; though, the statute of limitations for prosecuting her case ran out.
Numbers from the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) estimate that, in Georgia, more than 9,100 rapes took place in 2018, but the network also reports only 2,651 sexual assaults were reported to law enforcement.
"It is under-reported because there is so much fear," Kelly said. "Fear of the perpetrator, fear of further harm during the investigation, fear of being judged and misunderstood."
Currently, only a half dozen states don't have a statute of limitations for rape cases and other felony sex crimes, according to RAINN. A majority of states, including Georgia, do have exceptions for cases with DNA evidence.
State Sen. Harold Jones II (D-Augusta) introduced the bill in January. Jones said lawmakers in the Georgia House are preparing to introduce a similar bill.
As a former prosecutor, Jones said his bill doesn't make cases any easier to prosecute, but it does give survivors the opportunity to report a crime when they're ready to come forward and have the case investigated.
"There are reasons sometimes why someone may not go forward," Jones said. "Those are the facts and these reasons are well documented, researched and we understand them. And therefore as a legislature, we are taking that into consideration and we are saying 'Why create these arbitrary lines?'"
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