NC Supreme Court upholds child sexual abuse survivors' right to sue years later

Virginia Bridges and Cathy Clabby, The Charlotte Observer on Feb 3, 2025

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The North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the right of child sexual abuse survivors to sue people and organizations they say harmed them, clearing the paths for hundreds of lawsuits to move forward against school boards, Catholic dioceses and Boy Scout organizations across the state.

“Thanks to this decision, several hundred child sexual abuse victims will have an opportunity to seek justice against their perpetrators and those who enabled the abuse,” says a statement from Lanier Law Group, which represents many people whose lawsuits were put on hold by court challenges.

State legislators unanimously passed the SAFE Child Act in October 2019. The law opened a two-year window for victims of child sex abuse to file lawsuits in 2020 and 2021 against alleged perpetrators and organizations who employed them, no matter how long ago abuse occurred.

Before the SAFE Child Act, most survivors of childhood sexual abuse had only to age 21 to sue.

Hundreds filed complaints

Taking advantage of the two-year window, about 450 plaintiffs launched about 250 civil lawsuits in North Carolina, according to court records.

Their filings are filled with tragic stories of religious leaders, coaches and club volunteers grooming, groping or raping them. But all of the lawsuits have been stalled for years as various challenges to the law finally worked their way up to the Supreme Court in September.

On Sept. 18 the Supreme Court heard five SAFE Child Act cases, and released their opinion on four Friday.

In Friday’s decision, the court not only confirmed that the SAFE Child Act doesn’t violate the constitution, but also that institutions can be held accountable as well perpetrators.

In a loss to some plaintiffs, the court ruled that lawsuits filed and decided before the SAFE Child Act was passed, cannot be resurrected by another lawsuit. A General Assembly law cannot undo a state’s courts final decision, the opinion states.

“The SAFE Child Act, like any other act of the legislative branch, cannot set aside a final judgment of the judicial branch,” the opinion says.

A settlement amid stalled cases

In 2020, North Carolina became the first Southern state to open a temporary window for child sexual abuse survivors of any age to file civil lawsuits against institutions.

North Carolina legislators approved The Safe Child Act reform when many states were allowing people who said they were sexually abused as children to sue in civil court, recognizing that it can take many years for abuse survivors to tell anyone, or even fully understand, that they were abused as children.

One of the most high-profile case in this state was filed by dozens of alumni accusing former officials of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts of allowing faculty over many years to sexually abuse, harass and exploit students at the prestigious arts school.

The University of North Carolina System and the School of the Arts settled the case, agreeing to pay about 65 alumni a total of $12.5 million over four years.

While that case was resolved, most of the other lawsuits languished for plaintiffs, many of whom said they were re-traumatized after they came forward and again as the lawsuits stalled.

One of the key cases involved a lawsuit against the Gaston County Board of Education that alleged the board dismissed numerous complaints against former wrestling coach Garry Scott Goins for physical and sexual abuse after minimal investigation, leaving other children vulnerable to his unsupervised access to them in the 1990s and 2000s.

In response, attorneys for the board argued, among other things, that abandoning the statute of limitations violated North Carolina’s constitution.

The state Supreme Court did not agree, stating it an opinion Friday that “there is no constitutionally protected vested right” related to the statute of limitations in the case.

Gov. Josh Stein, who defended the legality of the SAFE Child Act while attorney general, released a statement praising the decision. “People who were abused as children will have the opportunity to face their abusers and seek justice,” it reads.

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