The Louisiana Supreme Court has decided to strip sexual assault survivors of an avenue of justice, ruling 3–4 that it’s the due process rights of priests and their enablers to not be held accountable in instances of sexual assault.
The Louisiana legislature passed the act in 2021 to establish a “#look-#back” window for sexual assault victims.
The legislation provided victims of sexual abuse crimes from any period with an opportunity to pursue justice against their alleged abusers, so long as they filed their lawsuits before June 2024.
But the court effectively ruled that the look-back window was unconstitutional.
The case, #Bienvenu v. #Diocese of #Lafayette, was brought by Douglas Bienvenu and several other plaintiffs who claimed they were sexually molested by a Roman Catholic priest during the 1970s, when they were between the ages of 8 and 14.
But in its majority opinion issued on March 22, the court argued that
while the facts of the case were largely undisputed, the priest
—and the religious institution he was a part of
—was protected under the U.S. Constitution’s due process clause, which says that no one shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”
The ♦️Louisiana Child Victims Act, ♦️according to the court, “cannot be retroactively applied to revive plaintiffs’ prescribed causes of action” on the basis that such an action would “divest defendants of their #vested #right to plead prescription.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/180677/louisiana-court-sexual-abuse-victims-catholic-priests