Denver, CO — Today the Colorado General Assembly passed Senate Bill 88, also known as the Child Sexual Abuse Accountability Act. This bill is an important step in Colorado addressing the state’s decades-old, well-documented history of institutions covering up the sexual abuse of children in their care. The Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault (CCASA) is confident this survivor-centered policy will provide a path to healing for so many.
“Our civil legal system is the single system designed to provide victims with the financial resources they need to heal from emotional, physical, and mental trauma. Through this bill, childhood sexual abuse survivors will have access to the civil legal system and hold the institutions accountable who, at best, were complicit in the abuse and, at worst, participatory in shielding serial sex offenders from accountability,” Raana Simmons, CCASA’s Director of Public Affairs.
In addition to holding institutions accountable for failing to protect children in their care, the Child Sexual Abuse Accountability Act will also incentivize the prevention of child sexual abuse by finally holding bad actors accountable.
“CCASA sincerely thanks all of the survivors who testified in support of this bill and all of those in the past thirty years who have worked to get this sort of policy passed. The Child Sexual Abuse Accountability Act will change the lives of survivors in Colorado and we are thrilled to see this bill become law,” Brie Franklin, CCASA’s Executive Director.