Bills to lift deadlines in sex-abuse cases die

OLYMPIA – Despite 11th-hour lobbying by sex-abuse victims and their advocates from Spokane, a proposal to eliminate the statute of limitations for prosecuting child sex abuse seems dead, at least for this year.

“We’ll keep going at it,” Sen. Chris Marr, D-Spokane, said of his Senate Bill 5817.

“I’m not deterred.”

Marr’s bill died Wednesday night when the Senate Judiciary Committee failed to vote it out of committee.

A similar House bill by Rep. Don Barlow, D-Spokane, also died.

Committee chairman Sen. Adam Kline wanted to amend Marr’s proposal to include fewer crimes and lengthen – rather than do away with – the statute of limitations.

Kline also wanted to extend the deadline for filing lawsuits in such cases, a move certain to trigger fierce opposition from insurance companies.

“(Kline’s) alternative really wasn’t a viable one,” said Marr.

Marr, a freshman lawmaker, also ran into some resistance from Republicans, who had tried to pass similar measures for years.

And after last year’s months of statehouse fighting over sex offender bills, “there’s this sex-crime fatigue that has set in,” he said. “Both sides have said ‘Well, we dealt with that last year.’ “

Local advocates were disappointed.

“I will be handing out free tickets to the child molesters, courtesy of the Washington State Senate as a result of the inaction on this bill,” former Spokane County Prosecutor Don Brockett wrote in an angry letter to Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown Thursday. “… I am entirely disgusted by the whole process.”

Brockett is calling on Brown – the most powerful lawmaker in the Senate – to use her clout to revive Marr’s bill.

Marr said the bill’s collapse taught him a lot about the power of committee chairs and about “the ability of partisanship to kind of toxify issues.”