Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2008,
pp. 167-168
Justice Denied, What America Must Do to Protect Its Children
Marci A. Hamilton
Cambridge University Press. 2008. ISBN-10: 052188621X; ISBN-13:
978-0521886215 (hardback), $23 ($15.41 Amazon.com). 200 pages.
Reviewed by Andrea Moore-Emmett
Marci A. Hamilton is one of the United States’ leading
church-state scholars, as well as an expert on federalism and representation.
She is a former clerk to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Hamilton is a Visiting
Professor of Public Affairs program at the Woodrow Wilson School and the
Kathleen and Martin Crane Senior Research Fellow in the Law and Public Affairs
at Princeton University. She holds the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at
the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. Hamilton is the
author of the award-winning book, God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of
Law, and is a columnist on constitutional issues for www.FindLaw.com.
In her new book, Justice Denied, What America Must Do to
Protect Its Children, Hamilton makes a strong and solid argument for ending
the statute of limitations (SOLs) for childhood sexual abuse across the United
States and in all circumstances. Using language geared to the nonlegal scholar,
Justice Denied is a comprehensive tutorial into the complex legal maze
that affects the issue of child sexual abuse. It is a book every child advocate
will want to read and refer to.
Hamilton explains that SOLs are procedural timing rules
that determine when one can go to court; and when SOLs expire, she says, the
effect is one of “locking the courthouse doors and throwing away the keys.”
In calling her book a “how-to” on stopping child sex abuse,
Hamilton begins by explaining how SOLs routinely protect sex offenders, allowing
them to go on to find new victims. At the other end of the spectrum, she says
SOLs compound the harm done to survivors of sexual abuse by not giving them the
justice they need and deserve.
Hamilton says there is a drive to treat childhood sexual
abuse as an idiosyncratic or isolated problem rather than the serious and
massive national problem that it is. She points to the Catholic Church’s clergy
scandal and how it was first minimized and said to be “peculiar to Boston” with
its “cultural liberalism.” In fact, as she reminds us, childhood sexual abuse
within the Church was found to be nationwide.
In revisiting clergy abuse, Hamilton says there is hardly
an institution that has not consciously favored its own interests over the
child’s, and that institutions must be coerced to protect children’s interests.
In case examples, she shows how the instinct to cover up is strong in both
public and private institutions. The law must change, she states, so that it is
in the institution’s best interest to turn in abusers.
Calling it “morally reprehensible,” Hamilton explains that
the United States’ legal system has structured itself in a way that
systematically subverts the interests of children, ignoring and suppressing the
needs of the millions of childhood sexual abuse victims over the interests of
predators.
She outlines how the states must go about abolishing SOLs
and what the federal government must do, as well. By making the child the
priority, she insists, these measures would accommodate the needs of survivors,
identify child predators in our midst, allow more survivors to come forward, and
deter institutions from hiding sexual abuse.
Hamilton takes aim at the insurance industry and the
hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church as barriers to eliminating SOLs for their
battling against child sex-abuse legislative reform. Other entities she names as
also creating barriers are teachers’ unions, defense attorneys (including
civil-liberties groups), and an uninformed public.
She declares that legislative reforms to date are
inadequate, as are such measures as harsher punishments, pedophile-free zones,
and Megan’s Law. Her position is that it will take the elimination of SOLs for
what she envisions as a coming civil-rights movement for children—a movement
that will bring long-overdue justice for survivors, and that will let the public
know who many of the predators in our midst are.
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