Ohio lawmakers are reviving a bill that will help victims of child sex abuse, specifically former Boy Scouts.
The bipartisan legislation gets rid of Ohio's civil statute of limitations in child sex abuse cases. This will allow victims to sue their perpetrators even after they file bankruptcy.
The bill is being brought back to light after the Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy in 2020 to try to get out of child sex abuse lawsuits. Almost two-thousand abuse claims against Boy Scout leaders were filed just in Ohio.
According to the Chillicothe Gazette, two men from Chillicothe at the end of February told their stories of sexual abuse from during their time in the Boy Scouts to the Ohio House Civil Justice Committee, asking lawmakers to repeal Ohio's statute of limitations on these types of sexual abuse cases.
A former Boy Scout leader from Chillicothe, Bill McKell, in 2020 was accused of sexual abuse by multiple juvenile victims from more than two to three decades ago. Chillicothe Police in 2020 released a report detailing the the allegations. McKell came clean on the allegations against him soon after, posting a lengthy post to facebook which has since been removed.
A few years earlier, in 2017, Dan Burris, a former educator from Westerville, found guilty of sexually abusing young boys he met at Boy Scout camp, was sentenced to 14 years in prison. the Gazette reports that one of the local men who provided testimony to the Civil Justice Committee said he was one of Burris' victims with the abuse taking place under the watch of McKell.