After six years, victims of childhood sexual abuse stand a good chance of eliminating the statute of limitations on sex crimes against children between the ages of 12 and 16.

Senate President Jeff Atwater said yesterday he wants the measure to pass and Gov. Charlie Crist said today he’s likely to sign it into law.

“It probably makes sense. It just sounds like common sense. If you find out that somebody committed such a heinous crime as that and it was a long time ago, it still was a heinous crime,” Crist told reporters today.

The House is expected to vote on the bill (HB 525) and the Senate could vote on it as early as tomorrow.

The Florida Catholic Conference has successfully thwarted similar legislation for the past six years, and continues to lobby against doing away with the current statute of limitations for institutions like the Catholic Church but supports doing away with the time restrictions on cases involving individual defendants.

On Tuesday, the Conference wrote a letter to Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, asking him to amend the bill to address the Catholic’s concerns.

“The open-ended nature of these proposals creates tremendous uncertainty for any organization’s potential liability for alleged acts of negligence,” Florida Catholic Conference executive director Mike McCarron wrote to Atwater.

“There’s no statute of limitations on suffering so there should be no statute of limitations on justice,” Atwater, who is running statewide for chief financial officer, told The Palm Beach Post yesterday.

The Catholic Church is ramping up efforts to water down a measure backed by victims of childhood sexual abuse that would do away with the statute of limitations on sex crimes on children between the ages of 12 and 16.

The Florida Catholic Conference wants Senate President Jeff Atwater to help modify the bill now that it’s ready to hit the Senate floor despite the conference’s lobbying to limit the number of years a victim has to press charges against a molester.

The Catholic conference is okay with doing away with the current statute of limitations for individuals who commit the crimes but wants a time limit on criminal or civil charges against institutions like churches involved in the abuse.

The reason? Money.

“The open-ended nature of these proposals creates tremendous uncertainty for any organization’s potential liability for alleged acts of negligence,” Florida Catholic Conference executive director Mike McCarron wrote in a letterto Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, yesterday.

“We fully support the added protection for children that will come from these bills. It is also our hope that an amendment will be adopted to reasonably limit what we believe is inequitable institutional liability for private employers.”

The House is expected to pass its version of the bill (SB 870, HB 525) tomorrow.

The church has fought off efforts to do away with the time restrictions for the past six years. Lawmakers have seven working days left before the session ends to pass the bill this year.

McCarron said he’s tried to amend the bill to exclude institutions or to set a time limit of up to 30 years.

Meanwhile, Pope Benedict XVI promised today that the Roman Catholic Church would take official action on a growing scandal over sexual abuse by priests.

In an unusual move, Benedict spoke openly about his meeting with abuse victims during a trip to Malta and said he promised them the church would take action.

“I shared their suffering and emotionally prayed with them,” the pope said during his weekly audience at The Vatican, describing his visit on Sunday with eight Maltese men who claim to have been molested by priests as youths.

The church will investigate the allegations, bring justice to those responsible for the abuse and “implement effective measures designed to safeguard young people in the future,” the Vatican said in a statement.

Last week, the Vatican issued guidelines instructing bishops to report abuse cases to civil authorities where required by local laws.
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The Senate honored Lauren Book-Lim this morning, the daughter of powerful lobbyist Ron Book and a childhood sexual abuse survivor.

Book-Lim is trying to raise awareness about child molestation on a 500-mile walk from the Aventura home where her sexual molestation at the hands of her nanny began at age 10 and lasted until she was 17 to the Florida Capitol.

The Senate played a video of the 25-year-old Book-Lim talking about her non-profit organizaiton, Lauren’s Kids, as the usually brash Book, joined by his family, tearfully looked on from the public gallery.

The Books got kudos from Senate President Jeff Atwater and some of his colleagues, including Larcenia Bullard, a Miami Democrat who shared in the past that she was sexually molested by her father.

“I stand as one who has had that experience and I stand for others who have been afraid to speak out. I pray for Lauren that she will really complete her jouyrney because her journey has just begun. What she’s doing by speaking out, she’s helping so many others come to a point where they too will feel better about themselves,” Bullard said.

Since learning about his daughter’s abuse, Book has lobbied for harsher penalties for child molesters and has spoken strongly in favor of an effort to do away with the statute of limitations on child sex abusers, a proposal the Catholic Church has opposed for years and continues to fight.

Read related story: Sexual abuse survivor, activist starts 500-mile trek