When the State Admits Harm, the Job Isn’t Finished

Texas Acknowledged the Harm of Silencing Abuse Survivors By taking an important step when it passed Trey’s Law.

For the first time, the Legislature acknowledged that silencing survivors of child sexual abuse through non-disclosure agreements was wrong — and that the State had a role in stopping it.

That mattered.

Why Texas Survivors Still

Cannot Access the Courts: Statute of Limitations Laws and Child Sexual Abuse in Texas

But acknowledging harm is not the same as remedying it.

Across Texas, survivors can now speak — but many still cannot seek justice. Not because the facts aren’t known. Not because wrongdoing didn’t occur. But because the courthouse doors are closed by time limits written long before the scope of institutional abuse was understood.

Notably, Texas law already recognizes the gravity of these crimes: there is no statute of limitations for the criminal prosecution of child sexual abuse (Article 12.01, subsection (1)(A) — a recognition that the harm does not expire, even if civil remedies do.

In Texas, child sexual abuse survivors can now speak openly — but many are still barred from court by outdated statute of limitations laws.

That tension should trouble anyone who truly believes in constitutional self-government.

A system that reserves for itself the power to prosecute forever, while denying victims the same access to justice, has not finished its work.

This is not about punishing institutions for the sake of punishment. It is about whether access to justice is real — or merely symbolic.

Texas has already admitted that certain abuses were hidden, delayed, and systemically concealed. When the State acknowledges that reality, it inherits a responsibility: to ensure that victims are not barred from remedy by the very delay the system enabled.

That question — how we finish the job responsibly, constitutionally, and without creating new injustices — deserves serious, sober discussion.

It is a conversation this campaign is prepared to have.

Not with slogans. Not with shortcuts. But with restraint, accountability, and respect for those who paid the price for silence.

More to come.

The responsibility belongs here.