The Real Cost of Opening a Window for Sexual Abuse Lawsuits in Pennsylvania

I was  asked to testify about the claims made in a paper by the Susquehanna Valley Center for Public Policy that opening a two-year window for childhood victims of sexual abuse to bring lawsuit against their abusers might cost publics schools in Pennsylvania between $10 and $32 billion. On its face the claim sounds utterly absurd. (Not to mention irrelevant. If that is the cost of  doing justice to those who have suffered from sexual abuse, then that is what we should be prepared to pay.) As I delved into the details of the paper I discovered that it was based on what, frankly, was a horror show of faulty research methods and statistical analyses. I was tempted to say–but in the setting of an official hearing in the Capitol, did not say–that this paper would have received no better than a D in the research methods or statistics courses I had taught at the University of North Carolina Charlotte or City College of New York. But that is in fact the truth.