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

I was Ā 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 Ā 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.

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