Bill Cosby avoided jail time this week by paying a $1 million bail, after Pennsylvania prosecutors announced they charged Cosby for an alleged sexual assault that took place in 2004.
The former “Cosby Show” star has been accused of sexually assaulting more than 50 women over five decades, yet so far, Cosby’s 2004 sexual assault of Andrea Constand is the only case that has resulted in criminal charges. This is largely because of the statute of limitations: most states don’t allow rape cases that happened more than 30 years ago to go to trial. In many states, victims have as little as three years to come forward and prosecute sexual assault—in Massachusetts, the limit is 15 years.
Even if three years seems like a reasonable amount of time to report a crime, rape is different. Only one out of three victims ever report rape, and rape is one of the most underreported crimes. “We treat sexual assault crimes differently, and we automatically look for areas of responsibility,” Andrea Cabral, former Secretary of Public Safety, said in an interview with Boston Public Radio. “I might leave my keys in my car, and it might get stolen, and there will be people who say, “well, you left your keys in your car.” But far fewer people [than rape]—because everybody owns a car, and everybody knows what it’s like to potentially have their car stolen. Only half of the population knows what it’s really like to fear rape. It’s not that men don’t get raped, but women live with that every single day.”
The case is strong to consider doing away with the statute of limitations entirely, Cabral says. Yet there are legal considerations, and prosecutors have to be mindful to strike a balance. “You always want to be able to strike enough of a balance,” Cabral said, “so that someone who is accused has enough of a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves.”
“Evidence does degrade over time,” Cabral said. “As do people’s memories, and a variety of other things that can have an impact on a person’s ability to defend themselves, but I tend to air more on the side of extending, maybe not indefinitely, but extending statutes of limitations in sexual assault cases, because they’re so grossly underreported for all of the reasons that make coming forward and all of the other kinds of crimes a reasonable thing for a victim to do. It is unreasonable in rape cases, too often.”
Of course—as time passes, cultural norms change as well. Sexual assault is viewed differently in 2016 than it was thirty years ago. Anne Scott, a former student at St George’s School in Rhode Island, only recently came forward about being sexually abused in 1970 by a staff member. Dr Hardy, a longtime medical director and a medical fellow at Brigham and Women’s, was accused of sexually molesting female patients, some under anesthesia, in incidents dating back at least a decade. In most cases, victims did not come forward for fear of being shamed or blamed for the abuse—they were afraid of the stigma. “The irony is that the women that we’re talking about in the Cosby case, the Dr. Hardy case, and Anne scott’s case at St George’s,” Cabral said, “those cases go back ten, 20 and 30 years, when it really was far more difficult to come forward.”
With respect to cultural changes and expiring statutes of limitation, Cabral says something needs to change. “There’s going to have to be a measuring point that’s more recent, going forward, to see if there’s a change,” Cabral said. “With whatever progress that has been made, it’s still less than a third of women that come forward. Now some of that is believing yourself that you will not be believed, and not giving the system a chance to tell you that’s not going to happen.”
Andrea Cabral is the former Massachusetts Secretary of Public Safety. To hear more of her interview with Boston Public Radio, click on the audio link above.
