ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland lawmakers are advancing a bill that reins in the payouts victims of child sex abuse can receive for debate on the house floor.
The bill comes just two years after the body expanded victim access to civil lawsuits under Child Victims Act of 2023.
"You can't quantify someone's pain and we're trying to do that today. And I do hope they get the services they need and they deserve," said Delegate Nicole Williams while getting noticeably emotional during a tense vote in the House Judiciary Committee.
The bill amends the child victims act to lower the maximum payment to victims from $1.5 million in a private case to $700,000.
The state's maximum liability in these cases drops from $890,000 to just $400,000.
The reason this bill is being considered is to lower the financial impact the state will bear when these settlements are paid out.
Delegate C.T. Wilson sponsors both the original bill and this one.
"It's never about the money, there's no amount of money that's going to undo anything to anybody so we have to make sure we also protect the taxpayers in this because they are not culpable because if not we will be cutting services and raising taxes," said Wilson to WMAR outside the House chamber.
Delegate Robin Grammer, a yes vote for the original victims act in 2023, a no vote in committee on this bill to change it was vocal about his displeasure with this legislation during the voting session Wednesday.
"Now that we've realized the state is the biggest defender, we're cutting that damage, we're cutting that protection in half. So I think if we were honest with ourselves at this point, we should call this the predator protection act because essentially that's what it does," said Grammer.
The legislation also clarifies that no matter how many times someone was abused, the victim is entitled to only one payout.
"So if you were raped hundreds of times over ten years by multiple people, you used to be able to have multiple claims, now you get one claim and that's burnt down to a couple hundred thousand dollars," said Grammer.
Delegate Wilson maintains this is not about the money.
"Whether it be one time or a hundred times there's no amount of money that's going to erase that and whether we give them $100,000 or $2 billion there's no amount of money that's going to change what happened to these people," said Wilson.
The bill has a quickly approaching deadline of Monday, April 7 at midnight to get passed out of both chambers.
