A group of men who allege they were sexually abused when they belonged to the Boy Scouts of America filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., against the organization, testing the limits of the district’s new statute-of-limitations law, the Wall Street Journal reported. The district recently enacted a measure allowing child sex-abuse victims who hadn’t been able to file civil claims because of statutes of limitations to sue the people responsible for the offense and the organizations to which they belonged. The law opened a two-year period, which began in May, to file a claim and generally applies to child sex-abuse victims up to the age of 40. Eight plaintiffs, who filed the lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C. on Monday, say that they were abused in states that still have statute-of-limitations laws preventing them from suing. Their lawyers said that the district is the appropriate place to file the lawsuit, in part, because the Boy Scouts were incorporated and domiciled there. It will be up to the courts to determine whether the new law can apply to civil claims for sex abuse that took place outside the district’s jurisdiction.
