When the Colorado Supreme Court ruled the Child Sexual Abuse Accountability Act unconstitutional in June, lawmakers decided it was time to change the constitution.

“It’s not a broad scope, it’s not changing the entirety of the constitution, it’s not even changing the entirety of that retrospective piece of the constitution,” said state Sen. Jessie Danielson, one of the act’s original sponsors. “It’s just making a very narrow exception so the state of Colorado no longer has this barrier for survivors of child sexual abuse.”

In the court’s June unanimous opinion, the justices ruled the act violated the Colorado Constitution’s prohibition on retrospective legislation.

“Since the Supreme Court decided that it was unconstitutional … we decided that we needed to address that constitutional problem,” Danielson said. “And so we’ve crafted a very narrow fix to allow these survivors to pursue their claims.”

If the in-progress amendment passes both the state House and Senate with a two-thirds majority, the question would be put to voters on the November 2024 ballot. Exactly where Ray Desser wants it.

“My goal from the beginning was to get this on the ballot, to put it to the people of Colorado,” Desser said.

Desser said he was molested as a 13-year-old in Colorado in the 1970s. By the time he decided to come forward, at 50 years old, the statute of limitations on his case had expired.

“People who go through this, most of them won’t say anything for decades,” Desser said. “They don’t know where to go, there’s no avenues, they’re out of touch and by the time they decide to come forward, it’s too late.”

When the Child Sexual Abuse Accountability Act was introduced in 2021, Desser said he was in the Capitol building every day.

“Once I became a part of this, I realized I was speaking for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t speak for themselves,” Desser said. “It was right in the middle of COVID, and I was kind of retired at that time so I just put forth all my effort.”

He said he’d do the same today to see this amendment passed — even if it meant going door to door to get signatures.

The original act, which Desser testified for in 2021, created a three-year window for people whose statute of limitations had expired to sue over decades-old childhood sexual abuse.

Another bill sponsored by Danielson in 2021 eliminated Colorado’s six-year statute of limitations for child sex abuse victims.

“So if this happens in the future, people will have recourse,” Danielson said. “The problem is the people that this already happened to, the statute of limitations is so small that it closes before most survivors even realize what happened to them and wish to pursue their claims.”

“We know from social science research that it can take many, many decades for survivors, especially of child sexual abuse, to come to terms with what happened to them and be ready to move forward and seek justice,” said Brie Franklin, executive director of the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

The organization was also heavily involved in supporting the 2021 legislation, and is currently working alongside Danielson, House Majority Leader Monica Duran, state Sen. Dafna Michaelson Jenet and state Sen. Rhonda Fields to draft the amendment that would hit ballots next November.

“To finally have something passed, after decades of work, was just such a relief and such a joy,” Franklin said. “It was devastating to then have that taken back. We’re excited to hear legislators are exploring other ways to do this and committed to figuring out what the best way is.”

Franklin said the coalition is also mindful of the burden placed on survivors sharing their stories.

“Many of them are ready to do this work again, but it can be really difficult to share your story,” she said. “And by making this a ballot measure, they not only have to share their stories with the legislators to get the bill passed, but then they have to do work with the general public.”

If passed, the amendment would change a small part of the Colorado Constitution regarding retrospective legislation to make an exception for this specific sexual misconduct, Danielson said.

“It became pretty clear immediately after the court acted that there’s a groundswell of support for this among the public and among the legislature,” said Aaron Houston, who already had a lawsuit in process when the Child Sexual Abuse Accountability Act was struck down. “With the stories that have come out, the public is now educated about this issue and I think this could overwhelmingly pass in both the legislature and on the ballot.”

Jessica Arbour, an attorney at Horowitz Law who represented Houston and has years of experience representing survivors of sexual abuse, said she and her firm were happy to see Colorado lawmakers getting to work so quickly to open the courthouse back up to these decades-old cases after the Supreme Court’s June decision.

Arbour said she had two dozen cases in progress in Colorado under the Child Sexual Abuse Accountability Act before the state Supreme Court overturned it.

“There’s been a movement across the country, particularly since 2018 when the Attorney General of Pennsylvania published a groundbreaking grand jury report about the level of pre-sexual abuse of children in the state of Pennsylvania, where states are opening these look-back windows up,” Arbour said. “Colorado really is an outlier in the sense that it, out of 35 or so other states who’ve passed these windows, got struck down. We expected a challenge, but the result was certainly unexpected and unusual compared to other states.”

The in-progress amendment, which will be introduced to the ballot through a referred measure in the legislature, will likely be accompanied by a companion bill to address certain timeline and statutory issues with the Child Sexual Abuse Accountability Act, Danielson said.

Since the original act passed in 2021, the three-year lawsuit window opened in 2022. If the constitutional amendment passed next year with the current statute, there would be almost no time for survivors to file claims before the window closed in 2025, Danielson said.

“We have to do right by these people,” Danielson said. “Working with the survivor community, we really thought we had reached the ideal solution, or at least pretty close to it, and then that got taken out from under them.”

Resources for survivors of sexual assault, including community-based crisis centers, emotional support and medical care, can be found online at youhavetherightco.org.

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