CINCINNATI — Rebecca Surendorff became an advocate for victims of childhood sexual abuse after the arrest of Geoff Drew, a former Cincinnati priest who pleaded guilty in 2021 to raping a 10-year-old altar boy.
Drew was Surendorff’s music teacher at St. Jude Catholic School in Bridgetown in the 1980s. The altar boy was her classmate, Paul Neyer. Surendorff’s daughter was baptized by Drew, who was pastor of St. Ignatius Parish in Green Township when her children went to school there — and Drew was arrested — in 2019.
“He basically had a three-decade pattern of behavior of grooming children in Butler, Hamilton and Montgomery counties, and yet he was able to work with children in both school and churches in our state, despite well-written policies and well-trained parents,” said Surendorff, co-chair of Ohioans for Child Protection. “Few people realize that a second victim came forward in the Geoff Drew case and he was denied his day in court. My classmate, Paul, who was courageous and came forward, he had his day. But the other victim didn’t.”
That’s why Surendorff was encouraged last year when Ohio lawmakers proposed five new ideas for protecting children, including a bill to ban sexual grooming.
But a year later, four of those five ideas are still stuck in House committees, including one that would expand to age 55 the statute of limitations for civil claims against abuse perpetrators and those who enabled them.
“We’re talking about the rape of children here,” Surendorff said. “A lot of Ohioans are unaware of how far behind we are and there’s some powerful institutions that might not want to see it changed.”
‘Favorable to insurance companies’
The WCPO 9 I-Team has been following statute of limitations reform in Ohio since 2019, when our “Culture of Silence” investigation showed how the Archdiocese of Cincinnati used those time restrictions to avoid criminal and civil penalties. It also documented how the church often moved priests and brothers to new parishes and schools after they were accused of abuse or inappropriate behavior, without sharing that information with the public.
The archdiocese declined to comment on the latest efforts to ban grooming and reform Ohio's statute of limitations laws.
Ohio ranks among the worst states when it comes to statute of limitations reform, according to Child USA, a Philadelphia-based think tank that promotes the elimination of time limits on civil and criminal cases of child sex abuse and the revival of claims that expired under current law.
“The Ohio legislature is very favorable to insurance companies, corporations and the Catholic Church,” said Konrad Kircher, an attorney who has represented hundreds of victims of child sexual abuse. “Those entities have strong lobbying arms in Ohio.”
Kircher started filing lawsuits in 2002, after the Boston Globe exposed the sexual abuse of children by priests who were repeatedly moved to other parishes.
“The statute of limitations was an appalling one year from the age of majority against the perpetrator and two years (from the age of majority) against the church, meaning that a victim would have had to have filed a lawsuit by the age of 19 against the priest or, or by the age of 20 against the church,” Kircher said.
He pushed for statute of limitations reform in Ohio, only to see a series of last-minute maneuvers that kept his clients from suing.
“Our suits were overwhelmingly dismissed by Ohio courts. At the same time … we were successful in getting a new law passed that extended the statute of limitations, which is the current law to the age of 30 … but it didn't apply to past victims,” Kircher said. “So now, if a child is sexually molested, they have until the age of 30 to file a lawsuit. It’s still not enough time.”
In the past 20 years, public pressure has prompted lawmakers in many other states to reform their statute of limitations to allow more sexual abuse victims to sue.
But Ohio laws are still unchanged: criminal charges for rape and sexual battery can be filed until victims are 43; while civil claims are permitted until victims turn 30.
Ohioans had no way to revive expired claims until last October, when state lawmakers passed the “Scout’s Honor” bill. It opened a five-year window for the limited purpose of allowing Ohioans to receive bigger payments from a national sex abuse settlement with the Boy Scouts of America.
The bill was co-sponsored by Rep. Bill Seitz, the Republican House Majority Leader who warns advocates like Surendorff not to expect broader statute of limitations reform in the current General Assembly.
“My views on the statute of limitations have been very well etched in stone for a long time,” Seitz said. “A limitless statute of limitations is not fair. It does not serve the goal of getting matters rectified while they’re fresh in peoples’ minds and it results in hardship to the institutions who employ the actual offenders.”
‘Endless barrels of cash’
Seitz’s law firm, Dinsmore & Shohl, represented the Archdiocese of Cincinnati in cases of alleged sexual abuse by clergy. It “negotiated global resolution through a settlement fund and successfully prevailed in two Ohio Supreme Court cases, based on statutes of limitations defenses, thereby terminating most of such litigation in the state of Ohio,” according to the firm’s website.
Seitz worked for the Taft law firm when Dinsmore did most of that work.
For more than two decades in Columbus, Seitz has been an immovable object, blocking legislation that would open Ohio’s courts to lawsuits against organizations that failed to keep children safe from sexual abusers.
A series of fresh scandals prompted Seitz to budge a bit in his final term before a planned retirement in December. He co-sponsored not only the Boy Scouts bill but a second potential law that would define and criminalize child sexual grooming.
“The Geoff Drew case is what led to the statute on grooming,” Seitz said. “Because folks were concerned that he was being passed around from parish to parish and up to no good to whichever parish he went.”
House Bill 322 would also expand from two years to four the statute of limitations on criminal charges against “mandatory reporters,” or people required by state law to report child abuse and neglect. And it would revise Ohio’s civil registry law, which Seitz created in 2006 as an alternative to statute of limitations reform. A Columbus judge declared the law unconstitutional in 2010, but Seitz said his new bill would fix that problem.
“We think as soon as we get back from (Ohio’s Mar. 19 primary break), we will get that passed,” Seitz said. “We think it’s just as important to go after the mandatory reporters who fail to do their job as it is to go after the perpetrators because we have the mandatory reporter statutes for a reason. We want you to inform law enforcement of these kinds of activities so that they can be interdicted, stopped, penalized promptly.”
But Seitz draws the line at making it easier to sue organizations that employ child predators.
“It’ll get a hearing. But, typically that’s all it’ll get,” Seitz said, of statute of limitations reform bills. “I’ve told them over the years, if you want to lift the statute of limitations for damages against the actual offender, I’ll work with you on that. But they don’t want to do that because why? Because the actual offender doesn’t have two nickels to rub together and so it is not that source of endless barrels of cash that some of these folks are looking for,” Seitz said.
‘The barrier of leadership’
That’s not enough for Rep. Jessica Miranda, a Democrat from Forest Park. She co-sponsored the “Scouts Honor” bill with Seitz and is trying to convince him to endorse broader statute of limitations reforms.
“I respect the hell out of Bill Seitz. But the fact that he is the one that’s been stopping this type of reform from happening for so many years is something that we’ve got to talk about,” Miranda said. “Ohio should not be a safe haven for predators and pedophiles or rapists.”
Miranda is a survivor of rape and child sex abuse. She co-sponsored House Bill 124, which is known as the Hidden Predator Act. It would remove the criminal statute of limitations in rape cases and open a three-year window for lawsuits currently barred by the statute of limitations. It would allow victims to file lawsuits until they’re age 55 and change Ohio law to permit lawsuits against any “entity that negligently facilitated” sexual abuse.
“We’re in the spot now here in Ohio … where the needle is starting to change, it’s starting to move,” Miranda said.
Miranda hopes the bill will get a hearing in the House Criminal Justice Committee so victims of sex abuse can build support for the reforms by sharing their stories as she did in 2022.
And if it makes it out of committee, Child USA Advocacy Executive Director Kathryn Robb will come to Ohio to testify, as she’s done in 33 other states to promote laws that protect children.
“We just have to get it through the barrier of leadership and whoever is keeping their finger on the bill from moving,” Robb said. “No one wants to vote against this sort of legislation … Once it hits the floor, it passes.”
And if the effort fails this year, Robb, Miranda, Kircher and Surendorff all agree on one thing: The job will be easier next year, when Seitz no longer has a leadership role at the statehouse.
“It’s going to take a lot more parents and concerned citizens in our state to speak up and say that we want to protect the children in Ohio, not powerful institutions that have been enabling or covering up abuse here in our state,” said Surendorff. “Our statute of limitations is prematurely shutting the doors to our courts. And that’s really just protecting predators in the long run and institutions that enable them.”
