Statutes of Unjust Limitations: An Argument in Favor of Increasing the Statute of Limitations for Civil Cases of Adult Sex Crimes in Texas

Authors

• Athina E. CastañonFollow

Abstract

This Comment argues that Texas’s current five-year statute of limitations for civil claims arising from adult sex crimes is unjust and misaligned with modern trauma research. While Texas has enacted meaningful legislation for child survivors, adult survivors who experience sexual violence after the age of eighteen remain subjected to an arbitrarily short filing window that fails to account for the psychological, social, and economic barriers to reporting and litigation. Drawing on historical context, trauma-informed research, and a comparative analysis of reform efforts, this Comment demonstrates how rigid statutes of limitations disproportionately harm survivors and undermine access to civil justice.

Last Page

470

First Page

438

Recommended Citation

Athina E. Castañon, Statutes of Unjust Limitations: An Argument in Favor of Increasing the Statute of Limitations for Civil Cases of Adult Sex Crimes in Texas, 28 The Scholar 438 (2026).
Available at: https://commons.stmarytx.edu/thescholar/vol28/iss3/3

Volume Number

28

Issue Number

3

Publisher

St. Mary's University School of Law

Editor

Priscilla Okolie

ISSN

1537-405X