In 2006, when he was leading the Ohio House of Representatives, Jon Husted gutted a bill intended to help survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic priests.
Husted, who is now running for his first full term to the U.S. Senate, has come under fire recently for accepting donations from a Jeffrey Epstein associate and having a county campaign chair who served jail time for alleged misconduct with a minor. Each of these stories has fueled a narrative that Husted is tolerant and even protective of sexual abusers.
The Ohio Senate passed SB 17, known as the clergy abuse bill, in March 2006. The legislation was led by Democratic state Sen. Teresa Fedor as a response to the Catholic clergy abuse scandal. It sought to enact several reforms, including requiring clergy (of all religions) to report child abuse committed by their colleagues, expanding the legal definition of sexual battery to cover clergy who sexually exploit minors in their congregations, and creating a one-year civil window for victims to seek damages for offenses that happened outside the 35-year statute of limitations.
The Catholic Conference of Ohio, which represents the state’s bishops, lobbied the state House to water down the bill. The group specifically took issue with the one-year civil window provision, arguing that the church could not reasonably defend itself against older allegations.
Husted, who is a Roman Catholic, was serving as House speaker at the time. He oversaw a process by which the civil window provision was stripped from the bill and replaced with a plan to create an online registry of clergy members found liable of sexual abuse in civil court.
Barbara Blaine, who started an advocacy group for survivors of priest abuse, told the Columbus Dispatch that she felt betrayed by Husted and accused him of caving to pressure from the Catholic Conference of Ohio.
On the day the House voted on the weakened SB 17, survivors lined the halls of the state Capitol, each one holding an image of themselves at the age when they were abused. Several Republican lawmakers reportedly entered the chamber through side doors to avoid confronting the angry victims.
The legislation passed with near-unanimous support.
This was not the first time Husted used his position to limit the ability of abuse survivors to seek justice. In 2004, he voted for a tort reform law that capped noneconomic damages for sexual abuse plaintiffs at $250,000.
The Ohio Capital Journal wrote 2021 that the law had the effect of “stripping child rape victims of millions of dollars in legal damages.”
Husted was appointed to the U.S. Senate last year to fill the seat vacated by Vice President J.D. Vance. He will face former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in the general election.
