Sen. Dave Wallace, R-Leachville, presents a bill to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 22, 2025. (Mary Hennigan/Arkansas Advocate)
While a lawsuit challenging the Arkansas Legislature’s authority to revive child sexual abuse cases makes its way through the system, Sen. Dave Wallace on Wednesday introduced a “safeguard” bill to protect funds allocated to victims.
Senate Bill 13 would protect nationally allocated funds for more than 500 victims of child sexual abuse in Arkansas, Wallace, R-Leachville, told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“[SB13] is a narrowly tailored piece of legislation designed to protect the awards already obtained by Arkansas victims of scouting in the Boy Scout bankruptcy trust,” Wallace said. “…This money is awarded to those who won their claims — it’s already committed. In other words, if it doesn’t go to the Arkansas victims, it will go to victims of other states.”
In 2021, Wallace championed legislation that created the Justice for Vulnerable Victims of Sexual Abuse Act, which allowed adult survivors of child sexual abuse to take action against a perpetrator until they turned 55 years old.
The law removed the statute of limitations for such cases and opened a two-year revival window for any adult survivor to take civil action, even if their claim had expired under previous state law.
Filing period reopened for legal claims against perpetrators of child sexual abuse in Arkansas
In 2023, Wallace amended the law to remove the age limit and extended the revival deadline to February 2026. In the previous two years, more than 20 claims were filed on behalf of over 100 survivors of abuse, according to a press release from Wallace.
But whether the Legislature had the authority to remove the statute of limitations and allow case revivals is a decision that’s still pending with the Arkansas Court of Appeals.
An hour before Wallace presented his bill, Judges Casey Tucker, Wendy Scholtens Wood and Waymond Brown heard brief oral arguments about the lawsuit challenging the Legislature’s authority.
The lawsuit, filed by four men during the lookback window in 2022, accused Dr. James “Darrell” Nesmith of sexual abuse when the men were teenagers.
Nesmith in 2018 pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault for molesting a teenage boy for four years in the early 2000s. Nesmith knew the boy through their Little Rock church, where Nesmith was a youth director, deacon and Boy Scout troop leader, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The victim was 27 when he told police about Nesmith’s actions.
The ongoing lawsuit alleges Nesmith molested the four men when they were under his medical care at Arkansas Children’s Hospital in the 1990s and 2010s, according to the Democrat-Gazette.
On Wednesday, Nesmith’s attorney Mark Wankum asked the court to uphold a previous decision from Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Tim Fox in which he threw out the case.
“I’m not saying we should turn a blind eye to child sexual abuse, but this case is about the scope of the Legislature’s authority,” Wankum said.
Wankum argued that the state’s highest court had already set precedent in related cases and that the Court of Appeals had an “easy job” to apply the settled law.
But plaintiff’s attorney Brian Brooks told the court that this case was “manifestly different” from others. He said the law “rarely speaks in absolutes” and protecting children was more important than allowing perpetrators to get by.
Brooks referenced child sexual abuse cases as situations where people aren’t aware they were abused until decades later or have delayed reporting because they’re afraid of repercussions as the perpetrator is typically someone the victim knows well.
“To uphold [Fox’s] ruling, the court must decide the Legislature got this wrong — it didn’t. It got this right,” Brooks said.
The court recessed without any action after approximately 30 minutes of arguments.
Antoinette Grajeda contributed to this report.
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