Legal Question in Civil Litigation in Nevada
effects of child abuse still being suffered as an adult
I have heard a lot lately about daughters who are now adults suing their fathers because of sexual abuse suffered as a child. Would it also apply to mental abuse? I am 44 years old, but as a child, my father beat and harasseed my mother, and harassed me by keeping me up at night, breaking things in our home and beating my mother, causing us to flee multiple times in order to escape. To this day, I have a great deal of emotional problems I attribute to having such an unstable childhood. Is this also grounds for a lawsuit to gain financial restitution that will help me get the psychiatric counselling I need?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Child abuse is actionable
Yes, a child can sue for having been abused, BUT . . . there are statutes of limitations and exceptions to those statutes and new statutes for them SO . . . it depends on the law in your state, Nevada.You will have to ask a Nevadan atty.
What did I say, you ask? Well, if a child is abused between, for instance the ages of 7 and 14, the child is still a minor. Generally that child will by law be allowed some period of years after s/he has reached majority to sue the offending parent.If the abuse reached a certain threshold of trauma, the child may even push the trauma out of its mind and not remember the abuse until some considerably later time. This is the "revived memory" theory. Some people believe it and some don't. If the trauma of abuse was never forgotten and the child never sued -- which is most common -- because "back then" (1) no one tried to sue, (2) no one thought suit was possible legally (it wasn't a recognized "cause of action"), (3) no one thought it could be sued upon factually (child abuse was hidden, not talked about, and not to be mentioned ever --it was politically incorrect).
Those people may be out of luck to bring a suitnot because so much time has elapsed since the abuse occurred.So, only your local lawyer, who knows the cases in your state, will be able to properly guide, inform, and advise you what is feasible and what is not.That is not to say that your pain is not real. We all have a child within us, no matter how old we are.It's just that too much time has elapsed between the harm and the desire to sue.Can you simply ask your father to assist you to pay for counseling?I realize he may not admit what he did, but if you simply state you need financial help and don't try to get your pound of flesh at the same time, maybe he will agree to assist you in getting the counseling you need.He must have the money, for otherwise, why would you bother sue him? You can't get blood from a stone. Ask him gently first. You might not need the big guns. Good luck!
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