 I'm so glad that you've come to join us today. I'm here with Roy Chang and Victoria Chang from the law firm Shimon Chang, and we are going to be talking about the important things that are involved going forward with all the new legislation we have. I'm sure people have been hearing on the radio and on the TV, people announcing, hey, you know, you guys can come out after your abusers. You actually have two years now that's been added, and there are some other things that have been added too. So I want to welcome you guys. Thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate you guys being here. Well, what you guys do is amazing, and you have a very long history. I know that the law firm of Shimon Chang has been there since 1966, which is a long time, and you've been there since, what, 1979, I think? Yeah, you've been there for quite a long time, too, and you both came from the prosecutor's office, right? Can you tell us a little bit about what you guys did at the prosecutor's office? Well, I'll let Victoria go first. Thank you, Cynthia. I actually just started at Shimon Chang in July of this year, and prior to that I was with the city kind of Honolulu prosecutor's office for ten years, and over four of those years I spent with the sex assault team. And so I had the opportunity to work with victims of sexual abuse, both children and adults. I've had the opportunity to work with doctors and crisis workers at the sex abuse treatment center. So it was a great experience, and I learned a lot while I was there. Thank you for all of that you do. And you were there, too, right? So what were you doing there? It was the same thing. I was there for basically two and a half years, and I was assigned, too, mostly. Back then we didn't call them sex assault cases. We called them rape cases. So I was assigned to doing most of those types of cases, and had the opportunity to work with the victims. And I think that's really the key or one of the rewarding parts of being a prosecutor. It isn't just about, you know, having a case. It's about, no, there's a victim, and she needs to have her day in court. That's right. And that was part of the rewarding thing. Right. And so that was from the criminal side, right? That's what you guys were looking at from that side. And now it's from the other side, and, right, so it came from the civil side, which is a really big thing. And I know that if some of you have been with me before you know, you've heard me talk about how important it was to me, I didn't remember my abuse till I was 30. So when I did, I found out that there was this thing called delayed discovery. This was in 1980, early 1980s. And they had just started this new thing called delayed discovery. And I was in the first handful of cases that were tried, and we, I was successful. And I'll tell you, it was the most empowering thing that has ever happened in all of my healing. I would say that was number one in the biggest part of making me know, hey, he's going to stand accountable. And there will be some kind of measure of retribution for me, right? In the sense of he had to sell his house. I won a really nice suit that was able to allow me to pay for therapy and move forward with my life in a way that I couldn't have afforded to do before. So I really, I want everyone to know out there, if you are in a position where you have been abused in any way, if you have been abused at work or at school or at home, wherever it is, I want you to know that there is hope. There is help, not just from the criminal side, not just from the police. You can go to, you could come to Shim and Chang, and they could help you out. And I know that you guys do free consultations so that if anyone out there needs help. And I recommend it highly. You have a bunch of issues. Now that's what I'd like to talk about, because when I went online, I wasn't really able to get all the specifics of this new bill. But I know that through the law, I'm not sure what the name of the thing is, but you guys have access to stuff that us normal people don't get. So you have some information that I don't have, and I'd love it if you would share it with our viewers. Let me just clarify that there are two court systems. There's the criminal courts, which is where we were at one point in time as prosecutors. And there, it's like the caption of the case would be state of Hawaii versus a defendant. So in other words, the victim never really has the opportunity to recover anything. It's really the state trying to hold someone accountable, and they committed a crime, then they would pay for the crime that they committed. The civil courts or the civil side is where we're at now, and that is where in your situation, on the civil side, the individual, the victim has the opportunity to recover something for themselves. It isn't just to protect society, it's to recover something for themselves. All of the harm that they've suffered throughout their lifetime, that's their opportunity. And that's where the civil side comes in, and that's what we do at this point in time. Right. Thank you for explaining that way more eloquently than I did. I just know it from the personal side, right? But I appreciate hearing it from the legal side, too. Thank you. And so Victoria can explain to you what the new law and how it's given victims the opportunity to have a longer period in which to bring a claim, and the longer they go from there. So this past legislative session, Act 98, basically extends the statute of limitations that was previously in place for these types of civil sexual abuse complaints. And so there's different sections and subsections that were amended, the years, the time allowed for a victim of child sexual abuse to bring a claim. And so the first section talks about a minor who, once that minor reaches the age of 18, that minor has eight years after 18, so until the minor turns 26 to bring a claim. Or if the minor's abuser happened to have been younger than the minor, then you could take that, you would add on to when that abuser turns 18, you've got eight years from that date. From their maturity. From their maturity. Of all. Right, so that gives the minor a victim more time. And then also as part of that first subsection, the minor has three years after discovering that he or she had been sexually abused as a child. So that's kind of like, Marlene, I was 30 before I realized or remembered any of it, and back then it was just one year in California anyway, because that's where I brought my suit. And it was just one year, I only had one year to do it. So like you said Cynthia, in your situation you didn't realize it until you were 30. And that's very common. Exactly. And not just me, as in like I'm sort of a stand out or, you know, kind of person that's unusual. Really that's the norm is that 30 years old should remember. And even if you've sort of had this inkling, remembering, you sort of have remembered, but you haven't had the emotional strength to deal with it, then it's just like as if you've just finally remembered, even though you sort of knew all along. But it's the same idea as you had just remembered, because you finally get strong enough to be able to go forward. I know when they, I should say we had Justin Murakami, who was one of the policy writers at SATC, was on. And he was talking about how they were trying to work with some of the lower statutes that were in the amendment, and that they originally had gone for extending the age to 40. But it didn't pass. And I know that next month I'm supposed to have Cynthia Thielen on. And we're going to talk a little bit more about how things are going to change and how we can ramp up the fight, so to speak, to go back again and see if we can't get it passed this next time, since it didn't pass last time. Well actually Cynthia. So in that subsection of this new act 98, for situations, someone who is 40 could possibly still bring claim, as long as say the realization that the experiences, the emotional challenges that you're experiencing at the present, as long as it's within three years of you realizing that the reason you're going through these challenges at the moment is because or attributed to child sexual abuse. So there is a way to get around that. Right. You have three years from the date of that realization. It's hard to prove though, that's an issue of how do you prove when it happened. Like I know the lawyer for me was saying that it was easy because I was in therapy when I remembered. I was having issues with my husband, which is what got me there, to therapy. And I kept thinking, I can't have had this perfect life and still end up with a guy like this. I don't make choices like this. There's something wrong. I just don't know what it is. There's something wrong. I kept saying. And finally one day I was able to come and say, I don't know what it was. But so I had a specific mark. And so I know it's important for people to get help, reach out for help. You know, there's hope and healing out there. And unfortunately people are so silenced by the shame that they don't get out there. So I think that the more lawsuits that can happen now, the better. The more people that can talk about it, the better. So that people know they're not alone. And that they know that there are people out there that want to help. And I think that's an important thing. And that's really unfortunate. The burden is on the victim to prove that it happened. And so you're touching on ways that it can be done. Well, of course, is that when that realization occurs, if she or he is going through therapy, the therapist can potentially become a witness, a witness, a corroboration through family members. Because a lot of times these kinds of offenses occur not in a vacuum. Sometimes they do, but not always in a vacuum. Somebody knows. Somebody knows. And so you need to go and contact those people. But unfortunately the burden is on the claimant to prove when he or she discovered it and then the clock then starts to run for those three years. Right. And that's why it's so important to get into counseling, find somebody, a pastor, a priest if you're a Catholic, whatever, go to your rabbi if you're Jewish, go somewhere, find someone that you can talk to. Even if it's like your boss, if that's something that you can do, or maybe a teacher that you really trust at school, things like that, that it's just so important to reach out to somebody and that way you can mark the time frame at that moment, which is an important thing to do. So in all of this stuff that is changing, I know that one of the things that was a big deal to make it change was the Kamehameha Schools suit that came out. There's a big thing in that newspaper today, even about some 60 million lawsuit or settlement or some such thing like that that was done for those all was it 30, I think, victims that came out of that Dr. Brown who was a psychiatrist. And that's when you go, wait a minute, here I am telling people to go reach out for help and then here this guy who's a psychiatrist is totally betraying his responsibility to these kids. And after you were touching on another part of the law, which I think is important for people to understand, that not only did this one particular statute increase the time in which you could file a claim or to bring a lawsuit as far as against the abuser, the actual abuser, there's a second part of the law that allows you to bring that claim within the same statute of time frames against a legal entity, a business, a school, a church, an organization to allow you to bring a claim like in the Bishop estate claim against Kamehameha Schools that you could sue the school and that statute allows for that and it also allows for the extension of statute of limitations. See people sometimes think I can only sue the abuser and that's not true. I can sue the legal entity that had control over that abuser who was aware of what was going on or had a duty responsibility to you as the victim. So as students, Kamehameha Schools owe a duty to them. They were their students, they had to protect them from someone like this. So the statute allows for that to happen. Okay, and this opens up a whole new bunch of stuff that we're going to talk about as soon as we come back. We're going to take a little break. This is finding respect in the chaos. Please don't go anywhere. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaii Anna all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Hello, I'm Yukari Kunisue. I'm your host of New Japanese Language Show on Think Tech Hawaii called Konnichiwa Hawaii, broadcasting live every other Monday at 2 p.m. Please join us where we discuss important and useful information for the Japanese language community in Hawaii. The show will be all in Japanese. Hope you can join us every other Monday at 2 p.m. Aloha. Hello, welcome back to Finding Respect in the Chaos. I'm Cynthia Lee Sinclair and I'm here with Roy Chang and I'm here with Victoria Chang, the lawyers from Shimon Chang here in Honolulu that has been around for 50 years. This is an amazing law firm and we had a great conversation going right before the break and I want to continue on that a little bit. Can you give us a little bit more? I know we were talking over the break and I want to make sure our viewers hear all of that too. I wanted Victoria just to finish up one more statute of limitations exception which the statute provides for and as soon as she explains that then I'll explain why it was so important. Okay, cool. This is great. I love having you guys here. You're so smart. So under Act 98, there's one more subsection, subsection B that addresses child sexual abuse claims that have statute of limitations that have already expired. So basically after eight years from April 24th, 2012 is the date that is specific to the statute. It adds eight years to that. So any claim that had already been time barred by maybe today now has until April 24th, 2020 to bring a claim. So those time barred claims as long as it was I guess the expiration of the as the law that was in effect as of April 24th, 2012. So if they had a time barred claim then they now have until April 24th, 2020 to bring a claim. So this opens up a whole bunch of opportunities for women or men, the people I should say that have been abused and the statute of limitations is way gone and yet they're still able to come back and have some kind of a civil case against their abusers. That's awesome. And again, but let's be real clear, these are victims who were abused when they were minors. Okay. There's also a lot of other people who are currently adults who are now who have been abused as an adult. That opens up a whole other area. You also have a claim. So even though you're not a minor, you're an adult, you could be of any age, you could bring a claim either against the abuser and or the legal entity that might be responsible either for you or for the abuser. Oh, it's like seeing a church or in a workplace kind of a situation, right? Exactly. Like in the workplace for example, you're even working and a coworker or your supervisor abuses you, sexually abuses or harasses you. Now you can bring two claims. The first claim is you can actually bring a worker's compensation claim that the statute allows the one exception, normally you can't sue your employer if you're employed. The one exception is if someone, either your employer or someone working for your employer causes the abuse, you can claim worker's compensation benefits so you can be entitled to wage loss, medical treatments, medical bills will all be paid. In addition, you can file a civil claim like what we do against your employer and the co-employee for the other kinds of damages which our law allows such as the pain and suffering, the mental anguish, the emotion, the stress, all the things which we know victims go through. If it were to take their lives just before the abuse happened and how wonderful that life was and not darkened it, everything that's changed because of this abuser, you can bring a claim for all those changes and that's the only thing about the civil law. Now those, as far as adults though, sexual limitations is either two years from when the abuse occurred or when you also discovered it again. So that discovery also applies to, but you know adults who are being abused in a workplace or a church or schools or whatever setting also have claims and they really should explore it and that's what law firms are for. Now law firms are here to at least tell you whether you have a claim or not, whether you within the statute of limitations, we're here for you to allow you that opportunity to deal. And again as far as consultations go, not only just our firm but other law firms are very similar, they don't charge, we don't charge you just to talk, just to come in and find out you know what are my rights, am I still within the time frame and if I were to pursue a claim what's involved with all that, how difficult is it to bring our claim and we can explain all those things to that person. Right. Can you give us sort of a quick sort of overview of what's involved, where to come forward with the claim? Sure. First of all it could be initially just a phone call. We get a lot of people that's calls, you know, I may have a claim, I don't know, it says well tell us a little bit about it. And so from there we will schedule them to come in and in a private conference room and of course everything is confidential. Whoever has said to you, an attorney, there's a confidential, you know, client and... That's the law, man. That's the law, that's right. You can't say anything. Exactly. And then we'll go through, well, here's what the law is, you know, that abuse really is, in tort law it's a battery, it's an assault on a person. So we explain the law to them and then we explain to them what we would have to prove, you know, whether we have to, it's her word, his word, for operations... Hardest times that he said, he said once, right? Of course, there's always hard. But if we corroborate it, that would be wonderful. Injuries, we need to then talk about the injuries, we need to find out, okay, how has it affected you? Right. And that's where it sometimes is hard because they don't really want to talk about it. But because everything is in confidence, they can and they should because we can't evaluate how extensive the harm has been till they tell us. Can you be surprised as they talk more and more as to how their life has been affected? Right. I wouldn't be surprised. And that's what we talked about. Maybe some people, but not me. Exactly. Because I've been there, done that, I'm sorry. So yeah, but I, so I understand this is, right, they need to tell somebody though that, and this, you guys are like the perfect people to tell even because you have all the information that somebody might need to go forward, which is so important. Right. And I know I keep saying it over and over, but it changed my life. And that's the one main reason why I wanted you guys to come on the show is because I want other people to know that they have the opportunity to change their lives. That's a big thing. And especially how empowering it is to stand up and say no more. You know? And I think you really hit it on the nose. And what people don't really understand is that in the process, there's actually two healings that need to take place. The first of course is the obvious one, right? It's the physical, the mental, the emotional healing that needs to take place. And you know, that's important. The second healing that I think every victim has to have is so-called the legal healing. Yeah. You don't have the legal part of it, so you've had, like for example, in the community school of things, until they've had either their day in court or holding the couple of people responsible. Right. So that's part of the legal healing, and that's where we get involved. We can't help with the emotional, the mental languishing. That's where the specialists are there for. Our specialty is to help with the legal healing. Getting them into court if they have to, getting them the damages they're entitled to, getting them the recovery they have to, or giving them the opportunity to talk about it. Right. And look at that other person, eye to eye. Sometimes that's important, and that's all part of the legal process. So we handle the legal healing, the doctors can handle the other side. But you have to have the legal healing together with it. Right. I agree. Absolutely. It needs to be a two-fold thing. So I have a question of what if there was someone, I'll just use me as an example because it works out good. I have to be in the courtroom now with my abuser. Now that can be a terrifying thing. What kind of things can someone do? Because I know for me, that was my first thought, I can't go to court, I can't look at him in the eye again. And I had someone with me, I had a good counselor that went with me to help me stay strong in all of it so that I could stand up to him and look him in the eye and tell him he was wrong. But is that the kind of thing that is something that still happens? Like a counselor could go with people to meet with you and maybe even go to court with you? Sure. And I think perhaps, for this one, to victory, it does occur, but that's a lot of what she did when she was at the prosecutor's office. And she can explain, at least on that side, how it all occurs and the preparation and who goes with them. Because you hit her on the nose. And you need someone to help you. You need somebody, right? What happens on the criminal side of the prosecutor's office? So what they do, the great job that they do for victims, I'll let her kind of explain that. Okay. Yeah. So at the prosecutor's office, actually, a victim witness advocate is assigned to every case and remains with that victim throughout from the inception, from when it's charged up until the time that it either goes to trial or maybe a plea agreement is reached. But that advocate remains with the victim. Wow. Sometimes the attorneys may change on the case, but the office felt that it was so important that those victims have the same advocate throughout the entire time. And some cases might be resolved within a year. Other cases may take four or five years to. Right. Sure. So what kind of case law do those guys have? Do they have like five cases that they deal with or 20 cases that they deal with all at the same time? So being the advocates. Yeah. The advocates. So advocates, they rotate so there's a group of victim witness advocates that work with the office. And so when a case comes in, then the, I guess the supervisor for that unit, the victim witness advocate unit, will designate a search in advocate to a case. And then that advocate remains with the victim sort of serves as an additional line of communication for the victim. If he or she is trying to reach the attorney, has questions about maybe not just legal questions, but also questions about counseling or other services that might be available to the victim, that advocate can point the victim in a certain direction. So is victim witness only for criminal? Well, there's also. Does it apply for civil too? Sure. We can also do that with civil side too, you know. Whoever they're comfortable with, whether it's their counselor or whomever, we would work with them at the same time because they're the ones who can, let me explain this to you. It's very hard for someone to get on the stand and talk about themselves. Yes. Good or bad. It's always very difficult. Many times it's a lot easier if we can have their counselor, their therapist do the talking for them. Okay. So you encourage your counselor to be with the people. We encourage them to work with them. Okay. So what's wonderful about the prosecutor's office is doing is that all victims come in all sizes and ages and so forth. Right. They also do a lot for children. Let's not forget the minors. Yeah. Let's not forget. They're the main ones we want out here. And what's a wonderful thing that they do? So what they also have is a courthouse dog. And that's Dennis Dunn. Exactly. Dennis. Right. He's coming on the show in a few weeks. So I know that Dennis now has a new courthouse dog. Prior to that it was Pono. Right. Pono was amazing. And basically... Pono got old so he had to be retired. Right. Right. So and Pono wasn't just available for children though. There were adults that if the adult was just scared about being in court, taking the stand, Pono would just sit there. Hang out, sit there with them. It was a calming presence. That's so cool. For that victim. And so I think that's a great, something that the prosecutor's office has really worked for to get these courthouse dogs in courthouses in Hawaii. Thank goodness. I'm so grateful. Okay, this is our last thing because then we got to go. Okay. Because I know the guys in the booth telling me it's time to go. But yeah, I want to give you guys the last thing. What's up? Sure. Well, I think we just want to let people know that you're not alone. Yeah. And that we're called advocates for reason. It's because we advocate for you. We get you ready and you're asking about, you know, how do I face my, my, my abuser? We get you ready for that. We take our clients down to the courthouse. We put them on the witness stand. He says, this is where he's going to be. This is where you're going to be. And this is where I'm going to stand and ask you the questions. So we prepare them. We advocate for them. And just want to let people know, you know, you're not alone in this problem, this process. That's why you hired lawyers so that we could be there for you every step of the way. That's like the perfect way to end to you. What a perfect note to end on. You're not alone. People, did you hear that? You're not alone. This has been a great show. And I really want to thank you guys for coming and sharing your expertise and your great intellect. You guys are really smart. I love having smart people on the show. So I want to thank everyone for coming to see Finding Respect in the Chaos. It's been an important show. And I really hope that anyone out there has gotten some good information here. And if you have any questions at all, you can contact us here at Think Tech. You can contact Shim and Chang. I want to thank you for coming. This is Cynthia Lee Sinclair, signing out from ThinkTechAway.com.