Track

Status

Governing provision

Twenty-four childhood sexual offenses can be prosecuted at any time — § 40-2-101(q)(1) lists them: trafficking for a commercial sex act (§ 39-13-309); aggravated rape (§ 39-13-502); rape (§ 39-13-503); aggravated sexual battery (§ 39-13-504); sexual battery (§ 39-13-505); mitigated statutory rape, statutory rape and aggravated statutory rape (§ 39-13-506 and (c)); felony indecent exposure (§ 39-13-511); patronizing prostitution (§ 39-13-514); promotion of prostitution (§ 39-13-515); continuous sexual abuse of a child (§ 39-13-518); rape of a child (§ 39-13-522); sexual battery by an authority figure (§ 39-13-527); felony solicitation of a minor (§ 39-13-528); soliciting sexual exploitation of a minor by electronic means (§ 39-13-529); aggravated rape of a child (§ 39-13-531); statutory rape by an authority figure (§ 39-13-532); felony unlawful photographing (§ 39-13-605); felony observation without consent (§ 39-13-607); incest (§ 39-15-302); and sexual exploitation of a minor, aggravated and especially aggravated (§§ 39-17-1003 to 39-17-1005). 

The unlimited rule where the child was under thirteen, or reported in time — § 40-2-101(q)(2): “A person may be prosecuted, tried, and punished for an offense listed in subdivision (q)(1) at any time after the commission of an offense if: (A) The victim was under thirteen (13) years of age at the time of the offense; or (B)(i) The victim was at least thirteen (13) years of age but no more than seventeen (17) years of age at the time of the offense; and (ii) The victim reported the offense to another person prior to the victim attaining twenty-three (23) years of age.” Note that the report may be to any person, not to law enforcement. 

AND IT IS STILL UNLIMITED WITHOUT A REPORT — § 40-2-101(q)(3)(A): a person may be prosecuted “at any time after the commission of an offense” where the victim was thirteen to seventeen and did not meet the reporting requirement — subject only to an evidential condition. § 40-2-101(q)(3)(B)(ii): for offenses on or after 1 July 2025, to commence prosecution more than thirty years after the victim turns eighteen “the prosecution is required to offer admissible and credible evidence corroborating the allegations or similar acts by the defendant.” For offenses between 1 July 2019 and 1 July 2025 the same condition bites at twenty-five years rather than thirty. 

So the deadline is genuinely absent, and what varies is the standard of proof. This is why the entry stays at “No deadline” rather than moving to “partly removed”: subsections (q)(2) and (q)(3) both say “at any time”, and (q)(3)(B) attaches a corroboration requirement to late filings rather than a cut-off. Tennessee is the clearest example in this dataset of a legislature substituting an evidential safeguard for a limitation period. 

It reaches backwards, but does not revive — § 40-2-101(q)(4): subsection (q) applies to offenses “(A) Committed on or after July 1, 2019, except as provided in subdivision (q)(3)(B); or (B) Committed prior to July 1, 2019, unless prosecution for the offense is barred because the applicable time limitation set out in this section for prosecution of the offense expired prior to July 1, 2019.” A retroactive extension of live periods, of the ordinary non-reviving kind. 

Trafficking of a child is unconditional — § 40-2-101(r): notwithstanding subsections (k) and (q), an offense committed against a child on or after 1 July 2021 constituting trafficking for a commercial sex act under § 39-13-309 may be prosecuted “at any time after the offense is committed”, with no reporting or corroboration condition at all. 

Life-imprisonment offenses are unlimited independently — § 40-2-101(a): “A person may be prosecuted, tried and punished for an offense punishable with death or by imprisonment in the penitentiary during life, at any time after the offense is committed.” The graded periods in (b) — fifteen years for a Class A felony down to two for a Class E — are what subsection (q) displaces. 

The corroboration condition is the qualification that matters: a Tennessee prosecution more than thirty years past the survivor’s eighteenth birthday, where she did not tell anyone before twenty-three, is possible but must be corroborated. That is not the same as an unqualified elimination.

Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-2-101 — free full text (see the note below about the 2025 and 2026 amendments)

Three periods, graded by when the abuse happened — § 28-3-116(b)(1): for abuse before 1 July 2019 that was not discovered at the time, “within three (3) years from the time of discovery of the abuse by the injured person”. § 28-3-116(b)(2): for abuse on or after 1 July 2019 but before 1 July 2025, the later of fifteen years from the survivor’s eighteenth birthday, or three years from discovery. § 28-3-116(b)(3): for abuse on or after 1 July 2025, the later of thirty years from the eighteenth birthday, or three years from discovery. The current deadline is therefore the survivor’s forty-eighth birthday. 

Note what subsection (b)(1) does and does not give. For abuse before 1 July 2019 there is no age-based period at all — only three years from discovery, and only if the abuse “was not discovered at the time”. A survivor abused in 2005 who always knew what happened has no route under (b)(1). This is the operative rule for the great majority of Tennessee survivors, and it is the most restrictive limb in the section. 

Discovery is defined narrowly and helpfully — § 28-3-116(a)(2): “‘Discovery’ means when the injured person becomes aware that the injury or illness was caused by child sexual abuse or trafficking for a commercial sex act. Discovery that the injury or illness was caused by child sexual abuse or trafficking for a commercial sex act shall not be deemed to have occurred solely by virtue of the injured person’s awareness, knowledge, or memory of the acts of abuse.” Remembering the abuse is expressly not discovery. 

Trafficking runs on its own timetable — § 28-3-116(c)(1): for a commercial sex act before 1 July 2024 not discovered at the time, three years from discovery; (c)(2): on or after 1 July 2024, thirty years from the survivor’s eighteenth birthday, with no discovery alternative. 

A CORROBORATION REQUIREMENT AGAINST INSTITUTIONS — § 28-3-116(f): “If an action is brought against someone other than the alleged perpetrator of the child sexual abuse or trafficking for a commercial sex act, and if the action is brought more than one (1) year from the date the injured person attains the age of majority, then the injured person must offer admissible and credible evidence corroborating the claim of abuse or trafficking by the alleged perpetrator.” Every institutional claim brought after the survivor turns nineteen carries this burden. 

Two provisions that help — § 28-3-116(d): the plaintiff need not establish which act in a series caused the injury and need not prove that she psychologically repressed the memory. § 28-3-116(e): a parent’s or guardian’s knowledge is not imputed to a minor. 

The tracker’s reform row records the thirty-year rule accurately and its Bills to track row correctly notes that it is prospective. What neither carry is subsection (f): Tennessee treats institutional defendants differently, and it does so by a corroboration requirement rather than by a shorter clock.

Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-116 — free full text

Section 28-3-116 contains no revival provision. Its structure is the opposite of a window: subsection (b) divides survivors into three cohorts by the date of the abuse, and each new period — fifteen years in 2019, thirty in 2025 — was given only to abuse occurring on or after the effective date of the Act that created it. Nothing in the section reaches a claim that was barred when it was enacted. 

The 2025 Act is therefore prospective on the civil side, and the tracker records that correctly under Bills to track: “Tennessee | Applicability of the 2025 30-year extension | Watch (prospective law) | Abuse on/after 1 Jul 2024 | New 30-yr rule is prospective; older claims stay on the prior rule. Watch for a retroactive extension.” The one correction is the date: § 28-3-116(b)(3) keys the thirty-year rule to abuse on or after 1 July 2025, not 1 July 2024. The 1 July 2024 date belongs to the trafficking rule in subsection (c)(2). 

The criminal side did reach backwards and the civil side did not. Section 40-2-101(q)(4)(B) applies the unlimited criminal rule to offenses committed before 1 July 2019 unless already barred. Tennessee has therefore used non-reviving retroactive language in this field when it chose to, on the criminal track, and has not used it on the civil track. 

No Tennessee appellate decision on the constitutionality of retroactive revival was located, and none is asserted. Because no civil window has ever been enacted, the vested-rights question has not arisen here.

Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-116(b) — free full text, showing the three date-graded cohorts