Track

Status

Governing provision

The hands-on childhood offenses have no limitation — art. 12.01(1): felony indictments may be presented at any time for “(B) sexual assault under Section 22.011(a)(2), Penal Code, or aggravated sexual assault under Section 22.021(a)(1)(B), Penal Code” — the child limbs of both offenses; “(D) continuous sexual abuse of young child or disabled individual under Section 21.02, Penal Code”; and “(E) indecency with a child under Section 21.11, Penal Code”. Section 21.11 covers indecency by contact and by exposure, so the coverage of hands-on abuse is complete. 

And several associated offenses too — art. 12.01(1) also covers trafficking of persons under § 20A.02(a)(7) or (8); continuous trafficking under § 20A.03; compelling prostitution under § 43.05(a)(2) or (3); continuous promotion of prostitution under § 43.032; and, notably, “(M) failure to stop or report sexual or assaultive offense against child under Section 38.17, Penal Code” — a mandated-reporting offense with no deadline, which is rare in this dataset. 

Adult sexual assault is unlimited only conditionally — art. 12.01(1)(C): sexual assault has no limitation if biological matter was collected and either has not yet been DNA tested or has been tested and does not match the victim or any readily identifiable person; or if probable cause exists to believe the defendant committed the same or a similar sex offense against five or more victims. Otherwise art. 12.01(2)(E) gives ten years. 

BUT THE EXPLOITATION OFFENSES KEEP DEADLINES — art. 12.01(3)(F): “possession or promotion of child pornography under Section 43.26, Penal Code” — seven years from the commission of the offense. Art. 12.01(6)(B): “sexual performance by a child under Section 43.25, Penal Code” — twenty years from the victim’s eighteenth birthday, alongside “(A) trafficking of a child under Section 20A.02(a)(5) or (6)”. 

And the physical-abuse offenses too — art. 12.01(7): ten years from the victim’s eighteenth birthday for injury to a child under § 22.04, for bigamy under § 25.01 where the person is under eighteen, and for abandoning or endangering a child. Art. 12.01(5): twenty years from the eighteenth birthday for kidnapping and aggravated kidnapping where the victim was younger than seventeen. 

One sexual-assault limb has a two-year period — art. 12.01(10): “two years from the date the offense was discovered: sexual assault punishable as a state jail felony under Section 22.011(f)(2), Penal Code.” Art. 12.01(11) is the residual: three years for all other felonies. Art. 12.02(a): two years for misdemeanors. 

Attempts and conspiracies inherit the period — art. 12.03(a) to (d): criminal attempt takes the period of the offense attempted; conspiracy and organized criminal activity take that of the most serious object offense; solicitation that of the felony solicited; and any offense titled “aggravated” carries the same period as the primary crime. 

Why the status is “No Contact Deadline”: every hands-on childhood sexual offense — sexual assault of a child, aggravated sexual assault of a child, continuous sexual abuse of a young child, and indecency with a child by contact or exposure — is in art. 12.01(1) and may be prosecuted at any time. The offenses that keep deadlines are the exploitation offenses: possession or promotion of child pornography at seven years from the offense, and sexual performance by a child at twenty years past the survivor’s eighteenth birthday.

Tex. Code Crim. Proc. ch. 12 (Limitation) — Texas Constitution and Statutes, official text

Thirty years from accrual for six named child offenses — § 16.0045(a): “A person must bring suit for personal injury not later than 30 years after the day the cause of action accrues if the injury arises as a result of conduct that violates: (1) Section 22.011(a)(2), Penal Code (sexual assault of a child); (2) Section 22.021(a)(1)(B), Penal Code (aggravated sexual assault of a child); (3) Section 21.02, Penal Code (continuous sexual abuse of young child or disabled individual); (4) Section 20A.02(a)(7)(A), (B), (C), (D), or (H) or Section 20A.02(a)(8), Penal Code … (certain sexual trafficking); (5) Section 43.05(a)(2) or (3), Penal Code (compelling prostitution by a child or disabled individual); or (6) Section 21.11, Penal Code (indecency with a child).” 

And the clock starts at eighteen, not at the abuse — § 16.001(a)(1) and (b): a person under eighteen is under a legal disability, and “[i]f a person entitled to bring a personal action is under a legal disability when the cause of action accrues, the time of the disability is not included in a limitations period.” Section 16.0045 sits in Subchapter A, to which § 16.001 applies. The deadline is therefore the survivor’s forty-eighth birthday. 

Five years for the adult offenses — § 16.0045(b): sexual assault under § 22.011(a)(1), aggravated sexual assault under § 22.021(a)(1)(A), trafficking of persons under § 20A.02 other than the child limbs, and compelling prostitution under § 43.05(a)(1). 

The list is narrower than the criminal one, in a way that matters. Section 16.0045(a) does not include sexual performance by a child (§ 43.25), possession or promotion of child pornography (§ 43.26), or injury to a child (§ 22.04) — all of which are in the criminal chapter with their own periods. A civil claim founded on those offenses runs on the general two-year personal-injury rule in § 16.003(a), tolled to eighteen, so the deadline is twenty. 

A John Doe tolling provision — § 16.0045(d): the period is tolled on the filing of a petition alleging that the defendant’s identity is unknown and designating him “John or Jane Doe”; the plaintiff must proceed with due diligence and substitute the real name within thirty days of identification, at which point the period begins running again. 

Death claims accrue at death — § 16.0045(c): in an action for injury resulting in death arising from conduct described in subsection (a) or (b), the cause of action accrues on the death of the injured person. 

Forty-eight is at the upper-middle of the fixed-deadline group. What matters is the narrowness of the § 16.0045(a) list: a Texas survivor whose case is about images rather than contact is on a twenty-year deadline, not a forty-eight-year one.

Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.0045 — free full text (see the note below about the tracker’s official link)

Section 16.0045 contains no revival provision. It has been amended four times — in 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019, 2021 and 2023 — and each amendment lengthened the period or widened the list of qualifying offenses going forward. None reached back to claims already barred. 

The 2019 amendment is the one the tracker cites, and it is the one that raised the period to thirty years. Acts 2019, 86th Leg., Ch. 1306 (H.B. 3809), § 1. Whether it applied to claims accrued but not yet barred, or only to conduct after its effective date, was not established for this page: the applicability provision sits in the session law rather than in the codified section, and the session law was not retrieved. That is the same structural trap that produced the Oregon correction earlier in this review, and it is flagged rather than assumed. 

No Texas appellate decision on the constitutionality of retroactive revival was located, and none is asserted. Texas has a constitutional prohibition on retroactive laws (Tex. Const. art. I, § 16) that has been litigated in other fields, but nothing on this question was retrieved.

Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.0045 — free full text