Track

Status

Governing provision

There is no felony limitation period, and § 61-11-9 is the section that shows it. The section, read in full, sets exactly two periods: “A prosecution for committing or procuring another person to commit perjury shall be commenced within three years next after the perjury was committed. A prosecution for a misdemeanor shall be commenced within one year after the offense was committed…”. The remainder of the section deals with stolen, lost or destroyed indictments. Felonies are not mentioned.

ONE YEAR FOR MISDEMEANORS, AND THAT IS THE SHORTEST CRIMINAL PERIOD IN THIS DATASET — the misdemeanor rule runs from the commission of the offense, with no tolling for the survivor’s minority anywhere in the section. Where a childhood offense is charged as a misdemeanor, it is barred on the first anniversary of the act, whatever the age of the child.

But the childhood sexual offenses examined are all felonies, which is why the value has not moved. Sexual abuse in the third degree — W. Va. Code § 61-8B-9, sexual contact where the lack of consent is due to the victim being less than sixteen years old — provides that a person who violates it “is guilty of a felony”, punishable by one to three years. Distribution of obscene matter to a minor under § 61-8A-2 is likewise “guilty of a felony”. The first- and second-degree sexual assault and sexual abuse offenses in article 8B are felonies a fortiori.

The one misdemeanor in article 8B does not turn on the victim’s age — W. Va. Code § 61-8B-8, sexual abuse in the second degree, applies where the person “subjects another person to sexual contact who is mentally defective or mentally incapacitated”, and is a misdemeanor punishable by up to twelve months in the county jail. It is a vulnerable-adult provision rather than a child provision.

So, the position is: every childhood sexual offense examined is a felony and may be prosecuted at any time; the one-year misdemeanor rule bites on offenses that are not childhood sexual offenses. That is a different position from Virginia and North Carolina, where the misdemeanor tier expressly contains child sexual offenses.

The authority for the felony rule is judicial — State v. King, 140 W. Va. 362 (1954). The decision was not retrieved for this page, and nothing is stated from it; it is cited because the tracker already cites it and because the rule it states is the settled understanding and is consistent with the face of § 61-11-9.

Why the status is “no deadline”: every childhood sexual offense examined is a felony, and there is no felony limitation period. Sexual abuse in the third degree (§ 61-8B-9) and distribution of obscene matter to a minor (§ 61-8A-2) are both felonies; the first- and second-degree offenses in article 8B are felonies a fortiori. The one misdemeanor in article 8B — sexual abuse in the second degree, § 61-8B-8 — turns on the victim being mentally defective or mentally incapacitated rather than on age and is a vulnerable-adult provision. The one-year misdemeanor rule therefore bites on offenses that are not childhood sexual offenses.

Va. Code § 61-11-9 — West Virginia Legislature, official Code

Va. Code § 61-8B-9 (sexual abuse in the third degree; a felony) — West Virginia Legislature, official Code

Against the perpetrator, eighteen years past majority or four years from discovery — § 55-2-15(a), first sentence: “A personal action for damages resulting from sexual assault or sexual abuse of a person who was an infant at the time of the act or acts alleged, shall be brought against the perpetrator of the sexual assault or sexual abuse, within 18 years after reaching the age of majority, or within four years after discovery of the sexual assault or sexual abuse, whichever is longer.” The ordinary deadline against the abuser is the survivor’s thirty-sixth birthday, and the discovery limb has no outer cap.

AGAINST AN INSTITUTION, THE SAME AGE BUT NO DISCOVERY LIMB — § 55-2-15(a), second sentence: “A personal action for damages resulting from sexual assault or sexual abuse of a person who was an infant at the time of the act or acts alleged shall be brought against a person or entity which aided, abetted, or concealed the sexual assault or sexual abuse within 18 years after reaching the age of majority.” The four-years-from-discovery alternative is simply absent. A survivor who discovers the connection at forty has four years to sue her abuser and no claim at all against the institution that concealed the abuse.

That omission is easy to miss, and it is doing a great deal of work. The two sentences are otherwise parallel and sit in the same subsection; the difference is one clause. It is the fifth distinct device this review has found for treating institutions differently — after Oklahoma’s two-year employer rule, South Dakota’s age-forty bar on non-perpetrator recovery, Utah’s four-years-past-eighteen non-perpetrator rule, Wisconsin’s judicial exclusion of institutions from § 893.587, and Tennessee’s corroboration requirement.

The institutional limb is also narrow in who it reaches — it applies to “a person or entity which aided, abetted, or concealed” the abuse. That is not the language of negligent hiring, supervision or retention, and a claim founded on ordinary institutional negligence may fall outside subsection (a) altogether and onto the general savings rule in subsection (b).

The general rule for other claims — § 55-2-15(b): where the person is an infant or insane when the right accrues, the action may be brought within the like number of years after becoming of full age or sane, “except that it shall in no case be brought after 20 years from the time when the right accrues.”

Thirty-six against the abuser with an uncapped discovery limb is middling; thirty-six against an institution with no discovery limb at all is restrictive. The tracker has one field for both, so the rule text above carries the difference.

W. Va. Code § 55-2-15 — West Virginia Legislature, official Code

The revival, in full — § 55-2-15(c): “The amendments to this section enacted during the 2020 Regular Session of the Legislature are intended to extend the statute of limitations for all actions whether or not an earlier established period of limitation has expired.”

It is a single sentence and it does two things at once. It applies the new eighteen-years-past-majority periods to all actions, and it says expressly that it does so whether or not the earlier period has run. There is no closing date, no filing deadline and no separate window provision anywhere in the section.

But the revived claim is still bounded by subsection (a). A revived claim must still be brought within eighteen years of majority, or four years of discovery against the perpetrator. So the revival does not open the field indefinitely — it removes the bar of the old law and leaves the new periods to operate. A survivor now aged fifty who has always known what happened is outside eighteen-years-past-majority and outside four-years-from-discovery, and subsection (c) does not help her.

That is a materially different shape from Vermont’s. Vermont revives into a rule with no deadline at all, so every revived claim is live. West Virginia revives into a rule that still has deadlines, so subsection (c) helps only those whose claims fall inside the new periods but were barred under the old ones. The tracker records both as “Window open”.

No West Virginia appellate decision on the constitutionality of subsection (c) was located, and none is asserted. Given how many states’ revivals have been litigated — struck in Utah, Colorado, Kentucky, Maine and New Hampshire, upheld in Vermont, Maryland and North Carolina — the absence of West Virginia authority six years after enactment is itself worth noting.

W. Va. Code § 55-2-15(c) — West Virginia Legislature, official Code