Track

Status

Governing provision

The elimination is broad — 8 G.C.A. § 10.16: if the offense is a violation of Chapter 25 of Title 9 (the criminal sexual conduct chapter) and the victim was under the age of majority, or the victim’s mental comprehension and capacity was below the age of adolescence at the time, a prosecution may be commenced at any time. Chapter 25 covers the whole of Guam’s criminal sexual conduct scheme, so the coverage of childhood sexual offenses is complete. 

And it is reinforced for the top two degrees — 8 G.C.A. § 10.17: if the offense is a violation of § 25.15 or § 25.20 of Chapter 25, Title 9 — first or second degree criminal sexual conduct — a prosecution may be commenced at any time, without any age qualification. 

BUT § 10.16 CARRIES ITS OWN CARVE-OUT, AND THAT IS WHAT DECIDES THIS — the section excepts an offense whose prosecution would have been barred by § 10.15 on or before the date of its enactment. Section 10.16 took effect on 9 March 2011. Any Chapter 25 offense against a minor that was already time-barred under § 10.15 on that date stays barred, permanently. 

What the earlier rule was — 8 G.C.A. § 10.15: a prosecution for a violation of Chapters 22, 25, 25.1, 28 and 30 of Title 9 may be commenced up to three years after the minor reaches the age of majority. The practical deadline was the survivor’s twenty-first birthday. A survivor who turned twenty-one before 9 March 2011 — that is, anyone born before roughly March 1990 — is outside the elimination. 

The residuals — 8 G.C.A. § 10.20(a): a prosecution of murder has no statute of limitation. § 10.20(b): a prosecution of criminal sexual conduct involving persons under the age of consent shall be in accordance with § 10.15. § 10.20(c): a prosecution for any other felony shall be commenced within three years after it is committed. 

Why the status is “partly removed”: § 10.15 is not a live parallel rule running alongside § 10.16. It is the old bar, preserved by § 10.16’s own carve-out for anything already time-barred on 9 March 2011. That is the same shape as the prospective civil eliminations in Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oregon and Washington — an elimination that leaves the earlier bar standing. Guam is the only jurisdiction in this dataset where that shape appears on the criminal track.

8 G.C.A. ch. 10 (Time of Commencing Criminal Actions) — Guam Compiler of Laws, official code

The rule, in full — 7 G.C.A. § 11301.1(a): “Any claim arising from an incident of child sexual abuse may be commenced against a person, a legal entity, abusers, their enablers, their aiders or abettors, those acting in concert with them and their institutions at any time.” 

The list of defendants is the widest in this dataset, and it is deliberate. Where most eliminations say simply that an action may be commenced at any time and leave the defendant class to be worked out, Guam names seven: a person, a legal entity, abusers, enablers, aiders or abettors, those acting in concert with them, and their institutions. There is no institutional carve-out, no heightened standard of proof and no shorter clock for entities — the contrast with Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Tennessee and Vermont is complete. 

It has been applied against the Government of Guam, and the fight has been about a different statute. Two decisions of the District Court of Guam surfaced in the source folder — S.C. v. Government of Guam, 2022 WL 892081 (25 March 2022) and R.C. v. Government of Guam, 2022 WL 2195057 (17 June 2022) — both turning on whether § 11301.1’s “at any time” overrides the eighteen-month administrative claim period in Guam’s Government Claims Act. In both, the plaintiff argued that because the section permits a claim to be commenced at any time, an administrative claim filed outside the eighteen-month period is not time barred; in both, the government’s motion to dismiss was granted in part. Neither decision was retrieved in full and nothing is stated from them beyond that. 

That is the live issue in Guam and it is not visible in the tracker. A survivor suing a private defendant faces no deadline. A survivor suing the Government of Guam — which is the defendant in institutional abuse cases involving public schools and public facilities — faces an argument that the Government Claims Act imposes one anyway. Whether the two 2022 decisions resolved that point in the government’s favor was not established. 

The civil deadline is gone for every defendant, prospectively and retrospectively. The one route by which a Guam claim can still be met with a limitation argument is the Government Claims Act, which is set out in the open questions below.

P.L. 33-187, enacting 7 G.C.A. § 11301.1 — Guam Legislature, official public law

The revival, in full — 7 G.C.A. § 11301.1(b): “Any claim arising from an incident of child sexual abuse that occurred in Guam which has been barred by virtue of the expiration of the previous civil statute of limitations shall be permitted to be filed in any court of competent jurisdiction.” 

It is unconditional. There is no filing deadline, no heightened standard of proof for revived claims of the kind Vermont imposes, no damages cap of the kind Rhode Island and Maryland impose, and no restriction on the class of defendant — subsection (a)’s seven-defendant list governs revived claims as it governs new ones. 

And it revives into a rule with no deadline, which is what makes it complete. Subsection (a) removes the limitation entirely, so a claim lifted out of the old bar by subsection (b) is not then caught by a new period. That distinguishes Guam from West Virginia, whose revival puts claims back into a rule that still has deadlines. 

Quintanilla v. Roman Catholic Archbishop of Agana (D. Guam, 27 September 2017) is understood to have upheld the permanent revival, but the decision was not retrieved from a free source and is not cited here, because nothing about its holding can be stated without reading it. 

The status is “Permanent revival” rather than “Window open”. Guam, Vermont, West Virginia, Nevada and the Northern Mariana Islands were all recorded in the tracker as having an open window when what they have is a permanent retroactive rule with no closing date; a survivor reading “Window open” will reasonably think there is a filing deadline to meet.

P.L. 33-187, enacting 7 G.C.A. § 11301.1(b) — Guam Legislature, official public law

no Guam row.