Track

Status

Governing provision

No limitation for the enumerated offenses, but with a corroboration condition after twenty-seven years — § 63: an indictment or complaint for an offense set forth in §§ 13B, 13B½, 13B¾, 13F, 13L, 22A, 22B, 22C, 22D, 23, 23A, 23B, 24B or subsection (b) of § 50 of chapter 265, for conspiracy to commit any of these or as an accessory, “may be found and filed at any time after the date of the commission of such offense; but any indictment or complaint found and filed more than 27 years after the date of commission of such offense shall be supported by independent evidence that corroborates the victim’s allegation. Such independent evidence shall be admissible during trial and shall not consist exclusively of the opinions of mental health professionals.” 

FIFTEEN YEARS for rape and indecent assault — § 63: “An indictment for an offense set forth in sections 22, 24 or subsection (a) of section 50 of chapter 265, or for conspiracy to commit either of these offenses or as an accessory thereto or any 1 or more of them may be found and filed within 15 years of the date of commission of such offense.” Section 22 of chapter 265 is rape; § 24 is assault with intent to commit rape. 

Ten years for a further group — § 63: an indictment for an offense set forth in clause (iii) of subsection (b) of § 13A, or §§ 13M, 17, 18, 19 and 21 of chapter 265, or § 17 of chapter 272, may be found and filed within ten years. 

Six years for everything else — § 63: “An indictment for any other crime shall be found and filed within 6 years after such crime has been committed.” Any period during which the defendant is not usually and publicly a resident of the Commonwealth is excluded. 

A tolling rule for young victims — § 63, second paragraph: notwithstanding the first paragraph, if the victim of a crime set forth in §§ 13B, 13F, 13H, 13H½, 13H¾, 22, 22A, 23, 24B, 26A or 50 of chapter 265, or §§ 1, 2, 3, 4, 4A, 4B, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 26, 28, 29A, 29B, 33, 34, 35 or 35A of chapter 272, “is under the age of 16 at the time the crime is committed, the period of limitation for prosecution shall not commence until the victim has reached the age of 16 or the violation is reported to a law enforcement agency, whichever occurs earlier.” 

Why this has been changed to “partly removed”: the unlimited list in the first sentence is substantial and includes indecent assault and battery on a child under fourteen (§ 13B) and rape and abuse of a child (§ 23). But rape itself, under § 22 of chapter 265, carries fifteen years — and § 22 is expressly excluded from the unlimited list and given its own period in the same sentence. A survivor of childhood rape charged under § 22 is on a fifteen-year clock, tolled only to age sixteen where the victim was under sixteen, which puts the outer limit around the survivor’s thirty-first birthday. That is a deadline on the most serious offense in the chapter, and it is on the face of the statute.

Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 277, § 63 — Massachusetts General Court, official General Laws

Against the abuser — § 4C: “Actions of tort alleging the defendant sexually abused a minor shall be commenced within 35 years of the acts alleged to have caused an injury or condition or within 7 years of the time the victim discovered or reasonably should have discovered that an emotional or psychological injury or condition was caused by said act, whichever period expires later; provided, however, that the time limit for commencement of an action under this section is tolled for a child until the child reaches eighteen years of age.” 

Against an institution — § 4C½: “An action of tort alleging that the defendant negligently supervised a person who sexually abused a minor or that the defendant’s conduct caused or contributed to the sexual abuse of a minor by another person shall be commenced within the later to expire of: (i) 35 years of the acts alleged to have caused an injury or condition to such minor; or (ii) 7 years of the time the victim discovered or reasonably should have discovered that an emotional or psychological injury or condition was caused by such act”, with the same tolling to age eighteen. “Sexual abuse” has the same meaning as in § 4C. 

What counts — § 4C, second paragraph: “sexual abuse” means the commission of any act against a minor as set forth in §§ 13B, 13B½, 13B¾, 13H, 22, 22A, 22B, 22C, 23, 23A, 23B, 24, 24B or subsection (b) of § 50 of chapter 265, or §§ 2, 3, 4, 4A, 4B, 7, 8, 13, 17, 29A, 34, 35 or 35A of chapter 272. 

The structural point — thirty-five years runs from the acts, and the tolling provision means it does not start until the survivor turns eighteen. The practical floor is therefore the survivor’s fifty-third birthday, with the seven-year discovery limb able to carry it further. Massachusetts sets one of the longest civil periods in this dataset without eliminating the deadline. 

The most useful thing about the Massachusetts pair is that § 4C and § 4C½ are identical in their periods. Several states in this review give institutional defendants a shorter clock or a higher standard of proof than the abuser — Georgia, Hawaii, Delaware and Minnesota all do one or the other. Massachusetts deliberately does not and enacted the institutional section in the same 2014 Act to make that explicit.

Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 260, § 4C — Massachusetts General Court, official General Laws 

Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 260, § 4C½ — Massachusetts General Court, official General Laws

What is established — St. 2014, c. 145 rewrote § 4C, added § 4C½, and took effect 26 June 2014. Both sections are in the source folder and were read in full. 

The question is whether the 2014 retroactive clause counts as a window. Chapter 145 of the Acts of 2014 lengthened the limitation period and applied the new period to claims that had already accrued; Sliney v. Previte, 473 Mass. 283 (2015), held that application constitutional. 

What the Maine Law Court says about that case — Dupuis v. Roman Catholic Bishop of Portland, decided in January 2025 and read in full for the Maine page in this review, describes Sliney as “following Keene in holding that a statute retroactively reviving expired claims of sexual abuse of minors did not violate due process”, citing 41 N.E.3d at 740-42, and the Dupuis dissent relies on it at length. City of Boston v. Keene Corp., 547 N.E.2d 328 (Mass. 1989), is the earlier Massachusetts decision holding that the running of a limitation period “does not create a vested right”. 

What has NOT been verified here — neither St. 2014, c. 145 nor Sliney v. Previte is in the Massachusetts source folder, and neither was retrieved in this review. The text of the retroactivity clause, its scope, and its dates are therefore not stated on this page. Everything above about Sliney is what another court said about it, not a reading of the decision itself. 

Massachusetts matters to the national picture out of proportion to its own entry. It is the leading state on the permissive side of the vested-rights split, its reasoning is what Maine’s dissenters wanted to follow, and Maine’s article I, sections 1 and 6 derive from the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights — which is why the Dupuis majority had to distinguish Massachusetts rather than ignore it. A tracker that records Massachusetts revival as “None” loses all of that.

Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 260, § 4C — Massachusetts General Court, official General Laws (the section St. 2014, c. 145 rewrote) 

Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 260, § 4C½ — Massachusetts General Court, official General Laws (added by St. 2014, c. 145)

no Massachusetts row.