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In many cases, no. Section 16.0045 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code gives you thirty years from the day your claim accrues for abuse that violates the listed child sexual offenses. Most people abused as children assume the door closed long ago. In Texas, for many of these claims, it did not.
What cannot wait is the record. The evidence in these cases is usually in an institution’s own files, and those files can be purged, archived or lost as staff change and years pass. The sooner someone asks the institution to keep them, the more of them are likely to still exist when your case needs them. If you are weighing whether your claim is still alive, you do not have to decide anything today to ask the question. Call 713-521-0059.
Section 16.0045(a) gives thirty years from the day the cause of action accrues where your injury arises from conduct that violates any of these provisions:
Thirty years is a long time, and it is long on purpose. The Legislature extended it knowing that survivors often take years to come forward. It is still a deadline, and your dates matter. Our page on how long you have to sue covers the periods in more detail.
There are two points you should know before you rely on anything you have read elsewhere.
First, there is no category in Section 16.0045 with no deadline. The section contains exactly two periods, thirty years and five years. Nothing in it is unlimited, so a claim that seems to have no time limit still has one, and you should know which period applies to your facts.
Second, the section draws no distinction in its text between the person who committed the abuse and an institution sued for its own negligence in allowing it. That institution might be a school, a church, a youth organization, a camp, a foster placement or a medical practice. Section 16.0045 is written entirely in terms of the conduct that caused your injury. Whether the thirty-year period reaches an institutional defendant is a question courts decide, not one the statutory text answers, and it is one of the first questions worth asking about your case.
Often, yes. Where an organization is involved, your claim against it is usually a negligence claim in its own right rather than a claim that the organization committed the abuse. The question is whether the organization failed in the duties it owed to the children in its care, and whether that failure let the abuse happen or continue.
The recurring theories are negligent hiring, negligent supervision, and negligent retention after the organization received a report. Another is failure to follow its own policies or the reporting obligations that applied to it, which is often where the written record is strongest. In Texas, every adult has a duty to report. Section 261.101(a) of the Family Code requires a person with reasonable cause to believe a child has been abused, by any person, to report it immediately. Under Section 261.101(b), professionals must report within 24 hours.
What decides these cases is usually what the organization knew and when. The proof tends to sit in personnel files, prior complaints and what was done with them, internal correspondence, and insurance files. Transfer records matter too, where a person was moved rather than removed. These records exist far more often than you might expect, because institutions keep records, and thirty years is not long enough for all of them to be gone. Our page on evidence after a sexual assault covers what matters and what disappears.
The organization’s duty to supervise is the same. Schools, camps, foster placements and youth programs put children together in cabins, on buses and in unsupervised hours, and children sometimes abuse other children in those settings. What the organization knew about the child who did it, what its own rules required, and what it did once it heard are the questions that usually matter. The age of the child who committed the abuse can affect a claim against that child’s family. It does not change what the organization owed you when you were in its care.
Section 16.0045(d) addresses that situation, and it is more common than most survivors expect. Filing against an unknown defendant tolls the limitations period, provided you proceed with due diligence to discover the person’s identity. You must also amend the petition not later than the thirtieth day after the defendant is identified. The period begins running again on the date of the amendment, so the work of identifying the person has to keep moving once the case is filed.
Section 30.013 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code provides a confidential identity, meaning a pseudonym and the absence of other identifying information, in some civil cases. It applies to a civil action based on conduct described as a felony under Penal Code Section 22.011 or 22.021. Many survivors worry about this more than anything else, so it is worth understanding who the section covers.
Read the definition carefully. The section defines “plaintiff” as an individual younger than eighteen seeking recovery, together with that plaintiff’s parents or legal guardian. If you are an adult bringing a claim today about abuse you suffered as a child, you are not within that definition.
For an adult survivor outside Chapter 98 and Chapter 98B, there is no Texas statute conferring the right. Proceeding by pseudonym is then a request the trial court decides in its discretion. Our page on suing without your name explains more.
Every statute and case linked above was read at its primary source. Texas statutes change every legislative session and case law is constantly changing.
This page is general information about Texas law. It is not legal advice about your situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
Section 16.0045 has been amended several times, most recently in 2019, 2021 and 2023. Whether any of those amendments reaches conduct before the amendment, or revived a claim that had already expired, depends on applicability clauses. Those clauses appear in the bills rather than in the code. If you are trying to work out whether your claim is still alive, that is a question for a conversation, not for an assumption in either direction.
We start with your dates and the conduct involved, because those decide which limitations period applies and which amendment governs it. Then we identify every institution that had a role in your care, what each one knew about the person who harmed you, and when it knew it. We ask for the records early, before more of them are lost. We represent adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse in civil claims in Houston and across Texas.
Schiffer Law Firm is a Houston personal injury firm with 50 plus years of combined experience representing injured people and survivors across Texas.
If you are a parent, an advocate or a counselor asking on someone’s behalf, you are welcome to call with a general question. We will not ask you for their name.
There is no charge to talk, and no attorney’s fee unless there is a recovery.
Written by Jacob Schiffer, Attorney, Schiffer Law Firm. State Bar of Texas No. 24105175.
Call 713-521-0059.
For the offenses listed in Section 16.0045(a), yes, running from accrual. It is not thirty years for every claim connected to childhood abuse. A negligence claim against an institution may be shorter, and courts decide that question.
Section 16.0045(d) tolls the period when you file against a John or Jane Doe. You then have a duty to substitute the real name within 30 days of identification.
No, in most cases. A civil claim does not require a report, an arrest, a charge or a conviction. What your claim does need is evidence, and most of it is in the institution's own records.
Section 30.013 gives a confidential identity where the plaintiff is under 18, as the section defines "plaintiff". If you are an adult survivor, you usually must ask the court.
The organization's duty to supervise and protect is the same. The claim is about what it knew about that child, what its rules required, and what it did when it first heard.
In Texas, every adult does under Family Code Section 261.101(a). Professionals must report within 24 hours under Section 261.101(b). A failure to report can be evidence of what an institution knew.