Call Now
713-521-0059
No. This is the question survivors and the people helping them ask most often, and the answer is cleaner than most people expect.
A civil claim in Texas does not require a police report, an arrest, a criminal charge, or a conviction. An acquittal does not end it. A decision not to prosecute does not end it. A case the district attorney declined years ago can still support a civil claim today.
What a civil claim does need is evidence, and most of the evidence is not yours. It is in the records of the business, building or institution where it happened, and those records are on an automatic timer. See what evidence actually matters, and what disappears.
A criminal case and a civil case are different cases with different parties, different burdens and different purposes.
A criminal case is the State of Texas against a defendant. The survivor is a witness, not a party. The prosecutor decides what happens. The standard is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and the outcome is punishment.
A civil case is the survivor against a defendant, or against a business. The survivor is the party and decides what happens. The standard is a preponderance of the evidence, meaning more likely than not. The outcome is money.
Beyond a reasonable doubt and more likely than not are very far apart. A great deal of conduct that cannot be proven to the first standard is readily proven to the second, which is why a case that never resulted in a charge can succeed in a civil courtroom.
For trafficking claims Texas put the answer in the statute. Section 98.002(b) of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code provides that it is not a defense to liability under the chapter that a defendant “has been acquitted or has not been prosecuted or convicted” under Chapter 20A of the Penal Code, “or has been convicted of a different offense or of a different type or class of offense, for the conduct that is alleged to give rise to liability under this chapter.”
That is as explicit as legislative drafting gets.
The same logic runs through the rest of the field. The limitations statute for sexual abuse claims, Section 16.0045, is written in terms of conduct that violates specified Penal Code sections, not conduct that was charged or proven in a criminal case.
Evidence. That is a better answer than it sounds, because most of the evidence is not yours and never was.
A claim against a business or an institution is built substantially out of that organization’s own records. Surveillance video. Key card and access logs. Incident reports. Complaints other people made about the same driver, the same employee, the same broken gate. Guard schedules. Work orders on the light that had been out for a month. None of that depends on whether you called police, and none of it depends on what you did in the hours afterwards.
What helps from your side is whatever still exists. A police report, if you made one, and it is worth knowing that making one helps a civil case even where you do not want a prosecution. A forensic medical examination, which in Texas does not require a report, and for which you cannot be billed for the forensic portion or the kit. Texts, voicemails, call logs and messages in both directions. Photographs of injuries, of the place, and of the conditions. Receipts, ride records, hotel folios and key card records proving you were there and when. Every report you made to the business and what it said back. The names of the people you told.
Two things follow from this, and they pull in opposite directions, which is why they belong in the same breath.
The first is that a criminal case is not a requirement. It never was.
The second is that evidence decides whether anyone can help you, and evidence is disappearing on a timer held by the business. Video systems record over themselves. Access logs purge. Broken gates get fixed. That is not a reason to give up, and it is the reason to make the call early rather than late.
If you already showered, waited, told nobody or never reported, that is rarely what decides one of these cases. Most people do exactly that, and the case against a business is built out of the business’s own records rather than out of your body. Our page on what evidence a civil case is built from, and what disappears goes through all of it, including what to do with a phone, with clothes, and with an exam you never had. If the question on your mind is what it means that you showered, waited or never reported, that page answers it directly.
There is a further reason a criminal case is not the point.
The criminal case is about the person who committed the assault. The civil case frequently is not, or at least not primarily. A judgment against an individual with no assets and no insurance that responds is a piece of paper, and liability policies exclude intentional acts.
The recovery usually comes from a business or property owner whose negligence made the assault possible: an apartment complex, a hotel, an employer, a company. Those claims are about that defendant’s own conduct, which was never the subject of any criminal proceeding and never will be. No prosecutor is investigating whether a gate had been broken for three months.
It is not irrelevant. Where one exists, it can help.
A conviction is powerful evidence. A criminal investigation generates records, statements and physical evidence a civil plaintiff can later obtain. A pending prosecution sometimes pauses a civil case while it resolves.
But the sequence runs one way. A criminal case helps a civil case. Its absence does not prevent one.
Whether the conduct can be proven more likely than not. Whether a business or property owner knew of a risk and failed to address it. Whether the evidence still exists, which depends on how quickly someone preserved it. And whether the deadline has run, which for a Texas civil claim is five years for adult sexual assault under Section 16.0045(b), thirty years for the enumerated offenses against a child under Section 16.0045(a), and ten years for intimate image claims under Section 98B.009.
None of those turns on what a prosecutor decided.
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.
The Texas Crime Victims’ Compensation program, administered by the Attorney General under Chapter 56B of the Code of Criminal Procedure, contains no requirement of an arrest, a charge or a conviction. The standard is a preponderance of the evidence.
There is a reporting requirement, and it is worth stating accurately because it is widely misreported. Article 56B.053 requires a report “within a reasonable period, but not so late as to interfere with or hamper the investigation and prosecution of the offense after the criminally injurious conduct is committed.” No fixed number of hours or days appears anywhere in the statute. There is an extension for extraordinary circumstances, and the requirement does not apply at all if the victim is a child.
And Article 56B.107(d) provides that receiving a forensic medical examination constitutes sufficient evidence of substantial cooperation with an investigation.
Schiffer Law Firm represents survivors in civil claims in Houston and across Texas, including cases where no criminal charge was ever filed.
There is no charge to talk, and no attorney’s fee unless there is a recovery.
Call 713-521-0059.
This page is general information about Texas law, not legal advice about your situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
No. A civil claim does not require a report, an arrest, a charge or a conviction. What a civil claim does need is evidence, and most of it is in the records of the business, building or institution where it happened, which are on an automatic timer.
No. The two systems apply different burdens of proof and ask different questions. An acquittal does not decide the civil claim.
Yes. Section 98.002(b) of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code states that acquittal or non-prosecution is not a defense to civil liability under that chapter.
No. The Texas Crime Victims Compensation program does not require an arrest, a charge or a conviction.
