The Charleston lawyers at Pierce, Herns, Sloan & Wilson LLC have been representing in young women in civil lawsuits who were the victims of sexual abuse at the hands of aNorth Charleston police community service officer.
The Case
The 22-year-old officer, in 2013, faced numerous criminal sexual conduct and kidnapping charges for multiple offenses, which occurred from 2010 to 2012 while the women were guests in the officer’s home. The victims accused the officer of choking and forcing them, either at gunpoint or knifepoint, to have sex with him. He pleaded guilty to lesser charges, but that plea did not let him off the hook for civil action.
The South Carolina attorneys at Pierce, Sloan, Kennedy & Early LLC have stood by these victims and have fought for the civil justice that they deserve. These are not the only South Carolina sexual abuse victims that this law firm will represent. The law firm represents victims of sexual abuse by nursing home staff, health care providers, child care providers, clergy, teachers, family members, coaches and others.
A South Carolina sexual abuse victim may be entitled to compensation for his or her pain and suffering. The experienced sexual abuse attorneys at Pierce, Sloan, Kennedy & Early LLC are well-resourced, highly experienced, and ready and willing to meet with a sexual abuse victim, explain all of the legal options, and take aggressive action aimed at holding the abuser accountable.
Incarceration may be temporary, but sexual abuse inflicts a lasting toll. This is one reason that sexual abuse victims should pursue civil justice. And national statistics show that the young women represented by the Charleston sexual abuse lawyers at Pierce, Sloan, Kennedy & Early LLC unfortunately were not alone. Indeed, they were in a targeted age group.
Most Sexual Abuse Victims Are Young
As a January 2014 White House report on sexual abuse explains, “The majority of rape and sexual assault victims are young – between the ages of 16 and 24. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 80 percent of female victims were raped before they turned 25, and almost half were raped before they were 18. Among men, 28 percent were raped before they were 10. Some 12 percent of high school girls report having been forced to have sexual intercourse. And up to 38 percent of runaway teens say that sexual abuse is one of the reasons they left home.”
The effects of sexual abuse can be an indelibly traumatizing stain on the victim’s life. The federal report gets into the emotional damage of sexual assault, explaining, “Rape and sexual assault survivors often suffer from a wide range of physical and mental health problems that can follow them for life – including depression, chronic pain, diabetes, anxiety, eating disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder. They are also more likely than non-victims to attempt or consider suicide.”
Sexual abuse also has an economic component, according to the report, which added, “Although hard to quantify, several studies have calculated the economic costs of a rape, accounting for medical and victim services, loss of productivity, decreased quality of life, and law enforcement resources. Each used a slightly different methodology, but all found the costs to be significant: ranging from $87,000 to $240,776 per rape.”
Add compensation for pain and suffering that a sexual abuse victim deserves and those figures can generally fall short of the total recoverable damages to which the victim may be entitled.