23-101.Sexual abuse per se harmful.

Section 23-101 removes a proof burden that historically made childhood sexual abuse cases harder to win than they should be. For an action arising from sexual conduct or sexual penetration as the Criminal Code defines those terms, if the plaintiff proves by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant committed childhood sexual abuse as defined in Section 13-202.2, the law treats that conduct as harmful on its face — the court deems it per se harmful and traumatic. The plaintiff still has to prove the abuse happened, but once that is proven, harm is established as a matter of law rather than something the plaintiff must separately convince the fact-finder of. A plaintiff can still put on evidence about how severe the harm was, since that bears on damages even though it no longer bears on whether harm occurred at all.

The section is careful about what it does not do. It does not say when a plaintiff discovered their cause of action, and it does not say when a plaintiff realized their damages were connected to the abuse — both questions that matter for the discovery-rule analysis courts use to decide whether a claim was filed in time under statutes like Section 13-202.2. Section 23-101 answers only the harm question, not the timing question.

The section applies to causes of action arising on or after the effective date of the amendatory act that created it, and also to causes of action where the limitations period had not yet run out as of that date — so it reaches some claims based on older abuse as long as the clock had not already expired.