Sexual Abuse Legal Terms, Explained in Plain Language

These are the words that appear in letters, court documents and conversations about a New Jersey sexual abuse claim, in plain language. Nothing here is legal advice about your situation, and nothing here replaces a conversation about your own facts.

How a case is built

Civil claim

A lawsuit you bring yourself, seeking money for the harm done to you. It is separate from a criminal prosecution, which is brought by the state against a person and seeks punishment. Neither has to happen first, and neither depends on the other.

Preponderance of the evidence

The standard of proof in a civil case: more likely than not. It is a lower bar than the criminal standard of beyond a reasonable doubt, which is why a claim can succeed where a prosecution never happened or ended in an acquittal.

Plaintiff

The person bringing the claim. In these cases, the survivor.

Defendant

Any person or organization being sued. Most sexual abuse cases have more than one.

Complaint

The document that starts a lawsuit. It names the defendants, sets out what happened and states the legal theories being relied on.

Discovery

The stage after filing where each side must hand over relevant documents and answer questions under oath. This is where an institution’s internal records, prior complaints and personnel files come out, and it is frequently where these cases are won.

Deposition

Sworn questioning of a witness by the other side’s lawyer, out of court, recorded by a court reporter. Your lawyer is present throughout and prepares you for it.

Interrogatories

Written questions that must be answered in writing and under oath.

Subpoena

A court order requiring a person to give evidence or an organization to produce documents. It is how records held by a school, a diocese, an employer or a company are obtained when they are not handed over willingly.

Spoliation

The destruction or loss of evidence by a party who should have preserved it. Where it happens after a party was on notice, a court can penalize it, sometimes severely.

Preservation letter

A formal notice telling an organization to stop deleting specific records. Sent early, because most document retention policies delete on a schedule.

Settlement

An agreed resolution before or during a case. Most civil claims resolve this way. Whether to accept one is always the claimant’s decision, never the lawyer’s.

Verdict

The decision of a jury or judge at trial.

Contingency fee

A fee arrangement where the lawyer is paid a percentage of what is recovered and nothing if the claim does not succeed. It is how these cases are handled, and it is the reason asking costs nothing.

Who can be held responsible

Third-party liability

A claim against someone other than the person who committed the abuse, usually the organization that enabled it. It is the most important concept on this page, because it is where most of the responsibility, and most of the ability to pay, actually sits.

Negligent hiring

Liability for putting someone in a position of trust or access without the checks a reasonable organization would have made first.

Negligent supervision

Liability for failing to oversee someone once they were in that position, including the absence of basic safeguards such as two-adult rules, unmonitored spaces or unchecked one-to-one access.

Negligent retention

Liability for keeping someone on after the organization knew, or should have known, that there was a problem. Frequently the strongest theory available, because it usually leaves a paper trail.

Vicarious liability

Liability for what an employee did in the course of their work, imposed on the employer without proof of any fault by the employer itself. Also called respondeat superior.

Respondeat superior

The Latin name for vicarious liability. It means let the superior answer.

Duty of care

The obligation to take reasonable care to avoid harming someone. Whether one exists, and how far it extends, is the starting question in most negligence claims.

Breach

The failure to meet that obligation.

Proximate cause

The link between the failure and the harm. A claim requires not just that an organization did something wrong, but that the wrong is connected to what happened to you.

Actual notice

The organization was told. A complaint, a report, a conversation with someone in authority.

Constructive notice

The organization should have known. It did not need to be told, because the signs were there and a reasonable organization would have acted on them.

Mandatory reporter

A person legally required to report suspected child abuse. In New Jersey the obligation is unusually broad, and a failure to report can itself be evidence in a civil claim.

Joint and several liability

Where more than one defendant is responsible, each can be liable for the whole of the loss rather than only their share.

Deadlines and how time is counted

Statute of limitations

The deadline for filing a claim. Miss it and the claim is ordinarily lost regardless of its merits. New Jersey’s deadlines for sexual abuse are considerably longer than most people assume, which is why so many people who believe they are out of time are not.

Discovery rule

A rule that starts the clock not when the abuse happened but when the survivor realized their injuries were connected to it. In New Jersey, seven years from that realization. It exists because delayed recognition is the norm in sexual abuse, not the exception.

Tolling

The pausing of a deadline. Time can be paused for reasons including the claimant being a minor, or a defendant concealing what they did.

Lookback window

A limited period created by legislation during which claims that had already expired could be filed. New Jersey opened a two-year lookback window from December 1, 2019 to November 30, 2021. It has closed, and this is the most misunderstood fact in New Jersey abuse law: the ordinary deadlines are a separate mechanism and were not affected by that window closing.

Revival statute

The general name for legislation of that kind.

Accrual

The moment a claim is treated as having arisen, which is when the clock starts.

Statutes and legal regimes that come up

New Jersey Child Victims Act

The 2019 reform that expanded the filing deadlines for childhood sexual abuse, opened the two-year lookback window, and removed the government immunity protections that had shielded public bodies from these claims.

Title IX

A federal statute requiring schools and colleges that receive federal funding to respond to sexual harassment and assault they know about. A Title IX claim is about the institution’s response, which is a different question from whether the abuse happened.

Law Against Discrimination

New Jersey’s civil rights statute, one of the broadest in the country. It covers employment, housing, schools and public accommodations, and its protected characteristics include gender identity and gender expression.

TVPRA

The federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which allows a survivor of trafficking to sue not only traffickers but businesses that knowingly benefited from participating in a venture they knew or should have known was trafficking. It is the basis of claims against hotels and other businesses.

PREA

The federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, which sets standards for preventing and responding to sexual abuse in custodial settings including jails, prisons and juvenile facilities.

Charitable immunity

A doctrine that historically limited claims against nonprofit and religious organizations. How far it applies to sexual abuse claims in New Jersey is one of the first things a lawyer checks, and it is not the blanket protection it is often assumed to be.

Sovereign immunity

The principle that a government body cannot be sued without its consent. New Jersey’s 2019 reform removed the standard protections for sexual abuse claims, which is why claims against public school districts and state agencies are viable here in a way they are not in many states.

Tort Claims Act

The New Jersey statute that ordinarily governs claims against public entities, including notice requirements that are strict and short. Sexual abuse claims were expressly relieved of those requirements by the 2019 reform.

Compensation

Damages

The money a claim seeks. Not a single figure but several categories, calculated differently.

Economic damages

Losses with a receipt or a number attached. Medical treatment, therapy, lost wages, and the cost of care.

Non-economic damages

The harm itself. Pain, suffering, emotional distress, and the effect on relationships and daily life. The largest component in most sexual abuse claims.

Lost earning capacity

The difference between what a person could have earned and what they now can, where abuse interrupted an education or a career.

Punitive damages

An additional award, available only in narrow circumstances, aimed at punishing conduct rather than compensating loss. In New Jersey it requires proof to a higher standard than the rest of the case.

Structured settlement

A settlement paid over time rather than in a single sum.

Lien

A claim on part of a recovery by someone who paid costs along the way, most often a health insurer. Resolving liens is part of finishing a case properly.

Privacy and how a case is filed

Pseudonym filing

Filing under initials or as Jane Doe or John Doe rather than under your own name. Whether a court permits it depends on the case, and it is a question to raise before anything is filed rather than after.

Protective order

A court order restricting who may see sensitive material produced during a case, and what may be done with it.

Confidentiality clause

A term in a settlement restricting what the parties may say about it. Federal and state law have both narrowed what such clauses can do in sexual abuse and harassment matters, and any clause of this kind should be read carefully before signing.

Non-disclosure agreement

An agreement not to discuss something. Sometimes presented early, sometimes as part of a settlement, and it should never be signed without advice.

Mediation

A negotiation run by a neutral third party. Common, usually private, and non-binding unless an agreement is reached.

Arbitration

A private process that replaces a court hearing, with a decision that is usually binding. Whether a clause in an app, an employment contract or an enrollment form can force a sexual assault claim into arbitration is a contested question and not an automatic yes.

If a word here is the reason you have not called

That happens more than people would guess. Someone reads that a deadline has passed, or that an organization has immunity, or that they agreed to arbitration, and stops there. Every one of those has exceptions in New Jersey, and several of them changed in 2019.

The deadlines are set out in full on the filing deadlines page, what the 2019 reform changed on the New Jersey Child Victims Act page, and how organizations are held responsible on the institutional liability page.