If your organization has ever served children or vulnerable adults (a school, a daycare, a church youth group, a sports league, a summer camp, a clinic), a claim can arrive today about something alleged to have happened in 2010, or 1995. The people involved may be gone. The question that decides whether you have coverage is simple to ask and hard to answer: what policy did you have back then, and can you prove it?
The deadlines moved
For most of the last century, childhood sexual abuse claims had short filing deadlines. That has changed in many states, in three ways: longer deadlines, no deadline at all, and revival windows that temporarily reopened claims that had already expired.
- New York. The Child Victims Act opened a window under CPLR 214-g for claims that were already time-barred. It opened in August 2019 and, after an extension, closed August 14, 2021. Going forward, CPLR 208(b) lets survivors sue until age 55. The separate Adult Survivors Act (CPLR 214-j) ran a one-year window for abuse of people 18 or older, opening November 24, 2022.
- California. AB 218 extended the deadline to 22 years after the age of majority (age 40) or five years after the survivor discovers the injury was caused by the abuse, whichever is later, and revived expired claims for three years starting January 1, 2020. AB 452 then removed the time limit entirely for abuse occurring on or after January 1, 2024.
- New Jersey ran a two-year revival window beginning December 1, 2019.
- Maryland's Child Victims Act of 2023 eliminated the deadline for these claims, including older ones, and the Supreme Court of Maryland upheld it in February 2025. A 2025 amendment then lowered the damages caps for claims filed on or after June 1, 2025.
Other states have made changes too, and this area keeps moving. Talk to your attorney about where your organization operates. For insurance purposes, the takeaway is that an old exposure is not a closed exposure.
Occurrence vs. claims-made: which policy answers
How a claim finds a policy depends on the trigger. (Our full explainer on occurrence vs. claims-made coverage goes deeper.)
- Occurrence. The policy in force when the injury happened responds, no matter when the claim is made. If abuse is alleged in 2010 and you had an occurrence general liability policy in 2010, that policy is generally the one in play. Many organizations carried occurrence coverage for years, so the old declarations page can be worth a great deal.
- Claims-made. Much of today's abuse coverage is claims-made. The policy in force when the claim is made responds, but only for abuse that happened after the policy's retroactive date. If your retro date is 2018, a claim about 2010 isn't covered by that policy.
That's where organizations lose coverage without noticing. Switch carriers and accept a new retro date, let coverage lapse for even a short stretch, or close a program without buying a tail (an extended reporting period), and the prior years can fall out of coverage for good.
The exclusions and limits that shape the answer
Finding the policy is step one. Reading it is step two.
- Abuse exclusions. ISO's abuse or molestation exclusion, CG 21 46, was available for general liability from 1987. In its 2022 forms filing, ISO withdrew it and introduced two replacements: CG 40 28, *Broad Abuse or Molestation Exclusion*, and CG 40 29, *Sexual Abuse or Sexual Molestation Exclusion*, along with optional endorsements that add sexual abuse coverage back in occurrence and claims-made versions. Many carriers use their own wording instead. Whether an old exclusion reaches a claim framed as negligent hiring or supervision depends on the exact wording and on your state's courts.
- Sublimits. Abuse coverage often carries its own per-claim and aggregate limits, sometimes well below the main policy limits.
- Defense inside limits. On many abuse forms, defense costs reduce the limit. In long, multi-party litigation, defense can consume much of the limit before any settlement is discussed.
- What counts as one occurrence. If one employee harmed several children over several years, is that one occurrence or many? Some forms treat all abuse by the same perpetrator as one event; others count per victim. Under older occurrence policies, the question can decide whether one policy year's limit applies or several years' limits stack. Courts have not answered it uniformly.
The gotcha: the policy nobody can find
The trap most organizations fall into isn't a bad policy. It's a missing one. The church that changed treasurers four times, the daycare that switched brokers, the nonprofit whose files went into a dumpster during a move: each may have had perfectly good occurrence coverage in 2010 and no way to prove it. A carrier generally won't defend under a policy you can't establish existed.
The second version of this trap is the retro date reset. Your claims-made abuse coverage is renewed by a new carrier, the application asks for a retro date, someone accepts the policy's inception date, and fifteen years of prior acts quietly disappear.
What to do now
- Keep every policy, forever. Declarations pages, forms lists, endorsements, and the full policy, for general liability, umbrella, and any abuse coverage. Store digital copies off-site.
- Rebuild what's missing. Ask prior brokers and carriers for copies. Check board minutes, audit workpapers, certificates you issued to landlords or partners, and premium payments in your accounting records. Insurance archaeologists specialize in reconstructing lost coverage from exactly this kind of evidence.
- Collect your loss runs from every carrier, every year, and keep them with the policies.
- Check the retro date at every renewal and confirm it matches the prior policy. Never let a new carrier reset it without understanding what you are giving up.
- Run the controls underwriters expect. Background checks, screening and reference checks, abuse-prevention training, two-adult rules, no one-on-one contact out of sight, written reporting procedures, and documentation that all of it happened.
Our approach
At Cory Washington & Co., we treat abuse exposure as a history question as much as a coverage question. We help you assemble your past policies and loss runs, place sexual abuse and molestation coverage with a retroactive date that preserves your prior acts, and read the exclusions, sublimits, and defense terms before you bind, not after a claim arrives.
We work with schools, daycares and childcare centers, churches and religious organizations, nonprofits, youth camps, and youth development and mentoring programs, and we walk you through the screening and supervision practices underwriters will ask about.
Not sure what your organization carried ten or twenty years ago, or what your current retro date is? Request a policy review and we'll start piecing it together with you.
Frequently Asked
Can someone sue my organization for abuse that happened 20 or 30 years ago?
In many states, yes. Several states have extended or eliminated the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse claims, and some opened revival windows that let previously time-barred claims be filed. New York, California, and New Jersey all ran revival windows, and Maryland eliminated the deadline for these claims retroactively in 2023. Talk to your attorney about the rules in your state.
Which insurance policy pays for an old abuse claim?
If the coverage was written on an occurrence basis, the policy in force when the abuse happened is generally the one that responds, even if the claim arrives decades later. If the coverage is claims-made, the policy in force when the claim is made responds, but only if the abuse happened after that policy's retroactive date. That is why old occurrence policies and unbroken retroactive dates both matter.
What if I can't find my old insurance policies?
Start with your prior brokers and carriers, old board minutes, audit files, certificates of insurance you gave to others, and accounting records showing premium payments. Insurance archaeologists specialize in reconstructing lost coverage from that kind of secondary evidence. A carrier generally won't defend under a policy you can't prove existed, so the search is worth the effort.
Does general liability cover sexual abuse claims?
Often not fully. Many general liability policies carry an abuse or molestation exclusion, and ISO replaced its long-standing CG 21 46 exclusion with two new exclusion forms in its 2022 filing, alongside optional endorsements that add sexual abuse coverage back. Abuse coverage is frequently written with its own sublimit, so check the exclusions, the limit, and how defense costs are handled.
This article is general information for business owners, not insurance or legal advice, and does not bind or alter coverage. Policy terms, eligibility, and pricing vary by carrier and state — confirm specifics with our licensed team before making decisions.