Dr. James Heaps sexually assaulted me in 1999.

Also in 1999, I reported Dr. Heaps to UCLA and the California Medical Board.

Nothing was done. My complaint was buried.

Nothing changed, except the number of victims who followed.

That was twenty years ago.

I’m one of the women who has come forward. A devastating number of women have not. And some never will.

Statutes of limitations protect institutions, not survivors. The law expects us to speak out with clarity and agency while still inside the shock of betrayal. But trauma distorts time. Some of us remember slowly. Some of us remember in pieces. Some of us were silenced before we ever had the words.

AB3092 opens a door that should never have been locked. It gives survivors a chance to be heard on terms that reflect what trauma actually looks like. It gives us time. Time to gain clarity. Time to get into the depth of trauma and unearth what has haunted us unconsciously.

AB218 doesn’t erase what happened. But it does give survivors time. And time matters. Because memory isn’t linear. Because trauma distorts language. Because reality can take decades to name.

This bill redefines what justice can look like. It doesn’t demand that survivors be ready on someone else’s timeline. It acknowledges that trauma delays everything: memory, meaning, voice.

It also tells institutions that complicity is acceptable. It tells survivors being discarded is not exclusive to the perpetrator, but to the village that surrounds the offender.

AB1510 was written for survivors like me – those who reported, were ignored, and watched the harm continue. It recognizes a specific failure: that students were assaulted by trusted medical professionals in institutional settings and then left with no recourse once the window to file claims expired.

But the bill was too narrow. It didn’t go far enough. It applied only to a defined group at a defined moment in time. And while it helped some, it left hundreds of others out.

We need more than retroactive exceptions. We need permanent protections without exclusions, without expiration dates, and without institutional carve-outs that once again determine who gets access to justice and who doesn’t.

This is not about one institution. Or one bill. Or one set of survivors.

This is about a pattern of protection for predators, perpetrators, and the institutions that hide them from consequence.

It’s about delay as strategy. Inaction as policy.

It’s about what happens when systems close ranks and survivors are told – again – to wait their turn.

You have a rare opportunity to do what so many others failed to do: to respond, not dismiss. To act, not delay.

To make sure the law reflects what survivors have always known - that harm doesn’t expire on a timeline.

You don’t need to fix the past. But you can refuse to repeat it.

This is your chance to stand in tender solidarity with survivors in something stronger than sympathy.

This is your chance to get it right.