Atlanta Attorney for Victims of Rape & Sexual Assault

When an act of sexual assault occurs, you should immediately report the sexual assault to the police and other appropriate parties (i.e. the owner of the property where the assault occurred). The police are responsible for investigating and reporting the incident. The state is responsible for bringing criminal charges against the perpetrator, if appropriate. In addition to this, you may file a civil lawsuit for damages directly against the at-fault party. However, it is important to recognize that this may only be a viable option if the individual who sexually assaulted you maintains a level of personal wealth that makes such a claim worth pursuing. Often, this is not the case. As Atlanta injury attorneys, we make it a point to examine all possible angles. In these situations, we look carefully at the potential for a civil injury claim under Georgia’s premises liability laws, O.C.G.A. 51-3-1.

If you were sexually assaulted on a property such as a hotel, in a parking lot, or at an apartment building, you may also have a case against the owner of the property if you can prove that negligent security contributed to your injuries. Negligent security means the failure to provide a reasonable level of security in response to the known level of threat/danger.

For example, it is reasonable to expect the owner of your apartment building to provide a door that locks with a deadbolt, or for the owner of a hotel to secure the hotel with video footage, and perhaps a security guard. If you can prove that the owner of the property breached the duty of care owed to you by failing to provide reasonable security, and that the lack of security contributed to the incident of sexual assault, the property owner may be held partially liable for your damages.

The concept of third-party liability for sex crimes can seem foreign at first glance because it involves accountability for a crime someone else committed. However, these are civil and not criminal matters. It’s not about “guilt” or “innocence.” It’s about negligence, which is proven by the lower standard of preponderance of the evidence, as opposed to the beyond reasonable doubt standard in criminal cases.

The difference is why civil claims can prevail when criminal cases cannot. Take, for example, the high-profile case against Bill Cosby. He was accused of sexual assault over a period of decades by more than 60 women. One of those reported the alleged incident to police shortly after it happened in 2004. Investigators concluded that the evidence was insufficient to file criminal charges, but the victim later secured a $3.4 million civil settlement from Cosby. Of course, more than a dozen years later, when a flood of other victims came forward, investigators revisited that 2004 claim, filing felony charges just before the statute of limitations expired. Cosby was later convicted of three felony sex crimes and sentenced to 3 to 10 years in prison. But even when the conviction was overturned in 2021 (due to a technicality based on a previous plea agreement prosecutors signed), the civil case was unaffected. The proceedings in the criminal case were entirely separate from the civil claims.

The recourse of a civil claim is especially important for survivors of rape and sexual assault, given that arrests are made in less than 6 percent of all estimated sex crimes. Per a Washington Post analysis of federal data, only 1.1 percent of all estimated sexual offenses are referred for prosecution, and less than 1 percent of the total end in felony conviction. This is partly due to the fact that rapes and sexual assaults are so vastly underreported. However, they are also notoriously difficult to prove under rigid criminal justice standards absent physical evidence or witnesses.  For many survivors of rape and sexual assault, civil litigation is their only means to justice.

The Cosby case is an example of how civil law allows victims of sex crimes to pursue claims for intentional torts directly against a perpetrator. However, this is not always a worthwhile route, due to the fact that many sexual offenders and predators are not independently wealthy (and no insurer is going to extend coverage for an intentional criminal act). That is why injury lawyers often turn their primary focus onto third parties, accused not of a crime but of negligence by way of some failure to protect the plaintiff or vet/supervise the defendant.

Usually, Atlanta sex crimes litigation against third parties involves a property owner or a management company that breached a duty of care to protect the victim, allowing a perpetrator an opportunity to commit a crime that otherwise may not have existed. These are premises liability claims. Property owners – and businesses especially – owe anyone lawfully on site a duty of care to maintain it in a reasonably safe condition and address known or foreseeable risks. The potential for risk can be deemed foreseeable if there is a history of substantially similar crimes on site.

One example of a premises liability sex crimes case was the 1997 Georgia Court of Appeals matter of Doe v. Briargate Apartments, Inc. The plaintiff was beaten, raped, and robbed inside her apartment by an intruder who entered through a second-story window. The victim filed a claim of third-party liability against the landlord of the property, alleging inadequate security and failure to maintain the apartment, which gave her rapist an easier attack route. Although the court affirmed summary judgment favoring the apartment complex on the maintenance issue, it reversed on the claim of inadequate security. The plaintiff herself had been targeted for violence at the same site before, when another man broke into her home, assaulted her, and robbed her. The crime was reported both to the police and to the apartment complex managers. The defense tried to argue the two crimes weren’t “substantially similar” for purposes of establishing the foreseeability of the second attack because the plaintiff did not report being sexually assaulted in the first. The court rejected that argument, further noting that security on site had been hired to protect property, not resident safety.

In addition to premises liability, Georgia sexual assault injury claims can also be filed for things like negligent hiring or retention of the perpetrator as an employee, or failure to supervise the plaintiff or attacker when there was a duty to do so.

Sometimes third parties have a special relationship to the victim (i.e., daycare providers, schools, sports or recreational leagues, religious institutions, corrections and detention facilities, cruise lines), that results in a higher standard of care. If an attack occurred while the perpetrator was working or an attack was somehow facilitated by the job, employers might be held vicariously liable (meaning they weren’t negligent, but under certain circumstances can be held responsible for an employee’s negligence/criminal acts).

Under GA Code § 9-3-33, the statute of limitations holds that victims of sexual assault in Georgia have only two years to bring forward personal injury claims. After those two years, the courts will dismiss your claim as the statute of limitations has run out. Sometimes, insurance companies will engage in stalling techniques to run out the clock and avoid paying you anything. For this reason and others, victims should retain an experienced and dedicated personal injury attorney skilled in sexual assault injury cases to advocate on their behalf.