Olsen v. Hooley

In Olsen v. Hooley, 865 P.2d 1345, 1348 (Utah 1993), the Court held that a plaintiff who has repressed all memory of sexual abuse cannot be deemed to have reasonable knowledge of the abuse. Under such circumstances, the limitations period is subject to tolling. Tolling is appropriate in such cases because "repressing the memory of operative facts is, in effect, not knowing or being aware of those facts." But we limited our holding by "emphasizing that the case involved a plaintiff who alleged that she totally repressed her memory; it did not involve a plaintiff who remembered the abuse but did not realize until later that the abuse caused the psychological harm suffered." In other words, even though the Court implicitly recognized that victims of child sexual abuse may often be unable to causally connect their abuse to their injuries, the Court was unwilling to suggest that such an inability would toll the statute of limitations.