Catholic Church Helps Quash Child Sex-Abuse Legislation, by Hugh Kramer, Examiner, August 15, 2009

Catholic Church Helps Quash Child Sex-Abuse Legislation

By Hugh Kramer
Examiner
August 15, 2009

http://www.examiner.com/x-8947-LA-Atheism-Examiner~y2009m8d15-Catholic-Church-helps-quash-child-sexabuse-legislation

The Child Victims Act, a bill that would have loosened restrictions on lawsuits involving the sexual abuse of children, has been withdrawn from consideration in the New York State Assembly. In previous years (2006, 2007, 2008) it passed in the Assembly by wide margins but was blocked by the Republican-controlled State Senate. This year though, the Republicans lost control of the Senate and, faced with the real possibility that the bill could pass there, two dozen non-chordate Democratic Assemblymen who had formerly backed it, withdrew their support. The bill, sponsored by Margaret M. Markey (D, Queens), was then yanked from the calendar by the Assembly leadership.

Assemblyman Charles D. Levine, a Long Island Democrat whose district includes mainly Italian-American and Hispanic voters, said, "When it was never going to fly anyway, there was a tendency for many of us who are concerned about victims' rights to symbolically support legislation like this." Faced with pressure from a letter-writing campaign initiated by the local Catholic Church hierarchy, he withdrew that support.

Support in the Senate has also wavered after two democrats defected to the Republican party. This caused Assemblyman Peter J. Abbate Jr (D, Brooklyn), once a co-sponsor of the bill, to say, "If it's going to be a one-house bill anyway, why make people take the heat?"

The "heat" was turned up in large part, by pressure from the Catholic Church, a relentless campaigner against this legislation. "We believe this bill is designed to bankrupt the Catholic Church," said Dennis Poust, spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference, a group representing the bishops of the state's eight dioceses. Cardinals and bishops have visited Albany on several occasions to lobby against it and a statewide network of Catholic parishioners have bombarded law-makers with letters and emails. Allied with the Church in the campaign against the Child Victim Act, are small, disparate groups including leaders of Hasidic and Sephardic Jewish institutions in Brooklyn who also fear costly child sex-abuse lawsuits.