By Michael O'Keeffe
New York Daily News
May 26, 2011
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/iteam/2011/05/26/2011-05-26_bill_would_alter_ny_child_molest_law.html
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| State Assembly Member Margaret Markey sponsors the Child Victims Act, which would extend the civil and criminal limitations for sexual abuse victims. |
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| Bob Oliva pleaded guilty to sex abuse charges. |
A Brooklyn filmmaker who is making a documentary about sexual abuse in youth sports says the statute of limitations that limits prosecution of sexual abuse encourages offenders to prey on children.
Chris Gavagan, whose still-in-production "Coached into Silence" includes an interview with a coach he says abused him when he was a teenager, spoke at a press conference in Albany on Tuesday to promote the Child Victims Act. The bill, sponsored by Queens Assemblywoman Margaret Markey, would extend the civil and criminal limitations for sexual abuse and give previous victims a window to bring civil suits against sexual offenders.
"The reality is that these predators will feed for a lifetime on our children," Gavagan said. "And the short statute of limitations in our state guarantees 30, 40, 50 more years of children - our children, your children - as prey. A generation of children that could so easily have been spared.
"I have been forced to watch as my own abuser, a coach with direct and easy access to a hundred children a year for decades, found his next victim, and his next victim," Gavagan added.
Markey said the existing New York statute of limitations, which she describes as arbitrary and outdated, allows sexual predators to run out the clock on their crimes.
"I know this bill will also protect future generations of New York children from abuse by exposing pedophiles who have previously been hidden," she said.
Former Christ the King basketball coach Bob Oliva pleaded guilty to sexual abuse charges in Boston last month, acknowledging that he had molested a 14-year-old boy during a 1976 trip to Massachusetts. Oliva could not be prosecuted in New York because of statute of limitations issues. Boston authorities were able to prosecute Oliva because the statute of limitations clock stops ticking in Massachusetts when a suspect leaves the state.
The Manhattan District Attorney's office investigated sex abuse allegations made against Ernest Lorch, the founder of the Riverside Church Hawks basketball program, but prosecutors did not file charges because of statute of limitations issues. A Massachusetts grand jury indicted Lorch on sex abuse charges last year for allegedly molesting a New York teenager in Amherst more than 30years ago.
Gavagan said some survivors of sexual abuse hurt themselves and others as a result of the trauma they experienced as children because they don't know how to end their pain.
"What are your options when your ability just to tell the truth has been taken away by law?" he asked.
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