City Hall Rally to Be Held Friday in Support of Eliminating Statute of Limitations in Child Sex Abuse Cases

By Michael O'Keeffe
New York Daily News
March 6, 2013

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/iteam/2013/03/city-hall-rally-to-be-held-friday-in-support-of-eliminating-statute-of-limitations-in-

New York state lawmaker Margaret Markey will hold a rally and press conference outside City Hall on Friday before a Manhattan hearing on her Child Victims Act, which would eliminate the criminal and civil statute of limitations in sex abuse cases.

The speakers will include Kevin Mulhearn, the attorney who represented 12 men in a sex abuse suit filed against Poly Prep Country Day School, and Phillip Culhane, one of the plaintiffs in the case. Markey, a Democratic assemblywoman from Queens, has said the bill was inspired in part by the Poly Prep, Syracuse and Penn State scandals.

Also on the roster: Christopher Anderson, the executive director of MaleSurvivor, Mia Fernandez of the National Crime Victims Center and Yeshiva Law School professor Marci Hamilton. Two men close to the Horace Mann sexual abuse allegations - Amos Kamil, the author of The New York Times Magazine article on abuse at Horace Mann and Robert Boynton of the Horace Mann Action Coalition – will also be present. So will Tina Weber, an attorney who persuaded authorities in Massachusetts to prosecute an Albany-area priest after her clients were shut out in New York because of the statute of limitations.

The rally/press conference will begin at 9:30 on Friday morning at the Broadway entrance to City Hall Plaza. The hearing is scheduled to being in the Assembly Public Hearing Room, 250 Broadway, at 10 a.m.

Markey's previous Child Victims Act legislation has been adopted four times by the Assembly since 2006, but has not yet moved forward in the State Senate.