Adult Victims Push for Change in Child Abuse Law

By George Richert
WIVB
April 21, 2015

http://wivb.com/2015/04/21/adult-victims-push-for-change-in-child-abuse-law/

[with video]

A local victim of child abuse is on a lobby mission to Albany this week.

Tino Flores will accompany his attorney William Lorenz to the State Capitol Wednesday to lobby for passage of the Child Abuse Act which would end the statute of limitations for adult victims of child abuse who want to press charges against their abusers.

Under current State law people have five years after they turn eighteen to press charges against someone who sexually abused them. Flores says that’s not enough. He says he was molested by a priest and it took him thirty years to come to terms with it.

“We need change. we need people to listen. We need the adults and the children that are abused to open up and spill their guts,” said Flores.

The Child Abuse Act would also create a one year window in which child abuse victims could press charges against someone who abused them decades ago.

Vanessa DeRosa says that she was abused by a teacher at a Catholic School in Niagara Falls thirteen years ago.

“Imagine being abused as a child and maybe you don’t have the courage to talk about it, or face it, or report until you’re say twenty five, and imagine going to the police or law firm, or anybody and them telling you ‘there’s nothing we can do’. That shouldn’t happen.”

The State Assembly has passed it’s own version of the Child Abuse Act, but the State Senate has yet to pass its similar version.