NY Child Sex Abuse Laws Must Change in Order to Protect and Give Aide to Victims — Here's How That Can Be Done

New York Daily News
May 12, 2016

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/agenda-justice-preventing-future-sex-abuse-atrocities-article-1.2635540

Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan (pictured) talks to media members outside Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office in Albany, N.Y. (MIKE GROLL/AP)

New York has some of the toughest-sounding sex crime laws in America — yet the Legislature has stitched the statutes with technicalities that protect both those who victimize children and institutions like schools and churches that have served as enablers.

The hidden and grotesque nature of the laws has come into focus in the two months since the Daily News discovered that an exceedingly tight statute of limitations barred prosecutors from charging an alleged serial abuser with victimizing numerous foster children.

Almost daily since then, The News has spotlighted how the Legislature’s strictures have denied criminal and civil justice to people whose lives were irrevocably scarred in childhood by trusted adults who proved to be sexual predators.

To their great shame, Democratic Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Republican state Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan closed their doors — symbolically and literally — to men and women who sought to tell their stories of stolen innocence in hope of spurring reform in the closing days of the 2016 legislative session.

Horrific in detail, with many thoroughly documented, those tales leave no doubt New York has been complicit in injustice on a scale that can be tolerated only by lawmakers who are in denial or who have surrendered their consciences to lobbyists for institutions that would be threatened with compensation claims.

Over the last decade, proposed statute of limitations reforms have foundered in the Legislature — even as the law forced judges to dismiss lawsuits despite powerful evidence of victimization by teachers over many years.

Now, Heastie and Flanagan refuse to utter more than a few meaningless syllables about the issue, while Gov. Cuomo has said without specifics that he would support moving toward providing justice to victims.

Having studied the laws, consulted experts and reviewed the experiences of other states that grappled with statute of limitation reform, The News will fill Albany’s vacuum with an agenda aimed both at partially healing past harms and deterring future abominations.

— Open the courts for one year to those who claim victimization and who had previously been turned away.

Statutes of limitations serve a useful purpose. Events that allegedly happened long ago can be hard to prove or refute because passage of time can blur memory and make witnesses and documentary proof unavailable.

A claimant who misses the deadline for filing suit should be out of luck — except if the deadline has been written to require unrealistically fast action. Such is the case with the present time limit for filing a case based on sex abuse.

Having already suffered terribly, victims should not be denied vindication or compensation based on a law rigged against them. Allowing a fresh chance to sue is the only possible remedy.

A so-called look-back statute would have to be carefully drawn to protect the due process rights of the accused, allowing them, for example, to show they were disadvantaged by unjustified delays by claimants and placing a high burden on attorneys to certify a good-faith belief in the charges.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie speaks during a news conference in Albany, N.Y. (MIKE GROLL/AP)

Recommending a one-year look-back is not lightly done. Similar provisions in other states produced numerous claims, often placing religious institutions held responsible for protecting pedophiles under severe financial stress. Two U.S. Catholic dioceses went into bankruptcy, while the Los Angeles archdiocese took a $740 million hit.

No one wants to see financial damage to any church, synagogue, school, athletic team or do-good organization of any kind, but the amounts of money paid out only reinforce the justness of a one-year window because they indicate the extraordinary extent of unaddressed victimization.

— Extend the civil statute of limitations for current offenses.

A minor who suffers sex abuse must sue his or her attacker before reaching the age of 23. But, clearly demonstrating who wields power in Albany, that same minor has only until the age of 21 to sue an organization that may have enabled a predator.

It is make-believe to think that a very young and previously victimized adult would have the resources to wage a court case against a powerhouse institution. At the same time, many child victims struggle for years to come to terms with their scars. They should be permitted to sue at least until the age of 28.

— Drop a 90-day notice of claim requirement for suing a public agency like the Department of Education.

People who want to sue a government agency in New York have 90 days after an offense to submit a notice of intent to file a claim. Applying that rule to child sex victims offers obscene protection to, for example, predator teachers.

— Eliminate the criminal statute of limitations entirely.

Prosecutors may forever pursue a pedophile who has intercourse, oral sex or anal sex with a child under 13. But lifetime jeopardy does not apply to manual fondling, essentially alerting pedophiles how to best get away with their crimes.

There are precious few weeks before the Legislature adjourns. Cuomo, Heastie and Flanagan need now to put statute of limitations reform at the top of their agendas.

And, for the sake of the thousands of abandoned victims, they need now to declare where they stand on these critical points, along with others that may need to be addressed.