Assembly Majority Leader Joseph Morelle Says He Has Doubts about Eliminating Child-sex Victims’ Statute of Limitations

New York Daily News
May 21, 2016

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/child-sex-abuse-victims-bill-break-courts-top-pols-article-1.2644413

Joseph Morelle, the No. 2 Democrat in the Assembly, is worried that self-described victims with faulty memories will "break the basic tenants of our judicial process." (ERIC JENKS)

When it comes to dealing with child sex abuse victims, Assembly Majority Leader Joseph Morelle says public and private institutions should be held to the same standard even while he opposes the idea of making it easier for some survivors to sue.

Morelle, a Rochester Democrat and the second most powerful lawmaker in the chamber, expressed serious concerns about doing away with laws limiting the window that adult child sex abuse victims have to bring civil or criminal cases.

Under current law, victims have up until their 23rd birthday to bring civil cases.

Morelle says he can support extending the timeframe for civil cases, but not eliminating it entirely, a position similar to one revealed by Gov. Cuomo this week. But Morelle opposes the idea of doing away with the time limits for bringing criminal charges on child sex abuse cases, a change the governor’s office says Cuomo would like to see.

Morelle made his comments to the Daily News hours before the governor’s office released a statement on the subject.

“With each passing year, it gets harder and harder to reconstruct the truth," Morelle said.

For that reason, Morelle also is against giving adult child abuse victims who no longer can bring a civil case under current law a one-year window to sue.

"The trouble I have with it, going back two or three decades, even in a civil matter, is that making sure there is due process is incredibly difficult to ensure," he said. "If you don't have due process, it breaks the basic tenants of our judicial process."

He's not the only state legislator to put the legal rights of accused child sex abusers over the victims.

Senate Deputy Majority Leader John DeFrancisco (R-Syracuse), Sen. Neil Breslin (D-Albany) are among a number of others who have raised the issue with The News in recent weeks.

"Time tends to cloud memories and you don't have physical evidence to rely on,” Morelle said.

But Kathryn Robb, 56, an activist and child sex abuse survivor, said "without the (one-year) window, we will be ignoring justice to thousands of victims and, hence, allowing the perpetrators of those thousands of victims to continue to molest children.”

Morelle said he does support the need to treat abuses cases in public and private entities the same.

He called it unfair that adults who were abused as children in a private institution like a parochial school have up until their 23rd birthday to bring a case while someone abused in a public institution like a school must file a notice of intent to sue within 90 days of the incident occurring.

"The rules ought to be the same whether it's a public or private organization when dealing with child abuse, sexual or otherwise," Morelle said. "There should be a level playing field."

The time to act is quickly running out. Lawmakers have just 12 more session days scheduled before the June 16 end of the legislative calendar.