Child Sex Abuse Survivor: He'll Spend $100k to Beat Sen. Defrancisco, Others
By Mike McAndrew
A minority owner of the Vernon Downs racetrack says he'll spend $100,000 this year to unseat state Sen. John DeFrancisco and other senators who won't pass a bill to allow child sexual abuse survivors like himself sue their abusers. DeFrancisco, the Senate deputy majority leader from Syracuse, is going to be the No. 1 target of the new Fighting for Children PAC that Gary Greenberg says he's in the process of forming. Greenberg, a 57-year-old businessman from New Baltimore, said he's targeting DeFrancisco because of the senator's outspoken opposition to a pending bill that would eliminate the civil and criminal statute of limitations for child sexual abuse crimes going forward and create a one-year window for victims to sue for abuses committed decades ago. "There are a lot of cases where these perpetrators, because of the statute of limitations, have been able to get away with it and are still out there abusing," Greenberg said. "This would out some of these people. There may be instances where they're still abusing and it could be stopped." And for victims, "It would give people a chance to heal," Greenberg said.
Asked about Greenberg's pledge to target him, DeFrancisco said Tuesday on The Capitol Pressroom, "I can take the heat." But he said the threat of political pressure won't prompt him to back a bill that would let people who say they were sexually abused decades ago as children to sue the alleged perpetrator and their employer. "To go back forever, witnesses die, recollections get worse as time goes on," said DeFrancisco, a lawyer. "I think it's something that should not be done because statute of limitations have a purpose. The purpose is to make sure there is a proceeding based upon fact....No matter what the allegations may be, the purpose of the statute of limitations is to make sure that the proceeding is fair." Greenberg called that logic a cop-out. He noted that people who file civil suits still have the burden of proving their cases. "We have a jury system in this country. In civil cases, there's juries. They decide the facts," he said. DeFrancisco: He's won 12 Senate elections No Democrats have indicated any plans to run this year against DeFrancisco, a Republican who has not had a close election for Senate since he was first elected in 1992. No Democrats ran against DeFrancisco in 2014 or 2012. DeFrancisco also had $1.3 million in his Senate campaign accounts as of January, more than any other senator. DeFrancisco's seat seems as safe as any of the 63 Senate seats. If no Democrats step up, Greenberg said he'll try to persuade an independent candidate to run against DeFrancisco if the Republican-controlled Senate does not pass the Child Victims Act during this legislative session, which ends June 16. Even if he can't defeat DeFrancisco, Greenberg said he'll use his money to try to defeat a few other Republican senators who oppose the bill so that Republicans lose the majority in the Senate and DeFrancisco loses his deputy majority leader post. He said he's planning to use the Fighting for Children PAC to buy ads in newspapers across the state to call out DeFrancisco and other opponents of the legislation. "We're going to come into his district. We'll give talks. We've heard from victims up there. We'll run ads. We're going to let people know his position on this," Greenberg said. Why is Greenberg so passionate about this issue? Greenberg said he was molested in 1966 when he was 7 years old. When he visited his father in the hospital, a hospital orderly asked his mother if he could show Greenberg the xray room. The man dangled him over the roof of the Cohoes Memorial Hospital and threatened to kill him before abusing him, Greenberg said. Greenberg said he told his parents about the abuse about a month after it occurred. His father went to the police, but the police said that jurors don't believe kids and there's nothing they could do, Greenberg said. Decades later, in 1996, Greenberg said he saw news reports about a man named Louis Van Wie, who was arrested for abusing two children in the Troy-Cohoes area and who Greenberg said police suspected had abused as many as 150 others over decades. Greenberg said he contacted police because he believed the man was his abuser. He revealed publicly for the first time in 1996 that he was abused, buying ads to urge victims of Van Wie to contact authorities. Greenberg said he went to court in 1997 when Van Wie was sentenced to 11 to 30 years in prison for sodomy and sexual abuse, and he yelled at him. But it was too late for Greenberg to sue Van Wie and too late for Van Wie to be criminally prosecuted on charges of molesting Greenberg. The episode caused Greenberg to go to Albany to try to persaude state lawmakers to pass a bill eliminating the criminal and civil statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases. "I did it for about five, six years. I got frustrated. Every year it would be the same result. The Assembly passed it but the Senate wouldn't touch it because of pressure from the Catholic church," Greenberg said. DeFrancisco: Law was changed DeFrancisco says the state Legislature did change the law, although the changes do not allow lawsuits over decades-old sexual abuse cases. "In 2006, we modified that law. It says that, in the event, since 2006, you're a victim of a child abuse type case, or a rape first, the statute of limitation (on criminal cases) is forever, just like in a murder case, commencing 2006," DeFrancisco said. "In fact, these are the only B felonies that have an unlimited statute of limitations." The 2006 law also extended the statute of limitations for victims to sue only their abuser for the worst child sexual offenses, like rape. Generally, victims of those types of crimes have five years from the date of the offense to file a civil lawsuit against their abuser and three years to sue someone else, like an employer, for related negligence. But since 2006, if a criminal action is commenced against a defendant for one of those worst child sexual abuse crimes, the victim has five years from the date the criminal action is ended to file a civil suit against only the abuser. DeFrancisco was a co-sponsor of the 2006 bill that the Senate passed. The senator said he doubts that the Senate will even vote this year on Sen. Brad Hoylman's bill, which would allow victims to file lawsuits over child sexual abuse incidents that occurred before 2006, in many cases decades ago, against abusers and their employers. The Senate voted 30 to 29 to reject an attempt by Hoylman on Monday to attach the bill as an amendment to an unrelated bill. "I don't believe it's going to come to the floor. I really don't. But I didn't think the $15 minimum wage would come to the floor either," DeFrancisco said. "So who am I to judge the likelihood of something occurring in the New York State Senate." Contact: mmcandrew@syracuse.com
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