Another Voice: Legislation will help prevent child sexual abuse

By Melanie Blow
Buffalo News
June 14, 2016

http://www.buffalonews.com/opinion/another-voice/another-voice-legislation-will-help-prevent-child-sexual-abuse-20160614

New York cannot both protect children and those who sexually abuse them. That’s why a fifth of New York’s children are sexually abused while only one in 10 abusers ever see a day behind bars.

There is no effective way to prosecute child sexual abuse while abusers are protected by a statute of limitations on the crime. Research proves survivors need an average of 21 years before they can talk about their abuse. Child sexual abuse is usually committed by someone the victim knows and trusts. That relationship allows the abuser to manipulate the child into years or decades of silence.

Child sexual abuse cases are often hard to prosecute, meaning justice in civil court is as important. Successful lawsuits create documents that can block sex offenders from working with children. They ignite conversations within families, where half of child sexual abuse happens. The threat of lawsuits ensures institutions working with children adopt best practices that protect them.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates the cost of surviving child abuse at $210,000 per victim. Child sexual abuse is a stressor so intense it changes the way a child’s brain, endocrine system and DNA develop, making abuse survivors more likely to develop cancer, diabetes and heart disease later in life, along with a host of mental illnesses. Currently, taxpayers shoulder most of this burden. Transferring the cost to guilty parties makes sense.

The Omnibus Child Victims Act, co-sponsored by State Sen. Timothy Kennedy, will eliminate New York’s criminal and civil statute of limitations for child sexual abuse and provide a one-year window allowing victims already barred from the courts to sue their abusers or institutions that facilitated their abuse. The fate of this bill lies in the hands of state legislators.

New York lags behind the rest of the nation in allowing victims access to justice. Other states have passed similar legislation, and saw hundreds of old suits filed, hundreds of sex offenders exposed and thousands of children protected. Even in civil court, defendants are innocent until proven guilty, so the burden of proof is always on the plaintiff. I know survivors with written confessions, witnesses and records acknowledging their abuse, whose abusers are protected by the law today.

No other legislation can do as much to prevent child sexual abuse as the Child Victims Act. Opposing this bill is essentially saying that sex offenders have a right to mark their calendar and, on the assigned day, say, “I got away with it.”

I don’t think most New Yorkers agree with that. The time to pass meaningful reform is now.

Melanie Blow is chief operating officer of the Stop Abuse Campaign.