NEW YORK
Times Union
By Casey Seiler, Capitol bureau chief on May 2, 2016
Attorney John Aretakis won’t get to make a victim impact statement at Tuesday’s sentencing of former Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.
The controversial attorney, who has represented several Capital Region residents who brought suit against the Catholic Church for clergy sexual abuse claims, sent a Dec. 15 letter to the court charging Silver with yanking back his support for a bill that would have extended the statute of limitations for victims of such abuse.
Aretakis suggested Silver’s change of heart was a factor of the state Catholic Conference retaining the services of Patricia Lynch Associates, the firm run by Silver’s former top aide. (The letter was sent months before it was revealed that federal prosecutors had what they described as credible evidence that Silver had two extramarital affairs; Lynch was subsequently identified in numerous reports as being one of the women whose names were redacted in the unsealed court document, though she has remained silent on the matter.)
“Send him away for 20 years,” Aretakis wrote. “Victims of sexual abuse as children want Mr. Silver to have sufficient time away to think about how he abandoned victims, to line his own pockets and the pockets of Ms. Lynch, and other lobbyists that fed off Mr. Silver for decades.”
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