NEW YORK
Forward
Sam Kestenbaum
Matt H. Wade
Barring an eleventh hour deal, New York’s legislature prepared to end its session without passing a bill that will make it easier for child sex abuse survivors to seek justice as adults — legislation that advocates have been pushing for a decade.
By June 17, the bill’s backers were still pushing for a vote in the State Assembly on a modified version of the bill. But the Senate hadn’t scheduled a vote, leaving little chance that Governor Andrew Cuomo would be signing a bill into law.
This comes after months of campaigning to reform New York’s sexual abuse statute of limitations, which is among the shortest in the nation. A coalition of activists and survivors, many from Jewish communities who say they were molested at yeshivas and Jewish day schools, support a bill to give child sex abuse survivors more time to file charges. The governor had publicly announced his support for reform in broad terms, but did not back a specific bill.
“The bill is dead,” said Gary Greenbatt, a New York investor and sex abuse survivor who had been supported the legislation.
Under New York law, someone who is abused as a child has until the age of 23 to bring a civil lawsuit to court. The Child Victims Act, as this legislation is known, seeks to both lift time limits for victims to file civil suits and provide a one-year “look back” window during which past victims who have already exceeded the statute of limitations could go to court. Assemblywoman Margaret Markey introduced the Child Victims Act a decade ago.
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