NEW YORK
The Legislative Gazette
Written by KALEB H. SMITH, assistant editor on May 23, 2017
As the session enters its final weeks, child sex abuse victims are calling out the governor and Senate Republicans for not expanding their legal rights to hold their abusers accountable.
Sen. Brad Hoylman’s Child Victims Act, and related legislation, would extend the statute of limitations on legal actions for sex crimes against a minor, allowing abuse victims more time to prepare and file lawsuits against their attackers.
Victims and their advocates say the governor has forgotten them, and they accuse Senate Republicans — who have blocked the bill for years — of acting like hypocrites.
“The Senate Republicans seem to love to talk about domestic violence and sexual abuse and put out 10 different kinds of bills every other week about how to protect those victims,” said Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, a Manhattan Democrat. “However the grown-up victims, no one cares about. They think they’ll just go away. But we are here to say we are not going away. We will never go away until justice is done and we pass this bill into law.”
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