NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times
February 20, 2019
By Rick Rojas
For years, the Child Victims Act failed again and again. And for years, Margaret Markey continued to push for it in the New York State Legislature.
Several times, the legislation passed in the Assembly by a wide margin. But then it would collide with powerful opposition: the insurance industry, the Roman Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America. The Senate never even took it up for a vote.
Ms. Markey, then a member of the State Assembly from Queens, became so attached to the legislation that some took to calling it the “Markey Bill,” especially her critics as they publicly condemned her. But the aim of the bill — extending the statute of limitations for bringing child sexual abuse cases — had become nearly her singular focus.
She did not talk about it, but her devotion was fueled by personal experience: As an adult, one of her sons, Charles, had told her that years earlier he had been sexually abused by a priest at the Catholic parish where their family had worshiped for generations.
“Since so many abused children are not able to come to grips with what has happened to them until much later in life,” Ms. Markey said in 2015 as she renewed her call to pass the bill, “it is the victims who suffer the most as a result of our state’s archaic statute of limitations for these offenses.”
Last week, after 13 years, a version of the legislation became law. Ms. Markey had no involvement in its recent success; a challenger beat her in 2016 as she sought a 10th term. But as officials and advocates celebrated their victory, they repeatedly cited Ms. Markey’s zeal in waging a political fight that was bruising and once seemingly Sisyphean. When Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the bill, Ms. Markey standing behind him, he called her efforts a “profile in courage.”
“She didn’t have an easy time of it, but she went with her convictions,” said Assemblywoman Linda B. Rosenthal, who succeeded Ms. Markey as the bill’s sponsor. “She did a lot of the legwork for this, and she deserves a lot of credit.”
Ms. Markey, a Democrat, first introduced the legislation in 2006, and she continued forcing it back onto the agenda in Albany until she lost her seat in 2016. Her husband had nudged her to retire, her family said, but she insisted on running again, hoping the bill would have better odds the next time around.
Ms. Markey has been diagnosed with a form of dementia, making it harder for her to talk about the legislation. But in recent interviews with The New York Times, family members, including her husband, son and daughter, have publicly discussed for the first time the allegations of abuse that forged her personal connection to the issue.
“I think she knew I was in pain,” her son Charles, now 52, said. Mr. Markey, a retired New York City firefighter, said that after telling his parents, he reported the allegations to the Queens district attorney’s office, but prosecutors told him the statute of limitations prevented them from pursuing his case.
“She decided to do something about it,” he said. “She’s been through so much over the years. I think now she’s satisfied knowing this has finally gotten through.”
A changing political calculus
Some have attributed the change in fortune to the Democrats gaining a majority in the Senate. But others, including Ms. Rosenthal, argued that the new political calculus had grown from a larger cultural shift.
Ms. Rosenthal pointed to the series of events that invigorated the conversation around extending statutes of limitations: the monsoon of sexual assault allegations against Bill Cosby; the child sex abuse scandal at Penn State University; the explosive grand jury report in Pennsylvania that detailed decades of alleged abuse by Catholic clergy.
Suddenly, Ms. Rosenthal said, passing the Child Victims Act seemed inevitable.
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