ALBANY (NY)
Times Union [Albany NY]
December 14, 2023
By Chris Churchill
The attorney general’s office is using a technicality to scuttle Child Victims Act claims filed against the state
State Attorney General Letitia James claims to believe women who say they were sexually abused or harassed. But that belief doesn’t extend, apparently, to a woman who says she was repeatedly abused as a child at the state School for the Blind in Genesee County.
The attorney general’s office tried to get that claim, filed under the Child Victims Act, thrown out of court on a technicality.
James’ office did the same to hundreds of other claimants, including two women who said they were raped by a counselor at a state-run center for kids in Rockland County. As reported by my colleague Brendan J. Lyons, it’s all part of what’s being called the attorney general’s “scorched-earth approach to Child Victims Act cases” filed against state-run institutions.
What happened to the James who claims to fight for victims and justice? What happened to the attorney general who, when announcing the findings of an investigation into sexual harassment allegations against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, said women who step forward with abuse claims are brave and inspiring?
“We should believe women,” James said then. “I believe women, and I believe these 11 women,” she later added.
But if women were abused as children in state-run institutions, well, that’s a different story.
At issue is a flaw in the Child Victims Act that leaves untouched a rule in the Court of Claims, which is where lawsuits against the state are adjudicated. The rule arguably requires that claimants provide precise dates and locations for alleged abuse, and James is wielding it as a weapon in a win-at-all-costs strategy designed to keep cases from even being heard.
The same rule does not apply to private institutions and public schools sued under the Child Victims Act, nor should it.
The landmark law, passed in 2019, temporarily suspended the statute of limitations to let childhood victims sue decades after the alleged abuse happened. Under that context, it is ludicrous to demand that victims remember precise dates. Adults who were harmed as children may not remember exactly when and where abuse happened, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t occur.
James seemed to acknowledge as much in her statements about the Cuomo report, which highlighted a claim that the former governor had groped an assistant but left vague the date on which it allegedly happened. In a footnote, the report noted that the assistant, Brittany Commisso, “did not remember the exact date of the incident.” James believed her nevertheless.
The irony is thick. So, of course, is the hypocrisy.
James even supported the passage of the Child Victims Act, saying it would “finally provide survivors with the justice they have long deserved.” So, how does she now explain away denying survivors the justice they have long deserved?
“The office of the attorney general has a statutory responsibility to defend New York state,” a spokesperson said.
That’s shameless hogwash. The attorney general can settle cases filed against the state and is under no obligation to aggressively seek out technicalities in a heartless quest for dismissals. By contrast, New York City officials created a mediation program intended to settle credible Child Victims Act cases brought against the city.
“They realized the purpose of what the statute was designed to do,” Ari Taub, an attorney who specializes in sexual assault cases, told Lyons. “The state has taken the complete opposite approach, which is shocking to me.”
It should be shocking to all of us. It runs contrary to what James claims to stand for. It contradicts the goal of the Child Victims Act.
The Legislature shouldn’t escape blame. Advocates for the legislation promised that victims abused within public institutions would have the same legal rights as those abused in churches and other private places. State Sen. Brad Hoylman, a Democrat from Manhattan, told me the bill would not “let public institutions off the hook.”
For public schools, that has proven true — so much so that, with some districts fearing they’ll be financially swamped by accusations, lawmakers have considered creating a $200 million fund to help cover Child Victims Act costs and settlements.
But either by error or design, state-run institutions are likely to evade culpability as the attorney general’s office pushes for dismissals. That suggests that the abuse allegedly suffered by the woman at the state-run School for the Blind in Genesee County is somehow less vile or damaging than abuse that occurred elsewhere.
It isn’t, obviously, which means James should stop trying to deny justice to victims who, as she once said, deserved it long ago.
Churchill is one of the most well-known names, and faces, at the Times Union. His columns — published on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays — are shared heavily on social media and have won several awards. Churchill studied English and history at the University of Texas before beginning his journalism career at small weeklies in Maine, later working at the Biddeford Journal Tribune, Waterville Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal newspapers. He started at the Times Union as a business writer in 2007 and became a columnist in 2012. Reach him at cchurchill@timesunion.com or 518-454-5442.