MANHATTAN (CN) - Celebrating a law over a decade in the making, New York lawmakers who survived sex abuse as children praised the state Tuesday for giving future generations more opportunities to seek justice.
“When somebody is ready to speak up, our laws should be ready to listen,” Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou said at a press conference in Times Square hosted by the victim-services nonprofit Safe Horizon.
Along with three fellow survivors in the New York Assembly and Senate, Niou was part of a Democratic majority that brought the Child Victims Act to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s desk in February.
New York previously had one of the most restrictive deadlines in the country for victims of child sex abuse to bring a civil claim against their abusers.
Whereas they previously had to file suit before their 23rd birthday, the law set to take effect on Wednesday now gives survivors until they turn 55. The extended window applies only to those who were not yet 23 when the law was signed, but it also includes a one-year revival window for survivors whose claims have expired.
Aside from civil relief, adults who were abused as children will have until they’re 25 years old to bring charges for a misdemeanor offense and 28 to bring charges for a felony offense.
The think tank Child USA says studies show survivors are on average around 52 years old when they report. According to the National Center for Victims of Crime, 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse.
Marci Hamilton, CEO and academic director at Child USA, predicted that the revival window will have big public benefits.
“We’re going to learn about hidden child predators in New York state that nobody knew about,” said Hamilton, who is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The law has been a long time coming. Stymied by lobbying from the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America and other groups with long histories of shuffling around predators in their ranks, the Child Victims Act languished in New York’s state Legislature for over a decade until Democrats won a majority in the last election.
In an email, the Boy Scouts of America said it unequivocally backs the elimination of a statute of limitations on child-abuse claims but still seems to oppose the one-year window in New York.
“We do ... have concerns with proposals that would impose retroactive liability on organizations that did not have actual knowledge of the specific misconduct underlying an allegation of abuse,” the group said in an email.