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Editorial: Justice for abuse victims

Times Union
April 24, 2017

http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-opinion/article/Editorial-Justice-for-abuse-victims-11093392.php


THE ISSUE:

A new report documents decades of abuse at a prominent girls school.

THE STAKES:

It's yet another reason why the state needs to revisit the statute of limitations.

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About the last thing parents expect when they send their children off to school is that they'll be sexually abused by a teacher. Yet as a new report from Emma Willard School shows, that happened all too often, over the course of at least seven decades.

It's to the Troy private school's credit that it commissioned an outside review, and made public the 96-page "Report of Historical Allegations of Sexual Abuse & Misconduct." The account of faculty-student sexual relations from the 1950s to the current decade involves the sort of scandalous activity institutions normally try to cover up.

The issuance of the report, however, should not be the end of the matter for those outside the Emma Willard community. The revelations underscore the need for state lawmakers to revisit long-stalled legislation to extend the statute of limitations for criminal and civil action in cases of sexual abuse.

The Emma Willard report depicts decades of exploitation from the supposedly prim 1950s through the free-wheeling years of the late 60s and 70s and more recent decades, when there has been less tolerance and more awareness of the damaging effects of child sex abuse. Some administrators who looked into the rumors met a wall of silence, others looked the other way.

Emma Willard's report follows the disclosure earlier this month by Choate Rosemary Hall, a Connecticut boarding school, of instances of sexual abuse of students as far back as the 1960s. It would be naive to think there won't be more such revelations at more schools, just as scattered reports of sexual abuse by Catholic priests mushroomed into a global scandal.

Which brings us to an issue New York state has struggled with for years: how to afford victims of sex abuse justice years after the incidents occurred.

After at least a decade of failed efforts, this year again brings legislation in the Assembly and Senate that would afford victims of child sexual abuse extra time to come forward. Where the statute now covers two to five years after the offense is reported or the child turns 18, whichever is earlier, there are bills to extend that to between ages 28 and 33. One would set the statute of limitations at 15 years after the act.

The Catholic church in particular has opposed such bills, clearly concerned about opening the door to costly claims long ago seemingly settled.

Supporters of extending the timetable, however, note that it can take years for victims of sex abuse to come forward. Some grapple with misplaced shame or feelings of guilt. For some, the emotional scars don't surface, or aren't fully recognized, until adulthood. Others need time to see this for what it was, and what the Emma Willard report uncompromisingly depicts: a betrayal of trust.

It is time lawmakers stopped looking the other way. New York's failure to recognize this, and to extend the statute of limitations, is a betrayal of its own.




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