NEW YORK
Albany Times Union
By Brendan J. Lyons
Updated 5:59 am, Monday, March 11, 2013
NEW YORK — A proposal to abolish New York’s statute of limitations on sex crimes involving children was the subject of a gut-wrenching Assembly hearing in Manhattan that included testimony from an attorney for two brothers who said they were raped as boys by an Albany Roman Catholic Diocese priest.
Tina M. Weber, a Philadelphia attorney, read statements from the brothers, who are now adults, about their emotionally tumultuous lives since they said they were raped repeatedly in the 1980s and 1990s by a former priest, Gary Mercure, who was convicted two years ago of forcibly raping a child in Massachussetts.
Weber implored the Assembly’s Codes Committee to push legislation that would make New York one of a growing number of states that have expanded or eliminated statutes of limitations on child sex crimes.
Variations of the measure, known as the Child Victims Act, have passed the Assembly four times but never made it to a vote in the state Senate, where Republican leaders and other lawmakers say the legislation could be financially devastating to the Catholic Church and other organizations.
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