NEW YORK
Verdict
26 JUN 2017
MARCI A. HAMILTON
New York lawmakers last week closed their 2017 session in “legislative hell,” as one Senator called it, without resolving a number of important issues, including the Child Victims Act, which would reform New York’s antiquated child sex abuse statutes of limitations (SOLs). It would extend the civil and criminal SOLs, revive expired civil SOLs for one year, and eliminate the “notice of claim” requirement that has hobbled public school victims’ access to justice. Governor Mario Cuomo had endorsed the concept earlier in the year, making him the first state governor to step forward before being asked to sign such a bill. While the assembly had passed a version and the senate appeared to have a majority to vote for it, Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, on the next to the last day of the session, blocked its progress from committee to the floor. The New York situation is brilliantly summarized and parodied by Samantha Bee here.
So what does a survivor do who has been put through the wringer by the New York legislative process for over a decade and who just had Sen. Flanagan unilaterally shut down their hopes again? Naturally, they picket the ninth hole of the Trump National Golf Course where Flanagan is holding a political fundraiser at $1,500/head. Survivors are where they need to be: speaking their truth to power. And the truth makes Flanagan complicit in the cover up of information about pedophiles the public desperately needs.
Now, it is no surprise at this point that an Irish Catholic Republican Senator would carry the Catholic bishops’ water on child sex abuse, but everyone knows that the bill is going to pass sooner or later. New York has some of the worst SOLs in the country and even Irish Catholic Republican politicians can agree that child sex abuse is really bad and hiding predators terrible. This is not all about the past. SOL reform helps children in the present tense, because it identifies child predators who are still operating in the silence afforded them when the system gags victims with expired SOLs.
When I first started thinking and writing about this issue over 15 years ago, the term “statute of limitations” was routinely met with a blank stare. As in, what are you talking about, and more importantly, why? It was legalese. By 2011, however, when the Penn State-Jerry Sandusky scandal hit, audiences were savvy that it is just a deadline for filing a lawsuit or pressing charges—and that it frequently re-victimizes victims by sending a message that their injuries are not worthy of the legal system’s time.
So what accounts for the New York Senate’s obstinate refusal to take up the issue? The answer, of course, lies in the lobbyists. Some have said that the opponents to the CVA lurked in the shadows this year, but no one needs a college degree to know that the most ardent and active opposition comes from the Catholic bishops. And it is equally clear why they were lurking rather than lobbing salvos into the public square.
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