NEW YORK
New York Daily News
August 11, 2019
By Erin Schumaker
When she was a child, Beatriz Mendoza told her mother that she was sexually abused by an adult.
Mendoza remembers her mother’s response. “‘That’s not possible. How could that be?’” her mom questioned. “She really took no action,” Mendoza recalled. “I was 6-and-a-half.”
Because her mother didn’t believe her, Mendoza kept the assault to herself until she started working in victims’ assistance decades later.
It’s stories like this that New York’s Child Victims Act, which was signed into law in February, is intended to correct. The legislation, which extends the criminal and civil statutes of limitations for reporting child sex abuse, also includes a one-year, one-time-only look back window, in which victims of any age can file civil lawsuits against their abusers between Aug.14, 2019 and Aug. 13, 2020.
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