NEW YORK (NY)
Daily Beast
August 14, 2019
By Olivia Messer
A New York woman who has waited decades to publicly accuse a Catholic priest of rape kicked off more than 100 lawsuits filed Wednesday after a new state law opened a one-year window for sexual-abuse survivors to seek justice.
The 36-year-old, identified by the pseudonym Jane Doe, filed suit against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, claiming abuse by Father Ricardo Fajardo when she was a minor and he was working as a priest at the Church of St. Catherine of Genoa in Manhattan.
Doe’s suit, filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, alleges that she was raped by Fajardo, who “used his position as a dignified religious leader to ingratiate himself with [Doe’s] family as a trusted and respected individual.”
After volunteering to give her a ride home one day, Fajardo instead allegedly drove Doe back to the church rectory and invited her to lay in his bed. Then he gave her alcohol, groped and kissed her, and then raped her, according to the lawsuit.
Doe’s case is one of more than 100 lawsuits that were filed so far on Wednesday in 11 counties, mostly targeting Catholic dioceses in New York, by survivors of child sex abuse.
The suits were enabled by the state’s Child Victims Act, which passed in January and went into full effect at midnight Wednesday. The law removes the state’s statute of limitations on sex crimes against children and provides a one-year window, beginning Wednesday, to pursue legal action—no matter the age of the accuser, when the abuse occurred, or if the alleged perpetrator is alive or dead.
In addition to the new window, as of Wednesday, criminal charges can be filed against sexual abusers of children until accusers turn 28—up from age 23—in felony cases, and civil cases can be filed against abusers and institutions until the person making the claim turns 55.
More than 1,000 lawsuits took advantage of a similar one-year window in California in 2003, The New York Times reported.
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