NEW YORK (NY)
Reuters [London, England]
April 3, 2024
By Diana Novak Jones
A pair of lawsuits against Yeshiva University brought by more than 50 men who say they were sexually abused decades ago by teachers and staff while in the Orthodox Jewish high school associated with the college can move forward, a New York state judge said.
New York Supreme Court Justice Alexander Tisch on Tuesday rejected the school’s bid to dismiss the two parallel lawsuits, holding that a 2019 New York state law that lifted the statute of limitations on the claims is constitutional. Justice Tisch also said the plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged that the school failed to stop the abuse and failed to provide a safe environment for its students.
The lawsuits, filed in 2019 and 2021, claim that teachers and the principal of the Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy/Yeshiva University High School for Boys sexually abused students beginning in at least 1971. Several plaintiffs say they met with school leadership to report their assaults, but the perpetrators were never removed or reported to police.
Following Tuesday’s rulings, which came more than three years after the first motion to dismiss was filed, the cases are expected to move to the discovery phase.
Attorney Kevin Mulhearn, who represents 49 of the plaintiffs, said he has clients who have been waiting over a decade to get documents about what the school knew of the abuse. Specifically, Mulhearn said he will seek the documents uncovered as part of a 2013 report Yeshiva commissioned from law firm Sullivan & Cromwell on the abuse allegations.
The report, which was made public, included few details but concluded that authorities at the school had committed abuse, and that there were instances where school leadership was aware and did not act.
“YU has done a masterful job of keeping a lid on this for 11 years,” Mulhearn told Reuters. “The lid just popped off.”
Attorneys and representatives for Yeshiva University did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
More than 30 of the plaintiffs involved in the lawsuits were part of earlier abuse lawsuits against Yeshiva filed in 2013 and 2014 in federal court. Those lawsuits were dismissed on statute of limitations grounds.
As part of its motion to dismiss the lawsuits, Yeshiva had argued that those plaintiffs should be barred from bringing their claims again after they had previously been dismissed for falling outside the statute of limitations, but the judge held that the Child Victims Act specifically revived them.
The 2019 passage of New York’s Child Victims Act opened what became a two-year window to file claims that had previously been time barred, leading to dozens of lawsuits over decades-old abuse allegations.
The lawsuits are John Doe 42 et al vs. Yeshiva University et al, case number 951363/2021, and Twersky et al v. Yeshiva University et al, case number 950111/2019, in the Supreme Court of New York, County of New York.
For the plaintiffs: Kevin Mulhearn, Leander James of James, Vernon & Weeks, and Jesse Capell.
For Yeshiva University: Karen Bitar, Gershon Akerman and Paxton Moore of Seyfarth Shaw