Sexual-abuse survivors who traveled to Albany, N.Y., with high hopes this past spring got a tough lesson in political reality. The state Assembly’s regular session ended on June 22 without any action on a bill that would make it easier for sex-abuse victims to sue their molesters and the institutions that employed them.
“People are playing politics with innocent kids’ lives. I don’t even know what to think anymore,” said Joe Diangelo, a member of Survivors for Justice, a group that formed last year to support Jewish survivors of child sexual abuse. Diangelo was one of several Jewish activists who joined Catholic abuse survivors lobbying New York State legislators this year, only to see their efforts countered by a strong push against the bill from the Catholic Conference and a few ultra-Orthodox Jewish organizations.
“It’s sad, but by no means are we going to stop,” Diangelo said as he protested outside the office of Assemblyman Vito Lopez, a Brooklyn Democrat who played the most visible role in blocking the sex-abuse bill in the Assembly.
The bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Margaret Markey, a Queens Democrat, plans to reintroduce the measure when the legislature reconvenes in January 2010. Markey’s bill would extend the statute of limitations for civil and criminal cases of sexual abuse; more controversially, her bill also would create a one-year “window” during which older victims of childhood sexual abuse could sue their molesters and sue any institutions that covered up or enabled the abuse, such as schools, religious institutions or community organizations. Similar “window” legislation in California led to about 1,000 lawsuits, most of them against the Catholic Church.
Markey and her supporters argue that the one-year window is necessary to expose sexual predators who may still be molesting children today. But opponents of the bill — including the Catholic Church, Agudath Israel of America (an ultra-Orthodox umbrella organization) and the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg (an influential Satmar community group) — argue that defending against decades-old claims of abuse would prove impossible and too expensive for religious and community groups that would be targeted by lawsuits. They support the idea of a longer statute of limitations going forward, but oppose the retrospective window for lawsuits.
Markey entered this legislative session with high hopes for what she named the Child Victims Act. It had been approved in the Assembly by wide margins for the past three years in a row, only to die in the Republican-controlled Senate. After the 2008 election put Democrats in the majority in the Senate, chances for the Markey bill seemed better than ever. And the current chaos in the Senate was not yet a factor.
Ironically, the likelihood of a vote in the Senate may have made it harder for the bill to gain momentum. Knowing that the Assembly vote on the bill would have real consequences this year, the Catholic Conference stepped up its lobbying efforts against it, and groups such as Agudath Israel went public with their opposition.
“It was able to sail through earlier because everyone knew that Bruno [former Senate majority leader Joseph Bruno, who retired last year] would block it,” said Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law professor Marci Hamilton, who supported the Markey bill. “They could take a public vote on it, knowing there would be no backlash. This year, the Catholic Conference started to play hardball early on.”
The opposition forced Markey to make some changes: She reworded the bill to include public institutions as well as private ones, and she put a 53-year-old age limit on who could sue over past sexual abuse. With those changes, Markey said she was confident she had enough votes to pass the bill. As late as the week of June 15, she was predicting a vote in the full Assembly within a few days.
Supporters of the Markey bill point to Lopez as the architect of the bill’s downfall. A vociferous opponent of the one-year window legislation, Lopez sponsored a competing bill that would extend the statute of limitations going forward but would not allow lawsuits in old cases. Those lobbying for Markey’s bill heard that Lopez was planning to introduce what’s called a “hostile amendment” on the Assembly floor, basically replacing the Markey bill with his own. With votes from Republicans as well as from Democrats who were wavering on the Markey bill, that tactic might have succeeded. And the prospect of an ugly floor battle was enough to make Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver wary of bringing the bill to a vote in the busy waning days of the session.
Lopez told the Forward he has no intention of introducing a hostile amendment. Instead, Lopez said, he wants to convene a task force of religious leaders, abuse victims, legal experts and others to hammer out a compromise between his proposal and the Markey bill.
Given the rancor toward Lopez that exists among sexual-abuse survivors who lobbied for the Markey bill, such a meeting may be a tough sell. For his part, Lopez dismissed the daily demonstrations that have been occurring outside his district office in Brooklyn.
“That’s one or two people who want to sue, who just want to get money,” Lopez said. “That’s not, to me, a protest.”
Contact Rebecca Dube at dube@forward.com
The Forward welcomes reader comments in order to promote thoughtful discussion on issues of importance to the Jewish community. In the interest of maintaining a civil forum, the Forward requires that all commenters be appropriately respectful toward our writers, other commenters and the subjects of the articles. Vigorous debate and reasoned critique are welcome; name-calling and personal invective are not. While we generally do not seek to edit or actively moderate comments, the Forward reserves the right to remove comments for any reason.
Copyright © 2013, Forward Association, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Why Do Jews Intermarry at a Much Higher Rate Than Others?
The Mirror in the Mikveh
If Rabbis Are Allowed To Intermarry, Get Ready for the Non-Jewish Rabbi
Top 10 Badass Mah Jongg Jews
Auschwitz Museum 'May Not Reflect Real Facts' Says Hungarian Lawmaker
You've successfully signed up!
ASSEMBLY GIVES PREDATORS AND ENABLERS A FREE PASS The New York Assembly has given a free pass to sexual predators of children - of any stripe, sexual orientation or religious affiliation. Enabling individuals and institutions will get a free pass as well. It's not too difficult to conclude that the late into the night wheeling and dealing in the backrooms of Albany was very successful. The transparent collusion between religious institutions and the insurance industry, along with both groups' well heeled lobbyists, has managed once more to put the protection of children in the endangered species list - and this from groups who say they believe in and even signed onto the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. How does one explain a corruption so insidious that it protects sexual predators and their enablers at a cost that trumps the civil rights and lives of all children? Why is it when there is an ever broadening epidemic of child abuse in this country and a veritable pandemic around the world that some states still give more accommodation in law to individual predators, their enablers and facilitators, then to the very real victims of childhood sexual abuse? Perhaps it is easier to understand when one considers that in this country there were animal abuse prevention laws on the books a good ten years before any child abuse prevention laws appeared. Such a pattern continues in New York. Truly, it is heart wrenching to realize that there are churchmen in the state of New York, as elsewhere, who actually oppose the removal of statutes of limitations regarding the sexual abuse of our children. In the state of New York, leaders of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Jewish denominations pulled out all the stops to influence legislators to support their opinion that sexual predators and abusers should not be held accountable, and in particular instances, even threatening legislators belonging to their own denominations. Methinks a federal investigation of conspiracy and collusion is warranted in this matter. Ah, where is the Lord Jesus Christ when putting in an appearance would have really helped? This kind of wheeling and dealing by any religious entity should be unacceptable to all of us who are concerned with the trafficking of individuals for sexual exploitation, because, make no mistake about it, the sexual abuse of children in religious denominations, sects and cults are part and parcel of the wider epidemic and pandemic of trafficking. It is particularly disheartening in light of the fact that the Roman Catholic Church, the Holy See, was one of the earliest signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child while seemingly incapable of grasping the fact that "grooming" a child by buying ice cream cones, may actually fall into the category of "trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation." Is this another example of a “Do as I say, not as I do,” mentality? “Window” legislation, as it relates to civil statutes, is the single most important factor in holding sexual predators and their enabling individuals or institutions accountable. New York’s Markey/Duane bill is rather modest when compared to Delaware’s 2007 Child Victims Law which went from an egregious two year statute of limitation to none going forward and includes a two year civil window for previously time barred cases of childhood sexual abuse - by anyone - and which remains open until July 09, 2009. I was privileged to testify before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees in support of Delaware’s child abuse legislation. So imperious are religious denominations’ disregard of children in the state of New York, that the statute of limitations now protects known sexual abusers of children from criminal prosecution forever once short statutes of limitation expire. Now it will only continue. I cannot comprehend the hubris that would occasion the type of behavior that has been so graphically delineated in a number of investigations in the U.S. including the 2002 Suffolk County, NY Grand Jury Report which detailed the clergy sex abuse of children in the Diocese of Rockville Centre. Yet churchmen still question the rightfulness of extending the statute of limitations. Why, one wonders, did dioceses in the state of New York not distribute postcards for the members of the Catholic community to sign and send to their legislators in Albany to support the complete removal of statutes of limitations going forward in regard to the sexual abuse of children, criminally and civilly? This is not a matter belonging to what the Catholic Church calls the “deposit of faith,” and, leaving aside the matter of mortal sin for the moment, the sexual abuse of children is a matter of criminal behavior. Can there be any question about the intrinsic evil of the sexual abuse of children or of the fact that such individuals are intrinsically disordered? Certainly not! Church officials who claim that their dioceses, parishes, churches or programs will go bankrupt have produced no data to support such inflammatory statements and in states like California and Delaware there has been not the slightest possibility of that happening. In fact, in addition to settling a $ 660 million dollar lawsuit a few years ago, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, California built and paid for a new cathedral that any city in the world would be proud to showcase. It is important to remember that window legislation is not “anti” any particular group; it is pro-child. It forces records, if they exist and have not been destroyed, to be made available in a court of justice and hopefully into the public venue as well. Moreover, there should be no accommodation in law giving more protection to individuals who have been accused of the sexual abuse of children than to the victims themselves. I think the New York Assembly lost an exceptional opportunity this time around to make those who violate and abuse New York's children, along with those who have done so in the past, accountable. They should have followed Delaware's lead in this growing civil rights movement for children but they did not. The children are the losers, again. Sister Maureen Paul Turlish Victims’ Advocate New Castle, Delaware maureenpaulturlish@yahoo.com __________________________________________
Sister Maureen is a Delaware educator and a victims’ advocate who testified before the Delaware Senate and House Judiciary Committees in support of Delaware’s 2007 Child Victims Law.
She can be reached at: maureenpaulturlish@yahoo.com
You will never be able to convince any religious leaders to go along with your bill, to hold any of them, plus the Vatican, accountabile. Get the people who have been abused to start rising up in the streets in front of these so called churches,[all over the world] along with those who hold them dear. Let the parishioners that still go to this evil place know you won't allow them to get away with it any more.
I have never been sexually abused by a Roman Catholic clergy but I surely have been Mentally Abused, my whole Roman Catholic life, by a bunch of brainwashing evil MEN who only want you to Pay, Pray? and OBEY! Anyone who stays in it, is supporting the evil that is allowed to continue, century afer century. St. Paul in the middle of the 1st century, said there would be "Anathema" and that prediction is true, right up to this very moment. Get Smart and Realize Exactly What it is YOU have been allowing by your selfishness to stay in this evil place.
The battle for the SOL bill is not over. We all have just begun. A group of us are forming a Survivors Union in hopes of bringing national attention to the plight of adult survivors and in hopes of better protecting our youth. Our first goal is to have a rally in DC. If anyone is interested in joining forces send an e-mail to vickipolin@gmail.com.
Turlish's whirl of gibberish is full of misstatements and tricks. Just one: The Los Angeles cathedral was finished in mid 2002. But the settlement was sometime around five or six years later. Turlish implies that both happened very close to each other. The record indicates otherwise. Makes you wonder what other distortions lurk in her screed...?
Rep. Lopez exposed the first bill for what it was- more fleecing of religions. Public institutions must be included in the legislation or it's totally unfair.
Actually, the cathedral in Los Angeles was started in 1997, so it is more like a decade between it and the church sex abuse settlement. It appears that the two had nothing to do with one another.
Please do not respond to Vicki Polin's post. She is a tireless self-promoter appearing on every possible abuse blog and forum for her own peculiar psychological reasons which have more to do with tearing down Jewish institutions than to achieve relief or justice for victims.
But why are public schools not included? I think this helped scuttle this bill major way.