Article Title
Cuomo says Child Victims Act will be in his budget plan; lawmakers say they may act on it sooner
Link to Article: https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-pol-child-victims-act-cuomo-hoylman-rosenthal-20190111-story.html
Source: New York Daily News
Author(s): Kenneth Lovett
Date: January 11, 2019
Synopsis of Article
Gov. Cuomo announced Friday he will for the second year in a row include language to create the Child Victims Act in the state budget he will propose on Tuesday.
But unlike last year, the Republicans are no longer in control of the Senate to block the measure and the Democrats in each chamber have made the issue a top priority.
“There has been a degradation of justice for childhood sexual assault survivors who have suffered for decades by the authority figures they trusted most,” Cuomo said. “That ends this year with the enactment of the Child Victims Act to provide survivors with a long-overdue path to justice.”
Legislative bill sponsors, including in the Assembly, which passed similar bills the past two years, say it could be taken up by the Legislature even before the budget is finalized in the spring.
The governor’s bill, which hues closely to what the legislative Democrats have pushed, would give child sex abuse victims up to their 50th birthday to bring a civil lawsuit while the statute of limitation to bring a felony case would increase to a person’s 28th birthday, up from the current 23.
The bill would also create create a one-year window to revive old cases that are time-barred under current law, something that was vehemently opposed by the Senate Republicans, the Catholic Church, Orthodox Jewish groups, the Boy Scouts of America and insurance companies.