Will a remedy bill for sex-abuse cases stall in the Assembly again?

State lawmakers have four days to fix a technicality that threatens thousands of sexual abuse survivors’ chance at justice. The state Senate has already acted, but time is running out for the measure to see a vote in the Assembly.

The 2019 Child Victim’s Act permitted survivors of childhood sexual abuse to file civil cases against their abusers for a limited time, regardless of how much time had passed since the crime took place. Lawmakers opened a similar lookback window through the Adult Survivors Act in 2022 for abuse that occurred after age 18. The window to sue has closed for both laws, but nearly 2,000 cases remain ongoing. 

Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal carries a bill that would make over 1,800 cases – about 300 filed under the Child Victims Act and close to 1,500 Adult Survivors Act cases – more likely to advance in court, rather than be tossed out on minor factual technicalities with little bearing on merits of the lawsuit.

“Let’s say someone’s in prison – they don’t know what day it is and what time it is and where, if a guard or whomever sexually attacks them,” Rosenthal told City & State in an interview. “They don’t know the title of the person who attacks them, so these heavy pleading requirements that they can’t possibly meet makes access to justice impossible for that set of people.”

Lawmakers have an exceedingly abbreviated window to get nonbudget bills across the finish line as Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the latest state budget in 16 years into law this week.

Michael Whyland, a spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, said Friday that conversations about the bill are taking place ahead of the end of the legislative session on June 4. Earlier this month, the speaker told reporters in Albany it wasn’t clear if the measure was on Assembly Democrats’ priority list.

Advocates are pushing for the legislative remedy after the state Court of Appeals last year dismissed a case filed under the Child Victims Act for lacking sufficient information to bring the claim against the state. Under current law, someone needs to know the exact time, date, location and damages of their abuse in order to bring a case. Rosenthal said requiring survivors to recall such a specific, high level of detail is unfair and unrealistic, and has caused other cases against the state to get dismissed.

“This is something I’m very worried about because there are more than 1,800 survivors who need us to fix this issue, and that’s why we’re trying really hard to do this,” she said. 

Nikiea Hawkins is one such survivor. She was incarcerated at Albion Correctional Facility near Rochester from 2015 to 2019. While there, Hawkins said she was raped by a correctional sergeant and suffered a miscarriage. She filed a case under the Adult Survivors Act. Although the  same officer she accused has been named in at least three other lawsuits, the case remains in purgatory. Hawkins is advocating for the legislative fix, which she said will allow her to get the justice she deserves.

“As a result of that abuse, I cannot have children,” Hawkins said in a statement. “The Adult Survivors Act has given me, and so many other women, the ability to seek justice for what was done to us. The idea that our cases could be dismissed based on an inability to accurately recall some small detail about the abuse we suffered means that we will be denied the justice we were promised.”

The bill cleared the state Senate earlier this month, as well as last session, nearly unanimously. It’s unclear if it will stall in the Assembly for the second year in a row, and push the fight off for another year that the cases don’t have. 

Rosenthal said she has discussed the bill with several members of the speaker’s staff, and he’s aware of the pressure to bring the measure to the floor in the four remaining session days. “I’m talking to the relevant people right now, and hopefully, we’ll be successful,” she said. “Because nobody wants to deny them their opportunity. And they’re being denied right now.”

Hawkins said she’s thankful to state senators for passing the bill, adding on behalf of all survivors: “I hope it becomes law.”