Hoylman and Rosenthal Reintroduce Child Victims Act With Stronger Remedies for Justice

ALBANY- Senator Brad Hoylman (D/WF-Manhattan) and Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal (D/WF- Manhattan) announced today that the Child Victims Act (S.2440 /A.2683) had been re-introduced with even stronger pathways to justice.

Senator Hoylman said: "For years, survivors of child sexual abuse have looked to Albany for justice and for years, their pleas have gone unanswered. But it’s a new day and a new Democratic majority. Finally, survivors will have the opportunity to seek justice against their abusers and hold the institutions who harbor them accountable.

Passage of the Child Victims Act was blocked in the Senate for over a decade, denying survivors their rightful path to justice. The impasse ends here. Survivors have been through so much, and now New York will finally be there to stand with them.”

Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal said: “The gates to our courts and to justice will soon finally swing wide open to the survivors of child sexual abuse who have been silenced for so long. For the past 13 years, despite overwhelming support and repeated passage in the Assembly, the Child Victims Act has been stalled by powerful interests. Those days are now behind us, and it is survivors who find themselves with the keys to justice in hand.

The horrific sins of past abuse can never be absolved, but the passage of the Child Victims Act will deliver an opportunity for accountability and redress that survivors in New York have never before had. I look forward with incredible optimism and excitement to finally see the Child Victims Act pass both houses and become law.”  

The Child Victims Act would extend New York’s statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse and create a one-year lookback window within which survivors would be able to initiate claims against their abusers in cases where the statute of limitations has expired. Under the new legislation, survivors of child sexual abuse will be permitted to bring a civil lawsuit against their abuser or institutions that enabled or protected their abuser by the age of 55, up from the current age of 23. Additionally, those abused at a public institution will no longer be required to file a notice of claim as a condition to filing a lawsuit.

The legislation previously passed the Assembly by wide margins in 2017 and 2018, but has stalled in the State Senate.

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