Face of Nation : Hundreds, possibly thousands of people who say they were molested as children in New York state are expected to go to court this week to sue their alleged abusers and the institutions they say failed them, including the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, public schools and hospitals. It’s all because of a landmark state law passed this year that creates a one-year window allowing people to file civil lawsuits that had previously been barred by the state’s statute of limitations, one of the nation’s most restrictive, that had prevented many victims from seeking justice for decades-old abuse.
Many won’t even wait a day. Michael Schall, 64, who says his scoutmaster in the Buffalo suburbs molested him for two years beginning in 1968, will be among those filing lawsuits early Wednesday morning. It’s not about money, Schall said, it’s about standing up for the “sweet, naive” kid he once was, who had nowhere to turn. “This is my chance to say: this happened to me,” said Schall, who now lives in Portland, Oregon.
“It’s affected me in so many different ways in my life, in who I am. This seems to free. It’s like I’m bringing something to light that’s been held in the darkness for so long.” Wednesday could begin a year of financial reckoning for many large institutionsthat care for children.
A similar law passed in 2002 in California resulted in Catholic dioceses there paying USD 1.2 billion in legal settlements. A compensation fund for sex abuse victims set up by the New York Archdiocese in 2016 has paid out USD 65 million to 323 victims, the archdiocese says.
Those victims have waived their right to file lawsuits. The archdiocese is also suing more than two dozen insurance companies in an effort to compel them to cover abuse claims, anticipating that insurers won’t pay the numerous claims filed during the litigation window.
“We don’t know exactly what to expect when the window opens,” said Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, which is the nation’s second-largest after Los Angeles. The Boy Scouts of America said in a statement that it supports allowing victims to sue individual abusers and organisations even if the statute of limitations had expired — but only if the organisation concealed or withheld evidence of the abuse.
Major institutions such as the Catholic Church argued against it, warning that it could cause catastrophic financial harm to any organisation that cares for children. The church dropped its opposition to the bill this year, after Democrats won control of the state Senate from Republican lawmakers who had been blocking the bill from receiving a vote.
The new law can be confusing, since it treats recent abuse cases differently than ones that had been barred under the statute of limitations, according to Michael Polenberg, of Safe Horizon, a group that advocates for abuse victims and that pushed for the legislation. He said essentially, abuse victims who were under 23 when the act became law in February now have until they turn 55 to sue or seek charges.
Sometimes victims say they didn’t think they’d be believed if they accused their priest, teacher, scoutmaster or another respected adult. Sometimes they say they felt some responsibility for the abuse, even though they were children at the time.
Others say the shame, embarrassment and fear were simply too much to overcome. “Every time a survivor comes forward, there’s another survivor who finds the strength,” said Brian Toale, 66, who says he was molested by an employee at a Catholic high school he attended on Long Island. Toale, who now lives in Manhattan, was one of the leaders in the fight to pass the Child Victims Act. The Boy Scouts of America did not return a message seeking comment on Schall’s allegations.
