Sex Abuse Suits Flood NY Courts Under Child Victims Act

NEW YORK — Survivors of childhood sexual abuse flooded New York's courts with lawsuits Wednesday under a new state law giving them a year to pursue long-delayed justice.

Lawyers expect to bring hundreds of lawsuits against alleged sexual abusers and institutions that protected them under the Child Victims Act, the law Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed in February giving abuse victims more time to hold perpetrators accountable.

The law opens a one-year window starting Wednesday for survivors to bring old legal claims that had been precluded by statutes of limitations or notice of claim requirements.

"Today is the day of reckoning," said Jeffrey Herman, an attorney whose eponymous law firm filed dozens of sex-abuse lawsuits around the state Wednesday. "Today is a day of justice for survivors."

Some 427 cases, including 169 in New York City, were filed across the state under the Child Victims Act on Wednesday, according to the Office of Court Administration.

Two firms, Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala and the Marsh Law Firm, said they filed the first-ever suits under the law just after midnight.

Those were among 17 suits the firms had brought across the state on behalf of 140 abuse survivors as of Wednesday afternoon, said attorney Jason Amala of Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala. The cases include 11 against New York's Catholic dioceses, five against the Boy Scouts of America and one against Rockefeller University, Amala said.

The law is "in line with the greater awareness not just of the danger of child sex abuse, but this culture now that is much more encouraging of people to come forward and realize that they’re not alone," he said.

Survivors represented in the first cases filed in Manhattan Supreme Court include men who were abused as children by a Catholic missioner in The Bronx, the leader of a Harlem Boy Scout troop and Reginald Archibald, a notorious doctor at the Upper East Side's Rockefeller University, according to a press release.

A law firm's extensive investigation found that Rockefeller officials knew of Archibald's alleged abuse but did not take action against him. He worked at the university as a professor and senior physician from 1948 to 1980.

"Rockefeller University is committed to acting responsibly and working constructively with former patients of Dr. Archibald," the university said in a statement Wednesday. "We profoundly apologize to his patients who experienced pain and suffering as a result of his reprehensible conduct."

Another complaint was brought against the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, the pedophile financier who recently died by apparent suicide while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.

Jennifer Araoz accused Epstein of raping her in his Upper East Side mansion when she was a teenager. The lawsuit also aims to hold accountable his accomplices who were on his payroll and recruited his victims, Araoz said in an op-ed in The New York Times.

"I’m angry he won’t have to personally answer to me in the court of law. But my quest for justice is just getting started," she wrote.

The survivors bringing cases range widely in age — Herman said he has clients in their 20s and others as old as 90 who were abused as children.

While the lawsuits target a range of institutions, as many as 65 percent of the victims coming forward were abused in the Catholic Church, Herman said.

Herman's lawsuits seek monetary damages for the survivors, he said. Lawyers say the volume of cases should not hinder the speed at which they proceed, as the court system has prepared for the influx and assigned judges to handle them.

The courts "have done a fantastic job anticipating this and (they) really seem to be working together to allow victims to move their cases forward as expeditiously as possible," Herman said at a news conference outside the Manhattan Supreme Court building. "I expect that cases will be resolved within a year or two."

Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn seemed to express concern about the volume of claims last week in an article addressed to parishoners.

The diocese does not know how many lawsuits it will face during the yearlong window or whether it "we will have to declare bankruptcy as a result," he wrote. But the bishop apologized Wednesday for the abuse perpetrated in his jurisdiction.

"Sexual abuse is a heinous crime, and victim-survivors now have a new avenue to seek redress through the Child Victims Act," DiMarzio said in a statement. "For anyone abused by a priest, employee or volunteer — I am sorry that a member of our church who you trusted became the source of pain and anguish."

The Child Victims Act marked a significant update to state laws that were regarded among the worst in the nation for childhood abuse survivors.

In addition to opening the yearlong "look-back" window, it raises the maximum age at which survivors can bring civil cases related to their abuse to 55. It also allows criminal charges to be brought for felony sex offenses until the victim is 28 years old and allow charges for misdemeanor sex offenses to be brought until the victim is 25.

"(T)he courthouse doors have opened," state Sen. Brad Hoylman, a Manhattan Democrat who sponsored the law, said in a statement. "We are finally telling survivors: the State of New York and the full force of its law is behind you, and you will not be turned away."

The Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America were reportedly among the powerful institutions that initially opposed the Child Victims Act.

The Boy Scouts organization said it has concerns about imposing "retroactive liability" on entities that didn't have knowledge of specific misconduct, though it supports reforming criminal and civil statutes of limitations.

"First and foremost, we care deeply about all victims of abuse and sincerely apologize to anyone who was harmed during their time in Scouting," the Boy Scouts of America said in a statement. "We are outraged that there have been times when individuals took advantage of our programs to abuse innocent children."

But Amala said he hopes the new law will spark a "paradigm shift" in which institutions will own up to abuse that happened on their watch instead of lawyers digging it up. And Catholic organizations won't shut down if they do have to declare bankruptcy, he said.

"I think it’ll be healing for the church and for others, because these cases will give them an opportunity to one way or the other, explain what happened and how it happened," Amala said. "And that may be painful to do, but in the long run, that’s the only way you’re gonna get some level of closure where these folks can move on."