For many years, Safe Horizon has helped lead a coalition of survivors, advocates, organizations, law enforcement, and legislators from around the state to better align our laws with the experiences of childhood sexual abuse survivors. Known as the Child Victims Act (CVA), this legislation was created to enact meaningful and long-overdue statute of limitation reform.
In New York State, statute of limitation laws required most survivors of childhood sexual abuse to either file criminal charges or seek civil damages by the relatively young age of 23.
Thanks to our coalition of advocates and partners, the Child Victims Act has finally passed in January 2019!
The Child Victims Act includes these three main components:
- A new statute of limitations that allows civil lawsuits in child sex abuse cases for survivors to file until their 55th birthday.
- A retrospective “window” of one year to allow victims over the age of 23 to be able to initiate a civil lawsuit.
- A new statute of limitations that allows criminal cases to be prosecuted until the survivor’s 28th birthday
Please join us and share this post to celebrate this hard-earned victory for survivors!
