New York will open legal window to report prescribed sexual crimes

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The Governor of New York, Democrat Kathy Hochul, signed the this Tuesday a law that will open There is a one-year legal window to report adult sexual abuse in that state, regardless of when it occurred.

The legal window will open. within six months and will involve the temporary suspension of the civil statute of limitations of sexual crimes, that is to say, that it will allow report violations and other aggressions -which usually prescribe in about five yearss- suffered by people over 18 years of age.

The governor the “genesis of the Me Too movement” and thanked to the “people who finally spoke up about their experiences and held powerful people to account” in 2017, overcoming their traumas, shame, fear and other barriers.

“There are many reasons that can lead someone to take years, literally decades, in telling the truth about what has happened to them and all these reasons are legitimate”, added politics.

Hochul recognized The successes but also the limits of another similar law, approved before the pandemic, which allowed He told child victims of sexual abuse to file complaints many years later, pointing out that he stopped It was to a lot of people.

In 2019, the Child Victims Act opened up the law. A 12-month legal window in which victims of childhood sexual abuse could sue their rapists regardless of the date the crime occurred.

That period of time grace provoked an avalanche of lawsuits against organizations such as the Catholic Church, which has had to pay many hefty fees, and against people such as Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide after committing suicide. in prison awaiting trial for child abuse.

Furthermore, that law The statute of limitations for adults to file civil complaints in certain sex crimes is twenty years old, but it only applies to new cases, not retroactively.