By Carina Nixon, September 25, 2024, Senior Staff Attorney at CHILD USA. Prior to CHILD USA, Carina worked as an Attorney-Advisor for the Small Business Administration’s Office of Disaster Assistance, where she helped small business owners recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, she worked as an Attorney-Advisor in the General Counsel’s Office of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, D.C. As a mother, she is passionate about ensuring every child is afforded the legal protections and human rights they deserve.
CHILD USA’s CVA Report Affirms Trauma Has No Time Limit
CHILD USA’s recent report, NY Child Victims Act: Research Findings on the Victims Who Filed (Report), analyzes critical data regarding 44 child sexual abuse survivors who filed their claims pursuant to the most successful child sexual abuse revival window legislation enacted in our nation to date: New York’s Child Victims Act (CVA). The CVA’s revival window provided these survivors a second chance to seek justice for claims that were barred by New York’s previous legal deadline, or statute of limitation (SOL).[1]
Prior to 2019, New York required its survivors of child sexual abuse to bring a claim against their abusers before they reached age 23, or within 5 years after the conclusion of a criminal case against the abuser. The sheer number of survivors who filed claims during the window—10,857—reiterates that New York’s prior SOL, and the many like it in other states throughout the nation, are far too short when accounting for the unique ways child sexual abuse and its attendant trauma impact the time it takes for survivors to disclose their abuse. [2] In fact, the 44 survivors surveyed in the Report needed an average of 20 years after first telling someone about their abuse to decide to take legal action on their claims. This is 20 years in addition to the decades many survivors need before they can initially disclose their abuse to a trusted confidant. Insights like this are crucial to shaping legal arguments and crafting trauma-informed legislation that best serve survivors and prevent future abuse.
There is only one way to restore justice to adult victims of child sex abuse whose civil and criminal SOLs have expired, and that is to revive their civil claims. Revival laws honor and empower the survivors of child sex abuse who face locked courthouse doors due to unfairly short SOLs. New York’s CVA revival window prompted 10,857 cases to be filed against alleged child sex abusers. 10,857; a number significant due to its size that is rendered powerful by the survivors standing behind it. At least 10,857 survivors of childhood sexual abuse bravely stepped forward to hold their alleged abusers accountable, making New York a safer place for children as a result. It is the highest number of cases filed during any revival window in the nation thus far.
CHILD USA worked closely with New York Senator Brad Holyman and Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, who sponsored the Child Victims Act. We are proud that our CEO, Marci Hamilton, worked with these esteemed lawmakers from day one to craft this groundbreaking legislation. The CVA’s 1-year revival window was signed into law in 2019, with a second set of bills passed in 2020 to extend the revival window for an additional year in the face of COVID-19 court closures. Then, in 2022, New York passed the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act (VGMVPA), which opened a two-year revival window for claims of gender-motivated violence, including child sexual abuse offenses, that occurred in New York City. The VGMVPA window is currently open until March 1, 2025. If you are interested in learning more about the VGMVPA or filing a claim during the window, you can find helpful resources here.
CHILD USA recognizes that its work is not done upon bill passage, however. When the CVA was subject to numerous attacks in court by perpetrators and institutions attempting to avoid accountability, CHILD USA defended the revival window through its amicus advocacy practice, as it does in many other states.[3] Importantly, efforts to better understand survivors are vital for drafting even more effective child sexual abuse legislation in the future. For instance, CHILD USA’s Report revealed that the majority of survivors it sampled first told someone about their abuse at age 34, but did not file a lawsuit until age 56, on average. Thus, the age of first disclosure does not always equate with, and may be decades earlier than, the age survivors are ready to file a lawsuit.
This data augments the strong evidence that it is high time lawmakers take a trauma-informed approach when drafting child sexual abuse legislation. This means understanding that all survivors process their trauma in different ways and at different speeds, and that there is no correct pace for recovering from child sexual abuse. As the Report demonstrates, while there may be decades between when the abuse first occurs and when a survivor first tells a trusted family member or friend about it, there are often additional decades between that initial disclosure and when the survivor is ready to take legal action. It’s critical for lawmakers to acknowledge that every survivor deserves to hold their abuser accountable, regardless of how long it takes them to decide to pursue justice. To provide this opportunity, child sexual abuse laws must make room for each survivor’s unique healing process timeline, which is only made possible through SOL elimination and the enactment of revival windows.
Nevertheless, only about 22 states and 3 U.S. territories have successfully enacted revival windows. Importantly, these revival windows are not all equally effective. Many states have severely undermined the success of their windows by restricting them to a short timeframe or limiting the possible causes of action that survivors can bring. CHILD USA created this Window Report Card to clearly illustrate how these differences affect a window’s potential to bring justice to all child sex abuse survivors.
The Window Report Card highlights that survivors in the states that don’t make an “A” grade—which is nearly every single one—need SOL reform to bring their abusers to justice. CHILD USA encourages you to help us ensure every state achieves top marks. If you are a survivor of sexual abuse, check out CHILD USA’s and SNAP’s Survivor Tool Kits to explore your rights. If you are interested in advocating for better laws, keep an eye on CHILD USA’s SOL Tracker to see if there is any legislation pending in your state. If there is, reach out to your local congressperson to support the proposed bill. Every survivor’s voice matters and every ally’s support helps.
[1] For an in-depth explanation of “statutes of limitation” and “revival legislation,” see my prior blog post here.
[2] CHILD USA published its Child Sex Abuse Statutes of Limitation Treatise as a comprehensive guide to the CSA SOL in every U.S. jurisdiction, including federal, state, and U.S. territories. It details and compares the SOL in each state from 2002 to today, clearly illustrating that most state SOLs still need to improve access to justice for survivors. You can find it here.