Hundreds of New Child Sex Abuse Cases Are Flooding New York’s Courts

Survivors are suing the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, and Jeffrey Epstein’s estate.

header image of children praying

ChiccoDodiFC/Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

When 52-year-old Michael Whalen stood up in front of the St. Louis Roman Catholic Church in downtown Buffalo, New York, in February 2018, to tell his story of being sexually abused by a priest as a teenager, it set off a Spotlight-style chain reaction. The accused priest, the Rev. Norbert F. Orsolits, told a news reporter who knocked on the door of his cottage that he had abused “probably dozens” of boys. Within weeks, the local Catholic bishop released a list of 42 clergy members from the Diocese of Buffalo who had been accused of abuse. Local journalists later identified 85. A federal grand jury reportedly started investigating a potential cover-up in the churches of western upstate New York.

But Whalen, who has spoken publicly about how the abuse had caused him to have problems with drugs, alcohol, and family relationships, could not sue the church for damages. New York state’s statute of limitations for a civil lawsuit had already expired. The church offered him less than $50,000 in a private settlement.

That changed yesterday, as New York’s Child Victims Act (CVA) went into effect, opening a one-year “lookback window” for survivors of child abuse across the state to file lawsuits against individuals and institutions, even if the statute of limitations had previously expired.

A tsunami of lawsuits has already hit the state courts. On Wednesday alone, 439 CVA cases had been filed by 11:59 p.m., according to the New York State Unified Court System’s press office. At least 105 of those were against the Diocese of Buffalo, according to the Buffalo News. One involved the late accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. And one of them was Whalen’s. “Long time coming,” he said as his case was filed, turning to hug another survivor.

In addition to the lookback window, the law lengthens the criminal statute of limitations for child sexual abuse. Many of its other provisions apply only to survivors who had not yet turned 23 when it was signed on February 14: Those survivors have until their 25th birthdays to press misdemeanor criminal charges or their 28th birthdays to press felony charges. They also have until age 55 to file a civil lawsuit.

The idea of reopening statutes of limitations for child abuse survivors, who often wait decades to report their experiences, isn’t new. California, Minnesota, Delaware, and Hawaii have passed similar legislation, according to the Associated Press. California’s lookback window in 2003 produced more than 1,000 lawsuits, many against the Catholic Church. The Diocese of San Diego, faced with 140 lawsuits, filed for bankruptcy.

New York’s lookback bill was stuck for more than a decade in Albany, where Republicans in control of the state Senate, backed by the Catholic Church and the insurance industry, prevented it from coming to a vote. According to a report from law firms representing clergy-abuse survivors, the church spent nearly $3 million to fight the bill between 2011 and 2018. In the lead-up to the 2018 election, the Child Victims Act became a campaign issue in the fight for the state Senate, especially in heavily Catholic areas like Long Island, says state Sen. Brad Hoylman, who sponsored the bill this year. When Democrats took control of the Senate in January, the bill was finally permitted to come to a vote and passed unanimously

“There is a direct political correlation between issues like the Child Victims Act, mandatory clergy reporting, and Democratic control of the Senate,” said Hoylman, who is also sponsoring a bill that would lift the exemption for clergy members from reporting child abuse when they learn about it through a confession.

Many of the lawsuits filed yesterday take aim at Catholic dioceses across the state, but other organizations are also facing a reckoning. The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses is a target of multiple suits. New allegations against the Boy Scouts of America include stories of abuse dating back to the 1960s. Other lawsuits accuse former public school employees of molesting students.

And 32-year-old Jennifer Araoz filed a lawsuit against the estate of Jeffery Epstein and his longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, and three other Epstein employees, alleging that Epstein groomed her and raped her when she was 15 years old. “His money, influence and connections to important people made me want to hide and stay silent,” Araoz wrote in a New York Times op-ed published Wednesday. “For years I felt crushed by the power imbalance between Epstein, with his enablers, and me. The Child Victims Act finally offers a counterweight.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate