The time has come to remove all statutes of limitation regarding the sexual abuse of children in New York. It is society's gravest responsibility to both protect the most vulnerable among us while providing an avenue toward justice for those adults who were violated as children.
Why religious denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church, the state Catholic Conference and the Orthodox Jewish community, continue to oppose such needed legislation is truly beyond the pale.
However, no religious organization, church, temple or mosque can or should be trusted to police its own. It is not their purview.
Moreover, the promised accountability and transparency for crimes against children in the present and future does not absolve anyone from accountability and transparency for the crimes of the past or facilitation or complicity in such acts.
All statutes of limitation should be removed and a civil window of two years should be opened for those who have been denied their right to justice in the past.
Assemblywoman Margaret M. Markey's proposed legislation, the Child Victims Act, should be supported by all those of goodwill.
Senate Bill 29, became the 2007 Child Victims Law in Delaware, removing all statutes of limitation while including a two-year civil window for bringing forward previously time-barred cases.
If it could be done in Delaware, surely it can be done in New York.
Sister Maureen Paul Turlish
Advocate for Victim/Survivors & Legislative Reform, New Castle, Del.