CAN’T GO BACK

Catholic Diocese Sues to End Child Victims Act

After hundreds of lawsuits have bankrupted dioceses, a Long Island-based church filed a motion to challenge the constitutionality of the legislation.

A church in New York on Wednesday filed a motion to challenge the constitutionality of the state’s Child Victims Act, a piece of legislation that enabled child sexual-abuse survivors to seek justice over a one-year window despite long-expired statutes of limitations. More than 100 lawsuits were filed in just one day when the window opened in August, and some dioceses have had to declare bankruptcy. The motion by the Rockville Centre Catholic Diocese on Long Island cites a prior ruling from the New York Supreme Court in 2006, which determined that a plaintiff in that case could not sue over abuse outside of the crime’s statute of limitations. “This is absurd. There’s no constitutional right to a statute of limitations,” said Jennifer Freeman, of New York-based firm Marsh Law. “The Child Victims Act was put into place to help end the plague of child sex abuse in New York.”