After Child Victims Act headlines start to fade
Victims struggle to get through the lengthy, exhausting process Albany
The passage of New York’s Child Victims Act was front page news, and countless individual lawsuits have made headlines across the state as thousands of cases accuse churches, schools, Boy Scout troops and other institutions of abetting the sexual abuse of children in decades past.
What has been covered less is the nitty-gritty of the process — what it’s like for someone to bring a claim forward, what the process of securing a lawyer is like and what the legal timeline is for the deluge of cases.
The process is exhausting for people who must seek out a
lawyer and relay their worst memories in detail over and over. And it is promised to take many months, if not more than a year. The law was signed in 2019, but a lawyer whose firm handles hundreds of cases said the first wave of settlements likely won’t hit until at least four more months from now.
Abigail Barker, 27, filed a CVA case in August saying that a Sunday school teacher from her former Troy church abused her while babysitting when she was 5 years old.
“I finally have the legal avenues that I have wanted for so long to pursue this,” she said of the CVA. “I felt that I would regret it forever if I didn’t (file).”
She started looking for an attorney in January, saying that the process of finding a good one is like finding a therapist: “You really have to dig.”
Finding lawyers for CVA cases has been a struggle for many who want to bring cases forward against individuals or small organizations, as legal fees are expensive and there’s a much smaller possibility of a large payout at the end.
Nearly 5,000 lawsuits have been filed under New York’s Child Victims Act since it came into effect last August. The landmark law, which had been pushed by activists for years, was signed into law Feb. 14, 2019.
The law expanded the statute of limitations on childhood sexual abuse allegations, and it opened a “lookback window” where people could bring lawsuits against abusers or the institutions they were a part of in civil courts — no matter how long ago the alleged abuse occurred.
“Whenever you call a law firm to ask them if they want to take on your case, you have to tell them in explicit detail every horrible moment that happens to you,” she said. “After the 15th, 20th time, somewhere in there, you become a little robotic.”
“You don’t want to re-traumatize yourself every time you call an attorney,” she said.
It wasn’t until the Fourth of July weekend when Barker finally found a firm that would bring her case forward. Together, they put together a written complaint that was filed in court in August. She had done so much prep work before meeting with her lawyers — writing down her memories in detail, preparing records and timelines — that they said she was the most prepared client they’d ever had.
“I think I was running on maybe like 10 hours of sleep a whole week this entire summer,” she said. “Everything seemed a little bit more concrete and real when you put it on paper. … When you put it on paper and you read it back and it’s staring at you in very plain black-andwhite, it’s hard. It’s very hard.”
Cynthia Lefave, of Guilderland law firm Lafave Wein & Frament, handles 370 CVA cases in New York in partnership with a law firm based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, that specializes in abuse cases.
After filing a case, the lawyers of the accused parties respond, which can take months with extensions. From there, the case goes into “paper discovery” where both sides ask for records from the other to examine the facts, another months-long process. Then there’s depositions, where witnesses are brought in and questioned under oath by lawyers, followed by another round of paper discovery.
And COVID -19 has made the entire process messier, Lefave said.
“The secrets that they carry are heavy, very heavy, and very hard for them,” Lefave said of her clients. “It’s so much easier to do it face-to-face when you’re talking about hard subjects like this - the parts that have sat buried in their gut for all these years.”
There’s two basic ways cases will end. Mediation — where a settlement is hammered out between the two parties with the assistance of an unaffiliated lawyer — and a trial, Lefave said. Trials would need to be scheduled far in advance, and it’s unclear when courts will be fully open again. CVA cases won’t see trials for months into 2021.
But because such a large portion of CVA cases are against large institutions like the Catholic church and the Boy Scouts, LeFave said, it’s likely that many will be settled through mediation ahead of a trial, which has happened historically with such cases. Lefave said she expects the first such mediation settlements to come in the next four-tofive months, and she welcomes it.
“It gives our clients the opportunity to tell their story in the mediation, and sometimes that’s the most cathartic part of the whole experience: being able to tell their story,” she said.