Old wounds ripped open
Abuse vics reel after Pa. report
The night after Pennsylvania authorities released a report on clergy sex abuse last month, Kathryn Robb says her abuser crept into her dreams.
Robb, 58, has accused her eldest brother, George, of sexually abusing her in their family’s Long Island homes for years beginning when she was about 9 years old.
“It was the first time I had a dream about him in a long time,” she told the Daily News. “I dreamed he came into my house and I said, ‘You can’t be here.’ He just walked in and I couldn’t get him to leave,” she recalled.
George, a former Wall Street mogul once married to supermodel Veronica Webb, did not return requests for comment from The News.
Robb’s nightmare reflects the reality for far too many sex abuse victims.
Recent reports about clergy members accused of committing heinous acts against children have ripped open old wounds for survivors, whose predators within and outside the church won’t be prosecuted, and who might never see justice because statutes of limitations have expired.
The Pennsylvania Grand Jury report identifies more than 300 priests accused of sexually abusing at least 1,000 victims. Attorneys general of Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York and New Jersey have since announced investigations into clergy sex abuse.
Robb came forward when she was in her late 40s, about 25 years after her statute of limitations expired.
For more than a decade, she has fought tirelessly to eliminate the civil and criminal statute of limitations for victims of child sex abuse.
“I always come back to the same question: Why do we have laws that reward sexual predators for the silence and shame they cause in their victims? It’s absolutely backward,” she said.
This sentiment is common among victims who have for struggled to come to terms with abuse they endured as kids. As adults they often see little recourse.
“It feels like being laid open like a gutted fish in front of the national media and then locally having to deal with that in every facet of my life,” said Justin Conway, who says he was sexually abused by his karate coach, Warren Craig Peeples, as a young teenager.
Conway, 40, along with six other men, have accused Peeples of abusing them at Pak’s Karate in Kingsland, Ga. The abuse began in 1990, when he was 13 and lasted about three years, he said.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation in 2014 determined there was sufficient evidence to prosecute Peeples for acts involving multiple victims. But the state, hamstrung by the statute of limitations, was barred from proceeding.
“You summon the courage to come forward and do the right thing to protect others, and nothing happens. I think that’s what victims really struggle with right now,” Conway (above) said.
Peeples, who continues to run the studio where the alleged abuse took place, denies the allegations.
“He has severe problems,” Peeples said of Conway when contacted Friday.
The release of the grand jury report in Pennsylvania is the first of many steps in an arduous journey to justice for countless survivors of childhood sexual abuse by priests, coaches, family members and other predators.
But in naming predators who cannot be prosecuted, the report highlights that in many cases, avenues of justice simply don’t exist.
Advocates are working to eliminate criminal and civil statutes of limitations for victims of child sex abuse and give survivors whose SOLs have expired a “lookback window” that suspends the statute of limitations.
Still, there is value in naming alleged predators, and survivors say they are glad that they’ve come forward, even if doing so has adversely affected their lives.
“It ended my marriage and ruined my life,” Conway said. “But I had no choice. I would do it one thousand times over.”