TIME FOR JUSTICE IS NEAR
Year window to sue sexual predators starts Weds. They’re ‘finally going to pay’
Nearly three decades later, Larry Taylor can’t forget the squeak of Father Dan Calabrese’s shoes in the hallway or the knot in his 6-yearold stomach.
Taylor was a first-grade student when the since-defrocked priest would come take him from class in the middle of the school day, leading the youngster to an empty room down a hallway linking the school and the church at Blessed Sacrament parish on Staten Island.
“It happened often enough that I knew what would be coming,” recalled the 35-yearold Staten Island emergency medical technician. “Those nice shiny black shoes. He was, ‘You know, this is OK. You know you can trust me.’ And eventually he exposed himself, and then it was me having to touch him.
“And it came to a point where he started to touch me.”
Starting at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, Taylor and hundreds of other accusers get their long-awaited day in court as New York State’s one-year window finally opens to file suits against alleged sexual predators — with a tsunami of court papers expected from Buffalo to Brooklyn as the victims turn into plaintiffs.
“I don’t think I’ve ever worked as many hours in a row,” said Jennifer Freeman, senior counsel at the New York-based Marsh Law Firm. “It’s been absolutely nonstop. I’m working two computer screens every minute.”
The Child Victims Act was signed by Gov. Cuomo on Feb. 14, ending a long and difficult battle to win approval from the state Legislature.
“It’s nice to know that people are finally going to pay for what they’ve done,” said Taylor, with the spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral rising behind him in a 20th-floor Midtown conference room. “I’ve been silent so long. It’s a scary situation. It’s a hard situation.”
According to the group BishopAccountability.org, the Catholic Church and its insurers paid out close to $4 billion in settlements across the past four decades. But attorneys say many other organizations are likely to face a flurry of lawsuits as well, including the Boy Scouts, private schools and other religious groups.
Two alleged victims plan a Monday news conference in Manhattan to announce legal action against the Jehovah’s Witnesses, with their attorney alleging a decades-old history of sexual abuse by the organization. Freeman said her firm is bringing more than 200 cases against Rockefeller University Hospital, where Dr. Reginald Archibald was accused of sexually abusing scores of his young patients.
“This is historic,” said Freeman. “New York has gone from one of the worst places to be a sexual abuse survivor to one of the best.”
Mark Taylor, now 53, of the Bronx, accused his Stevenson High School principal of sexually abusing him for three years in the 1980s — and even used a hidden camera in 2000 to capture Irwin Goldberg confessing to the abuse, according to court documents. But the New York statute of limitations allowed the principal to dodge a lawsuit and
criminal charges on the incidents.
Goldberg was never prosecuted, never fired by the city, and retired in 2001 after his videotaped admissions.
“Finally justice is being served,” said Taylor. “It feels great. Excellent. What do I hope to get out of it? The satisfaction that I’m not crazy.”
Lawyer Adam Slater represents Larry Taylor and some 200 other abuse victims around New York State. He no longer looks at the world in the same way after listening to client after client tell their sordid tales of abusive adults preying on naive victims.
“The depth of what went on in the church is appalling, and so is the depth of the coverup,” said Slater. “I wouldn’t have believed it if you told me this went on. I look at humanity a little differently now.”
In a familiar tale, Taylor’s alleged attacker was assigned to three different parishes in four years, leaving a trail of abuse charges. In 1989, while at a parish in Congers, Rockland County, the priest was allegedly caught drinking beer with teenage boys as they watched X-rated movies. And after leaving Staten Island, he pleaded guilty in 1992 to sodomizing a teenager after getting the boy drunk in the rectory of an upstate Poughkeepsie rectory.
He was sentenced to 90 days in jail in the last incident and removed from the priesthood in 2005.
“The archdiocese has been preparing for the window ..., and we continue to offer victim-survivors access to the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program for those who may choose to pursue that path,” said Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York.
According to Freeman, 96% of the past suits filed against the church in New York State were resolved with settlements rather than trials. But it’s unclear what will happen now given the expected flood of legal action against a variety of organizations.
Larry Taylor only revealed his story in recent years, after nearly dying and then getting a new lease on life with a May 2017 heart transplant.
He’s focused more on getting out a message than collecting any money.
“I want my saying something to help at least one person — that’s what I care about,” he said. “You can get over it. You need to get it off your shoulders and live a life you deserve to live, not with the regrets that you have.”