Roman Catholic and Orthodox Jewish officials in New York are mounting an intense lobbying effort to block a bill before the State Legislature that would temporarily lift the statute of limitations for lawsuits alleging the sexual abuse of children.
the bill is now widely supported by the new Democratic majority in that chamber, and for the first time is given a good chance of passing.
Marci A. Hamilton, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at
Yeshiva University who has argued that states should remove all statutes of limitation on child sex abuse claims, said the principle is comparable to the way industrial pollution is treated under the law.
He said that opponents’ claims of unfairness were not compelling, and that warnings of bankruptcy for religious institutions, which he dismissed as unlikely, missed the point.
“It’s not about money,” he said. “It’s about giving people the right to seek justice.”
clipped from: www.nytimes.com