This Saturday, August 14, New York State will close the window of opportunity for filing civil lawsuits in past statutory sexual assault and harassment cases. This is reported by Voice of America (the Russian-language version has the status of a foreign media agent in Russia ).
The state lifted the statute of limitations for the consideration of claims for two years. Residents could sue churches, hospitals, schools, camps, scout groups and other institutions that they believed were responsible for crimes against the person, harboring pedophiles, and child abuse.
During this time, the courts received more than nine thousand complaints. They touched priests, teachers and ravaged four Roman Catholic dioceses. Some citizens got the chance to bring their longtime offenders to justice.
For example, 74-year-old Carole DuPre filed a lawsuit against the Catholic diocese in Rochester, claiming that she was molested by a priest in the early 1960s when she was a teenager. “Ironically, it was a very healing experience for me on a personal level,” the woman explained.
As the portal emphasizes, the authorities do not plan to extend such a “window of opportunity”, and citizens will lose the right to go to court in cases with an expired statute of limitations.
In March in France, the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) counted about 10 thousand cases of child abuse. Thousands of minors have been the victims of pedophile priests since 1950. The commission took into account 6.5 thousand people who agreed to testify, as well as those who refused to talk about what happened, and those who have already died.
