The Adult Survivors Act, a bill that I introduced and, with a team of dedicated and fearless survivors, tirelessly worked to pass into law, has rightfully shifted the paradigm of how society views sexual violence in New York state. The ASA provides victims of sexual assault who were 18 years or older at the time of their abuse a one-year look-back period to file a lawsuit against their abuser and, if applicable, the institution that harbored them, no matter how long ago the crime occurred. Since the law went into effect last Thanksgiving, almost 3,000 cases have been filed.
The ASA is a tool that has prevented alleged sexual predators from being able to hide behind antiquated and sexist statutes to avoid the consequences of their unspeakable crimes. In New York state, under that very law, former President Donald Trump, music producer Sean “Diddy” Combs, former Columbia University OB-GYN Robert Hadden and coaches, prison guards and everyday people whose names we do not know have been accused of sexual violence years (if not decades) after the alleged offenses.
It is important that people who need to file suit against someone they say sexually abused them in the past do so now.
In May, Trump was found liable of sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s. Combs settled with the woman who accused him of rape. Hadden was sentenced to 20 years in prison in July for sexually abusing dozens of patients and was sued last month along with the university that employed him. “We owe it to the courageous survivors and the entire Columbia community to fully reckon with Hadden’s abuses,” Columbia University President Minouche Shafik and Irving Medical Center CEO Dr. Katrina Armstrong said in a statement this month. “Columbia failed these survivors, and for that we are deeply sorry.”
The law sunsets at the close of Thanksgiving Day, which means that it is important that people who need to file suit against someone they say sexually abused them in the past do so now.
Last Thursday, the singer Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, filed her lawsuit against Combs, with whom she had an on-and-off relationship, and who she says beat her, raped her and forced her to engage in sex acts with male prostitutes. “With the expiration of New York’s Adult Survivors Act fast approaching,” she said in a statement when the lawsuit was filed, “it became clear that this was an opportunity to speak up about the trauma I have experienced and that I will be recovering from for the rest of my life.”
The next day, Combs reached a settlement with her for an undisclosed amount of money. Ben Brafman, a lawyer for Combs, said Saturday that “Mr. Combs’ decision to settle the lawsuit does not in any way undermine his flat-out denial of the claims.”
For many, the ASA has represented not only a long-awaited path to justice, but it has also conveyed a very real and meaningful message to survivors across New York, and quite frankly, the entire nation: We see you, and we believe you. The ASA came on the heels of another law that I sponsored, the Child Victims Act (CVA), which instituted a two-year look-back period for adults who were sexually abused as children and had been time-barred from filing a claim.
The criticisms that I heard about the CVA were the same ones I heard about the ASA when I introduced such legislation in 2019. Some argued that by changing the law, we would be facilitating lawsuits against people wrongfully accused of sex crimes. When survivors of sexual violence trekked week after week to Albany to share their traumatic stories, some opponents to my bill chided them for not speaking up sooner or even blamed them for being assaulted.
Those attacks were despicable and the arguments that such legislation opens the floodgates to false claims is a myth that is not grounded in reality. Numerous studies with survivors, researchers, medical professionals and trauma experts have demonstrated that it often takes years, sometimes even decades, for a person to come to terms with abuse and recognize it as such.
Those attacks were despicable and the arguments that such legislation opens the floodgates to false claims is a myth that is not grounded in reality.
According to an National Institutes of Health study published in 2016 titled “Meta-Analysis of the Prevalence of Unacknowledged Rape,” 60% of women and young girls who had previously been assaulted “did not recognize their experience as rape even though it fit the definition,” ultimately delaying or preventing their ability to process the attack. Others experience intense feelings of shame, guilt and embarrassment, while others who had been abused by someone they once trusted began to question their instincts and blame themselves for being involved in such a situation in the first place.
Take Hadden’s patients for example: Hundreds of women say they were violated by the doctor who professed to have their best interests at heart. Complaints seemed to go nowhere; meanwhile Hadden attempted to gaslight survivors into thinking him putting his mouth on their vagina or palpating their cervix or massaging their breasts was necessary for their health or the health of their pregnancy.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Hadden robbed many people of their sense of self and left them to pick up the pieces of their lives as they struggled under the weight of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and isolation. Through the ASA, more than 300 former patients have courageously wrested back their power by filing claims to hold Hadden accountable for his reign of terror at Columbia University.
The ASA has also shined a bright light on the holes that continue to permeate our justice system.
For example, after a court rightfully found Hadden guilty of abuse, the New York’s Office of Professional Medical Conduct sent him a letter requiring him to notify his patients that he could no longer practice medicine. But he didn’t, and, for a long time, neither did Columbia University.
That is why I recently introduced legislation requiring institutions to notify patients when a current or former doctor has been convicted of sexually abusing someone under their care.
The ASA has undoubtedly helped to rebalance the scales of justice by giving survivors the necessary time and space to come forward. Holding an abuser accountable, whether it be Trump, one’s doctor or one’s relative, is not easy, but I hope that the success of the ASA becomes a rallying cry for state legislatures across the country to finally re-examine their decades-old statutes that often prioritize the interests of predators over the rights of survivors.
Here in New York, we’re working to transform that mindset and, by extension, the criminal justice system by building on the successes of both the ASA and the CVA. I recently introduced a bill that would eliminate the statute of limitations on child sexual assault in civil cases. Artificial time frames should never hinder someone, especially when it comes to complicated situations such as sexual abuse, from holding their abuser accountable for their crimes. I am also in discussions on introducing a bill to extend the ASA look-back window for people who may still need more time to file a case against their abuser.
The ASA has provided hope, strength and comfort to thousands of survivors, yet we still have much work ahead of us in creating a more equal and just society. Thanks to fearless survivor-led coalitions like the one I had the honor of working alongside for years, we helped bring some overdue justice and accountability to abusers who had every reason to believe they were above the law.
