© Paul Sancya/APTarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo campaign, plans to support the Child Victims Act.
Tarana Burke is expected to formally call for the Child Victim's Act passage later this month at a public forum at SUNY Stony Brook focused on expanding the #MeToo movement on Long Island.
In an email, Burke confirmed her support for the Child Victims Act.
One of the sponsors of the forum is Protect NY Kids/Fighting for Children, a political action committee created by Gary Greenberg, an upstate investor and child sex abuse survivor. Greenberg said the issues of sexual harassment and abuse of women and child sex abuse are linked.
"You're talking abuse and talking about people coming forward and talking about abuse," he said. He called having Burke getting behind the Child Victims Act effort "huge."
Burke in 2007 came up with the #MeToo campaign in order to reach out to sexual assault survivors. It became a national rallying cry a decade later after the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke.
Burke is the latest national figure to weigh in supporting the bill. Sunny Hostin, co-host of "The View," television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz, and actor Corey Feldman, who says he was sexually abused as a child actor, also joined the chorus calling for the bill's adoption.
The measure has passed the Assembly several times over the past dozen years, including in 2017, but died each time in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Comment: For good reason. All bills trying to inject tyranny into the state have some innocuous name like "Help children Act" or "Save Women from Harassment Act." In the same way all of the US Military interventions are named things like "Operation Glorious Freedom."
Advocates are hoping Gov. Cuomo, who supports the Assembly bill, includes the issue in his state budget proposal set to be released on Tuesday. Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi on Sunday wouldn't say whether that will happen.
The bill would allow survivors to bring civil cases up until their 50th birthdays and felony criminal cases until their 28th birthdays. Currently, they have until their 23rd birthdays to bring such cases.
Comment: This sounds good on paper, but most sex crimes have little or no evidence, simply accusation. Sex crimes that happened decades ago will have even less evidence, and more questionable issues with memory and recall.
What this bill essentially does is give the power of accusation-as-indictment which will largely be used to keep people in line. Once it is passed, the Judicial system will complete the transfer from "beyond reasonable doubt" to a standard of "preponderance of evidence."
Think about #MeToo, how many people in positions of power have lost everything on the accusation of something they may or may not have done 30 or 40 years ago? How many dogpiles have we seen?
It is just this kind of thing which William Garrow, the coiner of "Innocent Until Proven Guilty" fought against in the 19th century. This is why we have an adversarial system, because of the abuses of systems like what they are trying to do today.
The bill also included a one-year window to revive old cases and treated public and private institutions the same. Currently, those abused in a public setting like a school have just 90 days from the incident occurring to formally file an intent to sue.
Religious groups like the Catholic Church and Orthodox Jewish community oppose the provision that would open a window to revive old cases.
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