Brian Toale, 66, who says he was molested by an employee at a Catholic high school he attended on Long Island, was one of the leaders in the fight to pass the Child Victims Act.It was the early 1950s and Peter Vajda was a little boy attending a Catholic boarding school in the Bronx when he says a religious brother molested him.
Hundreds, likely thousands of lawsuits were expected to be filed on the first day. The Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America, public school districts and possibly even deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein are among the likely targets. A compensation fund for sex abuse victims set up by the New York Archdiocese in 2016 has paid out $65 million to 323 victims, the archdiocese says. Those victims have waived their right to file lawsuits. The archdiocese is also suing more than two dozen insurance companies in an effort to compel them to cover abuse claims, anticipating that insurers won’t pay the numerous claims filed during the litigation window.
The church dropped its opposition to the bill this year, after Democrats won control of the state Senate from Republican lawmakers who had been blocking the bill from receiving a vote. With Democrats in charge of the chamber, the bill passed unanimously. “We only get one childhood, one adolescence,” said Jack Traub, a 55-year-old Staten Island attorney who says he was molested by a doctor at Rockefeller University 45 years ago. He said that as a result of the trauma, he’s had trouble forming and maintaining normal relationships all his life. “I can’t go back. It is what it is.”
The church was against this-'warning that it could cause catastrophic financial harm to any organization that cares for children.' Kinda like the catastrophic harm that was done to the children in the first place...
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