2012 Legislative Agenda

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Home Visiting and Family Violence Prevention Programs:

  • Maintain the $23.3M for Healthy Families New York Home Visiting proposed in the 2012 Executive Budget to continue services in sites across the state.
  • Establish a dedicated line item of $5 million for Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) home visiting to help support its sustainability in communities it serves.
  • Establish a dedicated line item of $2 million for other evidence-based home visiting programs to fill gaps in services for families that are not eligible for HFNY and NFP.
  • Maintain the $621,850 for New York’s Wm. B. Hoyt Memorial Children and Family Trust Fund proposed in the 2012 Executive budget, to continue family violence treatment and prevention across the lifespan.

Voluntary prenatal and early childhood home visiting is a long-standing primary prevention strategy that improves the health and well-being of at-risk children and families. The prenatal and earliest childhood period provides a critical window of opportunity; infants’ health at birth and the care they receive, or don’t receive, during the first three years has a profound impact on development that lasts throughout their lives.  Regular visits by trained professionals during this time can shift the trajectory of families’ lives and lay a strong foundation for children’s future.  By reaching at-risk children and families at the earliest possible time, home visiting prevents problems that require expensive intervention and remediation.  In fact, every $1 spent on home visiting can generate up to $5.70 return on investment.

New York’s home visiting programs demonstrate documented outcomes: increasing children’s safety, health and learning, and well as promoting families economic stability. But our State’s home visiting programs still serve only a small percentage of those who would benefit.  We urge the State to invest in sustainable funding for evidence-based home visiting programs for New York’s most vulnerable children and families.

The Children and Family Trust Fund protects the three most important things that must be safeguarded in budget decisions: people, government spending, and infrastructure. Funded programs are proven to protect children. The Shaken Baby Syndrome prevention program has cut in half the incidence of head trauma in babies and has sustained that record for a dozen years. Programs in the Family Resource Center Network increase protective factors in families, which reduce the likelihood of child maltreatment.

Trust Fund programs are part of the social infrastructure that, like the physical infrastructure of roads and hospitals, is essential to the functioning of New York society and business. Without the protection these programs provide, the state will have higher child welfare loads, Medicaid costs, and other expenses. About 80 percent of babies who survive shaken baby syndrome have some form of permanent damage, meaning most face lifelong costs related to medical and other needs. The hospital costs alone for one victim run into tens of thousands of dollars.

2012 Legislative Issues

Extend the Statute of Limitations for Child Sexual Abuse Offenses

Prevent Child Abuse New York firmly believes that we have a collective responsibility, as a state and as individuals, to prevent child sexual abuse and to help heal the hurt and harm to victims. 

New York’s current law allows most felony sex offenses committed against a child to be prosecuted for only five years after the child turns 18, misdemeanor abuse for only two years. For civil claims, child victims have just five years from the time they reach their 18th birthday to file a suit against an abuser.

Nine out of ten children who are sexually abused are victimized by people they know and trust: family members, relatives, and adults they know at school, child care, youth groups, sports teams, religious organizations and in other settings where they live and play. Most victims are not able to report their abuse until they are well into adulthood.

Consequently, by requiring victims come forward by their 23rd birthday, our law has the effect of protecting offenders. Not only does the victim have no legal recourse, but more children are victimized as the result of our failure to deal with offenders. Child sexual abuse is not a one-time, one-victim offense.

New York’s laws are among the most restrictive in the country. In a growing number of states, legal reforms now allow victims of childhood sexual abuse to seek civil damages and criminal charges against their alleged abusers many years after reaching adulthood. The reforms are an acknowledgement of substantial research demonstrating that abuse victims often require an extensive period of time before they are ready to confront their abusers.

Eight states allow criminal prosecutions of child sex abuse for at least 20 years after victims turn 18, or longer. On the civil side, a majority of states now allow victims of child sex abuse to file claims against their abusers well into adulthood; some have eliminated the civil statute of limitations for child sexual abuse. Over two dozen states’ laws begin the civil statute of limitations only when a victim links an injury or condition to their abuse as a child, even if the recognition of the connection occurs decades later.

New York’s criminal and civil statutes of limitations for child sex abuse must be extended, at the very least by five years past the victims 23rd birthday, as has repeatedly been passed in the Assembly. Preferably the period of limitation should not begin to run until the offense is reported to authorities, law enforcement or the state central register of child abuse and maltreatment.

In addition, we support providing a one-year window of opportunity for victims of child sexual abuse to bring civil action, regardless of their current age.