Hundreds of child sex-abuse claims against New York City’s juvenile detention facilities were set to be revived after the City Council tweaked a law Tuesday that allows survivors to pursue damages.
Roughly 450 former detainees had filed the cases under the city’s gender-based violence law, which in 2022 created a window for litigants to bring civil suits against individuals or institutions that may have facilitated the abuse, even if the allegations are from years or even decades ago.
But a court last summer found the law as it was written did not clearly cover such claims and started tossing their cases.
Tuesday’s legislation effectively overturned the court’s decision to hold city agencies accountable for enabling gender-based violence beyond the statute of limitations. Any person who brought a claim during the original window — but meets the new requirements — is explicitly permitted to amend or refile their case under the revised law.
“Today is a victory for survivors,” said Jerome Block, a partner at the law firm Levy Konigsberg and the lead attorney for the former detainees. “We applaud the City Council for passing Intro. 1297 to provide survivors a fair pathway to justice.”
The legislation had widespread support in the Council, including 41 members who signed onto the bill as sponsors.
“This bill reopens and clarifies the Gender-Motivated Violence Act,” Councilwoman Selvena Brooks-Powers, the bill’s lead sponsor, said at a press conference before the formal vote, “so that survivors, many of whom were abused in city-run facilities …, do not lose their cases because of a court-created loophole.”
“Survivors deserve justice, not legal technicality. With hundreds of cases at risk, the urgency could not be clearer,” Brooks-Powers added.
The lawsuits, some going back as far as the 1960s, accuse New York City of not doing enough to protect young people in custody from gender-based violence.
A Daily News investigation last year found that many of the former detainees say they endured sexual abuse by a repeat offender. More than 20 people’s claims involved Natalie Medford, a former staff member at Horizon Juvenile Center in the Bronx, The News reported. Seven litigants filed lawsuits that named a male registered sex offender who served time for sexually assaulting young girls, according to their lawyers.
A spokesman for Mayor Adams said his administration will review the legislation, which budget officials have warned has “substantial financial implications for the city.”
“We stand with survivors of gender-motivated violence in their quest for justice,” said Daniel Marans, Adams’ deputy press secretary.
With Josephine Stratman
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