Credit: Serghei Turcanu/Getty Images
Last month, New York’s lawmakers packed up shop in Albany and sent newsletters to their constituents touting a busy and productive legislative session. But they left many critical bills behind, including measures that offered sex trafficking and sexual violence survivors a chance at securing justice.
One such bill was the voluntary intoxication bill, which prohibits a victim’s intoxication as a defense in sex crimes. Despite strong support from prosecutors and victim advocacy groups, the bill fell by the wayside.
Also on the Capitol’s cutting room floor was a bill extending the statute of limitations to hold sex traffickers accountable and end their abuse of some of our most marginalized young women and girls. The bill would have given survivors more time to file lawsuits against their exploiters. Survivors of sex trafficking and sexual violence can suffer for years in silence, filled with shame and confusion as they grapple with what happened to them. Often, by the time they are ready to file a claim, they are told that the clock has run out. Current laws assume that ready-made cases against an abuser happen on a deadline, but trauma does not follow a calendar.
And then there is the Sex Trade Survivors Justice and Equality Act, which barely warranted a conversation in Albany. The bill, presented six years in a row, provides strong tools to prevent sex trafficking by ending the arrests and incarceration of people in prostitution, offering them key services to rebuild their lives and holding sex buyers to account.
Read the full piece.
