Justice for Sexual Assault Survivors: New Law Offers Healing

Holding Abusers to Account continued...

The outcome, prosecutors told Hoechstetter, was the best they could have hoped for. To Hoechstetter, this was another violation – and galvanized her to advocacy. “It went beyond the feelings towards this person who had harmed me, and became a much bigger feeling of rage at the institutional failures of people who said they were supporting and protecting me. Once I realized how deep the corruption went, and how many women he’d abused, I knew that there had to be institutional accountability, too.”

The ASA not only opens up possibilities to hold perpetrators like Hadden to account in civil court, it creates an additional path of recourse against hospitals, churches, schools, or other negligent institutions that may have created conditions that allowed the abuse to occur or continue. Hoechstetter is already involved in litigation against Hadden and Columbia University Irving Medical Center New York-Presbyterian Hospital, but is heartened that the ASA will enable the “dozens and dozens of Hadden victims who keep coming forward and have had no recourse” to benefit. “If we don’t name the harm done at the start, we won’t ever move the needle on sexual violence.”

The Power of Speaking Up

In New Jersey, similar legislation instituted in 2019 gave both child and adult sexual assault survivors 2 years to bring civil claims, regardless of when the abuse occurred. Lawsuits skyrocketed as many of those who had suffered in silence had opportunities to seek restitution. But advocates caution lawsuits and legislation should not be considered the final or only measure of healing.

“Healing is deeply personal and deeply individual,” says Robert Baran, managing director of the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault (NJCASA), “and the look-back window is always going to be an arbitrary number that will seem insufficient to a large portion of survivors.” But what it does do is expand options, allowing survivors greater opportunity to seek their own versions of justice and accountability. Not everyone has the resources – or will – to move forward with a lawsuit in the prescribed windows, Baran says, but knowing they have the chance to do so is impactful in itself.