Beneath the surface of many legislative acts with good intentions, there often lurks a sinister reality. This is frequently the consequence of lawmakers’ failure to courageously confront and consider the potential adverse effects of their policies.
This can manifest in many different ways: For instance, a legislator might overlook the few instances where their law could fail, or they may succumb to external political pressures, opting for silence over scrutiny.
The Adult Survivors Act, a landmark law passed in New York in 2022, is a prime example of a well-intentioned law turned ugly as a result of its sponsor failing or refusing to consider its negative ramifications.
To start, let’s consider the fact that this applied to every person who had ever stepped foot in New York State. It didn’t matter whether you lived right next door in New Jersey, all the way across the country in California, or oceans away across the world in Australia. It didn’t even matter if you'd never stepped foot in New York. The Act made it so that if someone claimed you committed sexual assault in New York years ago, you could be compelled to return to New York to mount a defense.
This is particularly concerning when you consider the lack of evidence that would exist in an older case. Sexual assault generally occurs behind closed doors, so even in a new case, evidence is scant, but at least the recollections of the people and any evidence from after the fact to disprove the assault would still be preserved. Add the passage of time into the mix, and the challenges compound.
A person accused of a sexual offense may find themselves at a loss to remember where they were during the day or time of the alleged crime, and they may dispute the alleged non-consensual nature of the encounter. And what if there was evidence in the past proving their alibi, or that the encounter was consensual, like a letter, email, photograph, or witness? Odds are, they’re gone now.
We must keep in mind that the dispositive question in a sexual offense case is whether the encounter was consensual. Consider a person who enters into a legal sexual encounter under the assumption that it was consensual, using affirmative verbal and non-verbal cues. Now imagine, two decades later, they face allegations of non-consensual sex. What memory could they possibly draw upon to credibly attest to the consensual nature of that past encounter? What if they have had numerous encounters with other women in the past and didn’t remember it? Is it enough for them to say that they’re a good person and that they would never commit a sexual offense against another person? Obviously not.
Sex abusers deserve to be sued for every dollar of theirs; they deserve to rot in prison, too. But this isn’t about the ones who have actually committed these heinous acts, and who are actually guilty of them. This is about the potential liability for those wrongfully accused, individuals who may be caught in the crossfire, alleged to have committed one of the most egregious offenses a person can commit and who now find themselves without the means to defend themselves.
