Suits pour in with NY Adult Survivors Act set to expire after sex abuse cases against Trump, Cosby
Sexual abuse claims against famous men poured in Wednesday as a New York law that launched more than 2,600 lawsuits in the last year was set to expire, with victims saying the special legislation gave them a shot at justice and healing.
The Adult Survivors Act, signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul on May 24, 2022, sparked high-profile suits — including against the likes of Donald Trump and Bill Cosby — when it lifted the usual time limit to sue over an alleged sexual assault for a one-year period, which began last Thanksgiving and will end at the close of Thursday.
“I didn’t know that I would have a chance at justice,” Laurie Maldonado, who was allegedly abused by disgraced gynecologist Robert Hadden in 2012, told The Post.
“This policy has deeply impacted my life.”
At least 2,600 claims — some on behalf of more than one person — have been filed in state courts under the ASA, though several others have also been brought in federal court.
The figure could also increase significantly by the time the “look-back” window closes, with several suits coming in as the deadline approached Wednesday — including one from Penthouse model Sheila Kennedy, who accused Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose of “violently” sexually assaulting her in a New York City hotel room in 1989.
Actor Cuba Gooding Jr. was also slapped with two suits Wednesday by two women who say he groped and forcibly kissed them in separate incidents in Manhattan — to which the “Jerry Maguire” actor pleaded guilty to in 2022 on downgraded charges of harassment.
Also on Wednesday, model Minerva Portillo filed suit against renowned photographer Terry Richardson under the ASA, claiming he forced her to give him oral sex during a 2004 shoot and later published pictures of it in an art exhibition and in a 2006 book without her consent.
Attorneys representing sexual abuse survivors said that while the window opened by the ASA was too short, they take solace in the fact that victims still have until 2025 to file sexual abuse claims under a little-known city law called the Gender Motivated Violence Act.
Prominent figures, celebrities, doctors and state prisons sued
The ASA grew out of the Child Victims Act — which opened a two-year look-back period from August 2019 through August 2021 — to offer adult survivors the same recourse that victims of childhood abuse had been afforded.
It gave many victims an opportunity to try to hold accountable the powerful figures who allegedly abused them, and the institutions that allowed the abuse to go unchecked.
The law has also been used to bring claims against Trump, Cosby and other celebrities including hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, comedian Russell Brand and heavy metal frontman Marilyn Manson — who’ve all been accused by various women of rape and abuse, and have denied the allegations.
Under the ASA, hundreds of women also sued hospitals for allegedly allowing Hadden — a prominent gynecologist since convicted of sex trafficking — to abuse countless patients for over a decade.
Roughly half of the state cases were brought by individuals who claimed they were sexually assaulted while in state or city jails and prisons.
Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll notably won a $5 million judgment against the former president in May after she filed suit under the ASA the day the look-back window opened last year.
Last week, Combs was sued in federal court under the law by R&B singer Cassie, who claimed he raped and beat her for over a decade. The pair settled the case the next day.
Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was sued by actress Julia Ormond in October for an alleged 1995 sexual assault. He’s denied the allegations.
Over a hundred men have sued disgraced Manhattan urologist Darius Paduch for sexually abusing them under the guise of medical treatment. Paduch has a criminal case currently pending against him — to which he pleaded not guilty.
One year isn’t enough time for victims, lawyers say
Lawyers who specialize in sexual abuse cases said the ASA’s one-year window was too short, especially in comparison to the CVA’s two-year period, extended due to the pandemic, that saw nearly 11,000 claims filed in the state.
“It’s completely unfair to tell a survivor of sexual abuse that they have one year to physically recover from the abuse, mentally recover from the abuse, find an attorney, share that story of abuse with an attorney, whom they don’t know, and have the attorney file the case all within a 12-month period,” said Anthony T. DiPietro — who has filed hundreds of cases on behalf of alleged victims of Hadden, including Maldonado.
“That is inherently unfair and virtually impossible in many cases.”
Still, DiPietro, who mounted 785 ASA cases, said he and and his clients were “grateful” to the state legislature for opening up the “look-back window to provide victims and survivors an opportunity to come forward and to have a path to justice.”
Lawyers Susan Crumiller and Carrie Goldberg — of the Survivors Law Project, which has handled roughly 24 ASA cases — said they will be advocating for the legislature to reopen the window for at least a year, working with state Sen. Brad Hoylman (D-Manhattan), who originally sponsored the ASA bill.
“A lot of people didn’t know about this window and still don’t know about it,” Crumiller said, adding that, “unlike other types of wrongs, sexual abuse and trauma is something that takes times to heal from and it takes time for survivors even to identify what happened to them let alone make a decision to litigate.”
Lawyer Mallory Allen — who has brought 194 claims against Paduch — said that many of the doctor’s possible alleged victims may not know that he’s been publicly accused of abuse and have yet to discover that they are not alone.
“I know that news of Dr. Paduch hasn’t reached the vast majority of his patients,” Allen said. “I’m certain we will hear about his patients for years to come and we will sadly have to tell them the window is closed.”
“That’s a real tragedy,” she added. “I’m hoping there will be more statutory reform.”
Three victims speak out about their opportunity to seek justice
Crumiller and Goldberg’s client Gina Tron, 41, says she is a prime example of taking almost the full year to decide whether to sue a man she claims kidnapped and raped her in Brooklyn in October 2010.
Tron, an adjunct professor and writer now living in Vermont, said she was reluctant to file suit but eventually changed her mind and brought a claim last week.
“I know I would have kicked myself” for not filing a case, Tron said. “Because this has haunted me for years and it’s hurt me for years.”
“I want to be able to find justice for myself,” she added. “It’s not going to magically change the past but I feel it will heal something and it will feel like some kind of closure or some kind of validity.”
One of Paduch’s alleged victims, Tucker Coburn, said it took him a long time “to come to terms” with being abused when he was just 18 years old in 2016.
When he eventually filed a police report in 2020, he was told his claims fell outside the statute of limitations.
“I thought that was going to be the end of it,” Coburn, now 26, told The Post. “So It was really powerful to actually have the opportunity to make something of it.”
Coburn didn’t know about the ASA until he saw a Post story about the first suit against Paduch — prompting him to take legal action in April.
Tron and Maldonado both said the ability to bring their cases has given them the opportunity to seek justice and to heal.
“I kept that in for more then 10 years,” said Maldonado, a Queens mom and professor at Columbia University, adding that coming forward was “the hardest thing that I have ever had to do.”
“You have a chance to go back and rewrite your story and you have the chance to make sure it never happens again to girls and women,” she said.
In Tron’s case, being able to bring a civil claims after a criminal case against her alleged rapist fell through, “feels like a real big chance at justice.”
“It is giving me hope again that in the eyes of the law what happened to me matters and that I matter,” she said.
For Coburn, one of the most meaningful things was seeing Paduch forced to stop treating patients, since it wasn’t until after the lawsuits were filed that the doctor was arrested and stopped working.
“My goal was to make sure that Dr. Paduch would not practice medicine,” he said. “What happened over the past year has protected future patients from him.”
Victims with time-barred claims still have recourse under a little known city law
While the ASA window is closing, New York City’s Gender Motivated Violence Act allows victims of sexual abuse in the Big Apple to file suit until March 2025 even if their claims are barred by the statute of limitations.
“The path to justice remains open, under the GMVA, for the thousands of victims and survivors of sexual exploitation and abuse in New York City who’ve yet to come forward,” DiPietro said.
Crumiller said in some ways the GMVA is “better” than the ASA because under this law a victim can also go after their assailant for the legal fees of bringing the case, if they win.
The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said it “does not comment on possible or pending litigation.” But it emphasized measures and initiatives it’s implemented to prevent sexual victimization in jails.
Through his lawyers, Rose denied ever meeting Kennedy.
Lawyers and reps for Paduch, Hadden, Gooding and Richardson all didn’t return requests for comment.
Additional reporting by Kyle Schnitzer
