Adult Sexual Abuse Claims

As a society, only recently have we begun to truly grapple with how common sexual abuse is and how it can impact people for their entire lives. The number of sexual abuse claims nationwide against clergy in the Catholic Church alone rose from 1,451 complaints in 2018 to 4,434 complaints in 2019, according to The Washington Post.

As awareness of sexual abuse and its lifelong damaging effects have spread, more and more adults are coming forward to tell how they were abused, either as children or adults. The New York family law attorneys at The Mandel Law Firm are committed to helping sexual abuse victims of all ages find justice for what’s happened to them. We make no assumptions about what happened to you and we do not judge.  We are here to help you and we fully employ our 40 years of experience with family law issues to do so.  We also know how delicate these kinds of cases can be, they require the utmost in trust and compassion on our part.

When you hire our dedicated and compassionate legal team to represent you, your problems become our problems, so you can let go of some of the stress you’ve been carrying. Get a risk-free, 100 percent confidential consultation today by calling our office or visiting our contact page.

While we have gotten better at identifying children who are being or have been sexually abused, many victims of abuse hide what happened to them or struggle to acknowledge that what happened was abuse, generally due to a sense of shame, guilt, or confusion. This means many victims don’t fully process their abuse until they’re adults.

Regardless of whether you were abused as a child or as an adult, you have rights if you’ve been sexually abused. Depending on when the abuse occurred and under what circumstances, you might have a criminal case against your abuser. By reporting what happened to law enforcement, they may file criminal charges against whoever abused you.

Unfortunately, the criminal justice system isn’t always an option for victims of sexual abuse. It may be difficult to find evidence outside of the victim’s testimony to help show that the abuse occurred, especially if the victim doesn’t report the abuse immediately. Furthermore, the statute of limitations on sexual abuse cases means that sometimes, even if there is evidence of abuse, too much time has passed for the perpetrator to be charged with a crime.

In cases where the perpetrator of sexual abuse is not charged with a crime, their victims can still find a measure of justice through the civil court system. A civil suit also allows victims of sexual abuse to hold larger institutions accountable if they aided or covered up the abuse, such as in the case of the Catholic Church or the Boy Scouts.

Even if the abuser is charged with a crime, it’s important to hold these institutions accountable for their appalling failure to protect those under their care, and a civil suit may be one of the few remedies available to victims.