Assembly Member Goodell is one of only 10 who voted against the Child Victims Act. He voted as an attorney who wants to be able to argue a good case. He wants fresh evidence. The Child Victims Act doesn’t prevent a child or adult from coming forward within current time limitations.

It simply extends the time frame for coming forward. This is important because comfort with disclosure is the most common way children and adults tell what happened to them and this is a process that takes time.

The numbers of sexually abused children are heartbreaking. They are boys and girls. In fact two-thirds are girls. They are infants, adolescents and teenagers. Abusers are family members, friends, trusted adults, and recently the League of Women Voters has brought into the light people who traffic in children here in Chautauqua County.

As a mother, a grandmother and a long-standing advocate for children who finds pedophilia among the vilest crimes, I say whatever we can do to support victims we must do.

When someone sexually abuses a child it’s a devastating experience for that child. That child may or may not even be able to understand let alone talk about sexual abuse. If a child is old enough to speak a child needs time achieving comfort with disclosure. That’s why the Child Victims Act has the overwhelming support it does in the NY Assembly. The Act extends, far beyond current statutes of limitations, a victim’s right to seek justice in court for a pedophile’s crime.

Goodell argues that such a long time between the abuse of a child and that child’s adult readiness to come forward with an unbearable truth makes it difficult to prove who did what.

He says key people who could provide evidence may be dead. He assumes that financial compensation will fall on the backs of the taxpayers if a child was abused by someone in a public institution or agency. He assumes that money is the object. The real object is for the child victim inside a now grown adult to know he or she was not at fault; that someone else is responsible for the harm that was done, and to squarely lay that responsibility on the person who did the crime.

If by chance the deed was done in a public institution we have ask where were the protections for the child at the time. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers.

I know Goodell has compassion for sexually abused children. But we don’t make laws just so lawyers can build good cases. It’s dreaming to think a short timeframe for reporting abuse will cause an abused person to come forward sooner. We make laws to protect people.

We need to acknowledge how human beings think and behave following serious traumatic experiences and take the human experience into account in the way we design our laws covering child sexual abuse.

The Child Victims Act is a big step in the right direction. It is far more than and far more important than political pressure by an Attorney General or Governor. Hat’s off to neighboring Assembly Member Joe Giglio, R-Gowanda, for his vote in favor of the Child Victim’s Act. Obviously both Democrats and Republicans overwhelming support the Act in the Assembly. I support it.

Victims of child sexual abuse and their counselors and advocates support it. Goodell does not and I urge him to reconsider and get on the side of what is right. I also urge Senator Young to champion passage in the Senate.

Judith S. Einach is a Westfield resident and candidate for the 150th District seat in the New York state Assembly.