For two years, New York temporarily set aside its usual time limit on civil lawsuits in order to allow victims of childhood sexual abuse to sue churches, hospitals, schools, camps, scout groups and other institutions and people they hold responsible for enabling pedophiles or turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.
That window closes Saturday, after more than 9,000 lawsuits were filed, a deluge whose impact may be felt for many years.
The tsunami of litigation surprised even some of the lawyers who work regularly with alleged abuse victims.
“We thought maybe we get one hundred cases or a couple hundred cases and here we are,” said attorney James Marsh, whose firm has filed about 800 cases. “We woefully miscalculated the interest there.”