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C.Legal Framework
1.Reporting Requirements
Under New York law in effect in the 1990s, several categories of individuals, including school officials, were required to file a report when they suspected that a child was being neglected or abused. However, this reporting requirement was limited to suspected abuse or maltreatment by a parent or legal guardian. Specifically, the mandatory reporting obligation applied whenever a school official had a “reasonable cause” to suspect that (i) a child “coming before them in their professional capacity” was an abused or maltreated child; or (ii) a child was abused or maltreated where the “parent, guardian, custodian or other person legally responsible for such child” came before them in their professional or official capacity and “state[d] from personal knowledge facts, conditions or circumstances which, if correct, would render the child an abused or maltreated child.”45 Under controlling case law at the time, the phrase “person legally responsible” included any person who was acting in the “functional equivalent of a parent in a familial or household setting,” but did not include “persons who provide extended daily care of children in institutional settings, such as teachers.”46
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2.Relevant Criminal Statutes
The conduct described by many of the students – including Students 1, 2, 3, 6, and 8 – and at least one Church employee would have met the elements for criminal conduct under New York state law. For example, in the 1990s, New York defined “sexual abuse in the second degree” as subjecting another person to “sexual contact” when such other person was less than 14 years old.47 “Sexual contact,” in turn, was defined as “any touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of a person not married to the actor for the purposes of gratifying sexual desire of either party. It includes the touching of the actor by the victim, as well as the touching of the victim by the actor, whether directly or through clothing.”48 New York’s penal code also defined several other sex crimes that were potentially applicable to the conduct as reported.
45 N.Y. SOC. SERV. LAW § 413(1) (McKinney’s 1995).
46 In the Matter of Yolanda D., 88 N.Y.2d 790, 796 (1996).
47 N.Y. PENAL LAW § 130.60 (McKinney’s 1965).
48 N.Y. PENAL LAW § 130.00 (McKinney’s 1996).
