Justice for all Sexual Assault Survivors
The Issue
No doubt you have been following all the heinous details of what the Cornell survivor had to endure at the hands of the 7 Chi Phi fraternity brothers. No doubt you are wondering how it was possible that the DA decided not to press charges. New York, like 18 other States, enshrined a massive gap in their laws called the Voluntary Intoxication Exclusion ? Currently the law in NYS only provides a pathway to justice to survivors who were unwillingly intoxicated at the time of their rape. In practice, this means that your willing choice to drink or do drugs is taken as consent for anything that befalls you later that night. This leaves victims who were at their most vulnerable when barely able to stand or barely able to speak excluded from the protection of our legal system.
A bill to end this exclusion and end victim-blaming was introduced in Albany 7 years ago. Every year the Senate consistently passed this bill unanimously. Every year, the bill has been killed in the Assembly. Had the Assembly followed the lead of the Senate in 2024, Jane Doe could have pursued justice. Belatedly, Speaker Heastie has decided that it is time for the Assembly to act now. He has convened a "working group" that is suppose to present to him ideas how to end this Exclusion.
No details have been released of who leads this group, when they are to hold meetings or which experts are presenting to them. There's no transparency so we must let our voices be heard and demand that the bill A101 serve as the basis for change. Pls reach out to the 14 members of the Speaker's working group to inform them that we do not need a watered down version of the bill that pretends to rectify the problem but could end up making matters worst.
This is our moment to demand that the burden of responsibility for a crime should not fall onto the person who was raped. Think about it, in what other case is the survivor of such violence blamed for the harm they endured? We can do better - our laws can be better and not rob survivors of their dignity and sovereignty over their own bodies.
2,332
The Issue
No doubt you have been following all the heinous details of what the Cornell survivor had to endure at the hands of the 7 Chi Phi fraternity brothers. No doubt you are wondering how it was possible that the DA decided not to press charges. New York, like 18 other States, enshrined a massive gap in their laws called the Voluntary Intoxication Exclusion ? Currently the law in NYS only provides a pathway to justice to survivors who were unwillingly intoxicated at the time of their rape. In practice, this means that your willing choice to drink or do drugs is taken as consent for anything that befalls you later that night. This leaves victims who were at their most vulnerable when barely able to stand or barely able to speak excluded from the protection of our legal system.
A bill to end this exclusion and end victim-blaming was introduced in Albany 7 years ago. Every year the Senate consistently passed this bill unanimously. Every year, the bill has been killed in the Assembly. Had the Assembly followed the lead of the Senate in 2024, Jane Doe could have pursued justice. Belatedly, Speaker Heastie has decided that it is time for the Assembly to act now. He has convened a "working group" that is suppose to present to him ideas how to end this Exclusion.
No details have been released of who leads this group, when they are to hold meetings or which experts are presenting to them. There's no transparency so we must let our voices be heard and demand that the bill A101 serve as the basis for change. Pls reach out to the 14 members of the Speaker's working group to inform them that we do not need a watered down version of the bill that pretends to rectify the problem but could end up making matters worst.
This is our moment to demand that the burden of responsibility for a crime should not fall onto the person who was raped. Think about it, in what other case is the survivor of such violence blamed for the harm they endured? We can do better - our laws can be better and not rob survivors of their dignity and sovereignty over their own bodies.
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Petition created on January 26, 2022