Brooklyn filmmaker Chris Gavagan, Queens Assemblywoman Margaret Markey support Child Victims Act
/Coached into Silence director Chris Gavagan featured in this New York Daily News article, covering his support for statute of limitation reform.
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A Brooklyn filmmaker who is making a documentary about sexual abuse in youth sports says the statute of limitations that limits prosecution of sexual abuse encourages offenders to prey on children.
Chris Gavagan, whose still-in-production “Coached into Silence” includes an interview with a coach he says abused him when he was a teenager, spoke at a press conference in Albany on Tuesday to promote the Child Victims Act. The bill, sponsored by Queens Assemblywoman Margaret Markey, would extend the civil and criminal limitations for sexual abuse and give previous victims a window to bring civil suits against sexual offenders.
“The reality is that these predators will feed for a lifetime on our children,” Gavagan said. “And the short statute of limitations in our state guarantees 30, 40, 50 more years of children - our children, your children - as prey. A generation of children that could so easily have been spared.
"I have been forced to watch as my own abuser, a coach with direct and easy access to a hundred children a year for decades, found his next victim, and his next victim,” Gavagan added.
