Most of the New York Child Victims Act lawsuits remain in limbo five years later
Back in 2019, James Manfredonia and some of his former Little League teammates thought they would finally be able to confront the coach who they allege abused them decades ago when they sued him under New York’s Child Victims Act.
Back in 2019, James Manfredonia and some of his former Little League teammates thought they would finally be able to confront the coach who they allege abused them decades ago when they sued him under New York’s Child Victims Act.
Five years later, they have yet to get a trial date, and their lawsuit against Tony Sagona remains in limbo.
The Sagona case is no outlier. For two years, from 2019 to 2021, 10,783 lawsuits were filed under the Child Victims Act in New York on behalf of 14,588 men and women who say teachers, coaches, priests and other authority figures sexually abused them as children decades ago, according to figures provided by the state’s Unified Court System.
Of those cases, 7,632 were assigned to judges, and 2,052 of those were either settled or disposed of. The rest are classified as "pending."
“When the lawsuits started being filed, there was a lot of attention and talk about how the victims would get justice,” said Manfredonia, 63. “But no one seems to care. Here we are, all these years later, and we just have to wait and wait and wait and wait. How can these cases not be a priority, especially given the supposed effort to pass the law?”
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