Laws with lookback windows gave Cassie Ventura and others the chance to fight back against accused abusers. Advocates say survivors deserve more

CNN

a day ago

EDITOR'S NOTE: If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you are not alone. Visit RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline for help. Call 800.656.HOPE (4673), chat at hotline.RAINN.org or text 'HOPE' to 64673. Getting help around the world: If you, or someone you know, is being affected by domestic violence, a worldwide list of directories is provided by UN Women. You can also find a list of national agencies on The Pixel Project.
Music mogul Sean 'Diddy' Combs was acquitted Wednesday of the most serious charges against him in a trial that exposed allegations of sexual assault and abuse of power, placing a renewed spotlight on survivors who choose to speak out.
Combs was acquitted of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking pertaining to two of his former girlfriends, including the singer Cassie Ventura, who provided vivid and emotional testimony while eight months pregnant.
Ventura first alleged years of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Combs in a lawsuit filed in November 2023, just before the expiration of New York's one-year lookback window, which suspended the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits related to adult sexual assault cases. The suit was settled shortly after.
New York's Adult Survivors Act was part of a suite of legislation passed in New York and California in the last several years that temporarily dropped the statute of limitations for lawsuits related to child or adult victims of sexual assault.
Thousands of lawsuits were filed under the laws against powerful figures and institutions, including President Donald Trump, once-renowned movie producer Harvey Weinstein, state prison systems, the Boy Scouts of America and the Archdiocese of New York.
Every 68 seconds, someone in the US is sexually assaulted, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, or RAINN, the nation's largest advocacy organization against sexual violence.
While the laws and temporary lookback windows were a huge step forward, advocates say they weren't a panacea for survivors seeking justice. Now advocates say the #MeToo movement's momentum is waning and they are struggling to maintain the public attention and legislative support to push through additional protections for sexual assault survivors.
Lawmakers in New York had been working to pass legislation for child victims of sexual assault for more than a decade when they recognized a unique moment in the cultural landscape, according to New York State Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, who helped lead the legislative effort.
The MeToo movement, launched by activist Tarana Burke nearly two decades ago, went viral around 2017, as allegations of sexual assault and harassment were leveled at Weinstein. People were willing to talk about sexual assault out in the open, in a way they hadn't been before, Burke told CNN in June.
Accounts of sexual assault and harassment spanned industries, and survivors didn't just want to be heard, they wanted accountability.
'It became harder for those who were opposed to the effort to say, 'Oh, this isn't such a big deal. It doesn't happen that often. It's not really a thing that we need to be changing the laws about,' when you couldn't open the paper or see a movie without this being a central topic,' said Michael Polenberg, vice president of government affairs at Safe Horizon, a national non-profit that offers services to victims of sexual assault and other forms of abuse.
After years of trying, there was finally enough public pressure and legislative support to overcome the fierce lobbying effort against the Child Victims Act, Rosenthal said.
The law, enacted in 2019, allowed child victims to file civil lawsuits up to the age of 55 and created a one-year lookback window for civil lawsuits from victims of any age, regardless of when the abuse occurred. That window was later extended for another year to account for difficulty accessing the courts during the Covid-19 pandemic.
It was a recognition that trauma takes time to process and strict statutes of limitations do not account for the experience of survivors, who are often not ready to tell their stories for years, Rosenthal said.
Nearly 11,000 lawsuits were filed under the Child Victims Act in New York during its two-year span.
'Once we passed the Child Victims Act, the dam sort of broke, and we were able to pass the Adult Survivors Act. People understood how many victims there are out there,' Rosenthal said.
New York's separate Adult Survivors Act passed in 2022 and created a one-year lookback window for adult victims. Similar legislation in California created lookback windows for child victims in 2020 and adults in 2023.
Former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s and later defaming her in his denial of her claims. A Manhattan federal jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and ordered him to pay about $5 million in damages. Trump has denied all claims.
'Some of the people that it helped bring down really makes me even prouder that I got to pass that bill into law,' Rosenthal said, citing Caroll's lawsuit against Trump. 'She used the Adult Survivors Act to get justice.'
But some of the survivors who chose to pursue legal action faced additional legal hurdles.
Advocates say a patchwork of sexual assault policies can sometimes feel like it exists less to protect survivors and more to weed out cases deemed illegitimate.
If one year seems like an arbitrary period to file lawsuits for old cases, that's because essentially, it is.
In New York, the time frame was born out of political compromise and reflects what some lawmakers believed was reasonable, Rosenthal said. She's since pursued legislation that would eliminate the statute of limitations in the state for child victims entirely, but interest among some legislators has waned.
'Once the momentum has stopped, you have to reenergize and get it back and prove all over again why some of these bills are needed,' she said.
Some cases brought against the state – like those filed by formerly incarcerated women who say they were sexually assaulted in New York's prison system – have to be heard in the Court of Claims, which requires a more precise degree of detail about the time and place of the abuse.
That requirement has resulted in cases being dismissed in New York, Polenberg said.
'It's chilling when you think about the Adult Survivors Act, where the preponderance of cases were brought on behalf of formerly incarcerated individuals – many women – for sexual abuse that took place in a prison. It is unfathomable to ask survivors to know the exact day that something took place, if they were locked up for six years or eight years,' Polenberg said.
Rosenthal authored a bill to try to remedy the issue, which had the support of Safe Horizon and other survivor advocates, but it failed this year.
Nationally, only a handful of states, including Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, have removed statutes of limitations for all felony sex crimes, according to RAINN.
Survivors in other states are limited to set time frames or temporary lookback windows.
Even then, a number of other factors are at play, like so-called intoxication loopholes that can prevent sexual assault survivors from getting justice if they were unable to consent after becoming voluntarily intoxicated.
The loophole exists in nearly half the nation, a 2022 analysis of sexual assault laws from all 50 states and Washington, DC, found.
Texas closed its loophole on June 20 with a law that expands the definition of consent and clearly outlines sexual assault to include cases in which a victim 'cannot consent because of intoxication or impairment by any substance.'
Rosenthal sponsored legislation in New York last month aimed at closing the state's intoxication loophole; it also failed to advance.
Christina Maxwell, a New York-based singer, actress and public speaker, advocated for the elimination of that loophole.
It was a legal hurdle she never thought she would have to contend with in 2020, after the #MeToo movement went worldwide and legislators were throwing their weight behind survivors of sexual assault.
That was the year Maxwell was sexually assaulted after drinking an alcoholic beverage she believes was drugged while at a workplace event, she told CNN. Maxwell pulled the surveillance footage which captured much of the night's events and went to the police, she said, but she was told by detectives and lawyers that she likely did not have a case.
'They verbatim said to me that drunk consent is still consent,' Maxwell said.
She returned to her job and spent the next three years working in the office where the alleged assault took place, she said.
'In order to keep working there and to keep doing what was a dream job for me at the time, I had to fully separate – for myself – what happened from the physical space because I didn't want him to take my dream job from me too,' she said.
Maxwell has since found camaraderie with the advocates she now works with to rally for protections for other sexual assault survivors.
Rosenthal said survivor voices will be key as she and her colleagues work to increase protections for victims of sexual assault, sometimes inch by inch.
'You can read about it, but the most convincing strategy is to have a survivor sit down with you and look you in the eye and tell their truth about what happened to them and the reasons that they were unable to seek justice,' Rosenthal said.
The fact that Combs was acquitted on the most serious charges in the federal trial was disappointing, said Polenberg, who believes there's been a recent backlash towards the MeToo movement and survivors' rights. He cited a willingness to dismiss serious allegations from survivors.
But just the fact that Ventura was able to file her original civil suit against Combs was a success, he said.
'Back in November of 2023, Cassie had a choice. She could accept an eight-figure settlement offer and move on with her life and sign non-disclosure agreements, or she could file a civil lawsuit and hold Sean Combs responsible for what he did to her and shine a light on his behavior,' Ventura's lawyer, Doug Wigdor, told CNN after the verdict. 'She showed great courage, great bravery, to choose the latter of those two options.'
During Combs' criminal trial, Ventura said she received a $20 million settlement in her 2023 civil suit.
The significance of Ventura's lawsuit will extend far beyond the trial, Burke, the founder of the #MeToo movement, previously told CNN.
'You can't unring this bell,' she said. 'We all listened to Cassie. We all saw that video. We've heard this testimony that's not going anywhere.'
Rosenthal said she hopes the moment will recapture the attention of her colleagues and other lawmakers around the nation who hold the power to shape policy.
'Cassie and others did file in the waning days of the Adult Survivors Act, and perhaps the depravity exposed in the trial will give renewed momentum to bills that will allow survivors to seek justice,' she said.
CNN's Elizabeth Wagmeister, Dan Heching and Kara Scannell contributed to this report.