Public Awareness

OPDV Bulletin:
Landmark Sexual Assault Law Reform (SARA)


The Sexual Assault Reform Act, known as SARA, will create significant reform in New York State's sexual assault and child sexual abuse laws. The changes are intended to address both long-standing and more current problems in the area of sexual assault. These have included multiple issues in the charging and prosecution of sexual assault, including child sexual assault, date rape, drug related rape and assaults such as those perpetrated in the June 11 Central Park attacks. SARA creates new crimes, increases protection for victims of sex offenses with additional protections for child victims, and increases and strengthens consequences for offenders. Once signed into law, the new statute will go into effect on February 1, 2001. Highlights include:


Assistance for Victims

  • Includes medical facilities that provide forensic exams within the definition of 'criminal justice agency' for the purpose of documenting a sexual assault for Crime Victims Board reimbursement. A survivor will still have to file a claim for reimbursement.
  • Requires the Commissioner of Health to designate interested and consenting hospitals as sites for sexual assault forensic examiner programs. Sets forth basic standards for victim treatment.
  • Establishes the statewide Rape Crisis Intervention and Prevention Program in statute. Defines services and authorizes the Department of Health to contract with local programs, provide technical assistance and evaluate programs every three years. Funding is dependent upon yearly appropriations.

Sexual Assault/Drugs

  • Adds GHB, also known as "liquid ecstasy" to New York's schedule of controlled substances, making its use illegal.
  • Creates the crime of facilitating a sex offense with a controlled substance - Class D felony.

Service Provider Abuse

  • Makes it illegal for a health care or mental health provider as defined in the law to have sexual intercourse with a patient during a treatment session. Includes an affirmative defense that if the provider informed the client that intercourse was not a part of the treatment, and the client consented, then there is no crime - Class E felony.
  • Criminalizes abuse of youth under supervision in Office of Children and Family Services facilities.

Child Sexual Abuse

  • Creates the crime of persistent sexual abuse, for repeat sexual offenders with children - Class E felony.
  • Lowers the age at which a child is presumed to be competent to give sworn testimony under oath from twelve to nine.
  • Restricts release and bail provisions for offenders whose victims are under age eighteen.
  • Expands child sexual performance crimes to include victims under seventeen.
  • Raises victim's age in rape first degree and sodomy first degree from 11 to 13, when the offender is over 18.
  • Raises victim's age in rape second degree and sodomy second degree from 14 to 15 if the offender is over age 18, unless the defendant is less than four years older than the victim.

Offenders

  • Establishes determinate sentences for repeat sex offenders and longer periods of probation and parole for persistent child molesters; restricts access to school settings for released, convicted child molesters.
  • Requires registered sex offenders to report their Internet accounts and screen names to the registry.
  • Reduces the charge for "900" number calls to the sex offender registry to fifty cents.
  • Provides for an information package on Megan's Law, including sex abuse and abduction prevention materials, which can be requested from the Division of Criminal Justice Services.

Additional Provisions

  • Allows rape in the third degree and sodomy in the third degree to be charged where the victim has expressed non-consent by word or action.
  • Creates the crime of forcible touching - in which a person intentionally and for no legitimate purpose forcibly touches the sexual or other intimate parts of another person - Class A misdemeanor.
  • Eliminates the marital rape exemption.
  • Repeals consensual sodomy.
  • Makes Penal Code Article 130 (sex offenses) gender neutral and changes the term "mentally defective" to "mentally disabled." The Legislature declares its intent to further modernize terminology and consolidate duplicative sections in future legislation.

(Thanks to the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault and the Albany County Rape Crisis Center for assistance in analyzing SARA)