In one of the first state court decisions involving a new statute in New York that extends the statute of limitations for cases of child sex abuse, the alleged victim will not be allowed to proceed under a pseudonym or start pursuing discovery before his case is filed.

Westchester County Supreme Court Justice Terry Jane Ruderman also wrote in the decision last week that state law allows the court to assert jurisdiction over the alleged abuser, despite him no longer living in New York state. 

The victim, who used the name John Doe to file the petition in Westchester County Supreme Court, is planning to pursue claims under the Child Victims Act against Daniel Calabrese, a former seminarian at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers.

Calabrese was formerly convicted on charges of sexually abusing a child more than two decades ago. He was laicized in 2005, but can still face civil litigation from alleged victims under the Child Victims Act.

The law will open a one-year window, starting Aug. 14, for victims of any age to pursue civil litigation against their alleged abusers. The lawsuit doesn’t have to be resolved within that one-year window, it only has to be filed during that time.

After the window, victims who were younger than 23 years old when the bill became law earlier this year will still be allowed to pursue civil claims against their alleged abusers until they reach 55 years of age. Criminal charges will be allowed until the victim turns 28 for felony cases and 25 for misdemeanor charges.

The unnamed victim in the petition alleged that Calabrese and another man at St. Joseph’s Seminary molested him in the men’s locker room in either 1983 or 1984 when he was 13 years old. He’ll only have the look-back window to file his lawsuit.

He’s represented by Barbara Hart, the president and CEO of Lowey Dannenberg, a firm in White Plains that specializes in securities and antitrust litigation. 

Hart said she doesn’t expect the decision on pre-action discovery to deter their case, and that there may be another way for her client to proceed without being publicly named in court filings. They could redact his name in public documents, for example, while making the non-redacted versions available to Calabrese and the church.

“Finding that balance is an important navigation point and I think that the defendants need to be mindful of that concern because the trauma is very significant,” Hart said. “There could be a chilling effect if they have to identify themselves if they do come forward.”

Her client had petitioned the court, in recent months, to proceed in his lawsuit against Calabrese under a pseudonym, John Doe, and sought to begin collecting discovery before the litigation was filed. Among other things, he was seeking to depose Calabrese and secure any documents or information that might be relevant to the lawsuit when it’s actually filed.

The victim made the request, the court said, because there’s a very real possibility that individuals relevant to the litigation may not be available in the near future. He argued that, because those individuals are getting older, they may either die or become unreliable if he waits to begin discovery until after the lawsuit is filed.

He wanted to remain anonymous, according to the decision, because he didn’t want his three children to be embarrassed by the litigation after it’s filed. He argued that his case is likely to draw attention from local media.

The victim also made a handful of other requests to the court, which were not addressed extensively in the decision. 

He wanted Calabrese and the Archdiocese of New York to be required, starting now, to preserve and log any documents that might be relevant to his lawsuit, identify anyone they thought might have information about his claims, and have a special master appointed to oversee compliance.

Those requests were deemed moot after Ruderman rejected the victim’s request for pre-action discovery and disclosure in the decision. 

Ruderman wrote that the victim didn’t have support from a person with first-hand knowledge of the alleged incident. The only factual claims were from the victim’s attorney, she wrote. The victim hadn’t included his own affidavit with the petition. 

“Accordingly, petitioner has failed to demonstrate the requisite showing of a meritorious cause of action to justify pre-action discovery,” Ruderman wrote.

Hart said pre-action discovery may have allowed them to identify the other man who allegedly abused him alongside Calabrese, but that she doesn’t expect their case to be impeded by Ruderman’s decision.

“I believe we have sufficient information to frame the complaint based on additional investigation and the facts we knew at the time and that the survivor can allege,” Hart said.

On the other information sought by the victim, Ruderman wrote that he didn’t need to conduct pre-action discovery of Calabrese’s former co-workers or supervisors because the information he already had was sufficient for a complaint. She rejected the claim that his case would be undermined by delaying discovery.

The archdiocese, meanwhile, has already said they’re preserving all relevant documents and information related to cases of child sex abuse, so Ruderman said she didn’t need to compel them to do so before the suit is filed.

Ruderman also denied the victim’s request to proceed in the lawsuit under a pseudonym. He had argued, according to the decision, that Calabrese would be able to figure out his identity based on past claims related to incidents involving the victim’s family. His identity, even through the petition, had not been revealed to neither the court nor Calabrese.

But even if Calabrese would be able to guess the victim’s true identity, Ruderman wrote, the church may not have the same information and would therefore be put at a disadvantage in the litigation.

“To allow petitioner to proceed without respondents ever knowing his true identity would be highly prejudicial to respondents’ ability to defend themselves against these claims as they would be unable to connect their acts to any specific persons,” Ruderman wrote.

She also rejected a response to the planned lawsuit by Calabrese, who argued that the court can’t assert jurisdiction over him because he’s no longer a resident of New York state. The victim alleged he was sexually abused decades ago in New York. His current residence is irrelevant to those claims, Ruderman wrote.

“Petitioner alleges that he was sexually molested by Calabrese in New York State,” Ruderman wrote. “The fact that Calabrese no longer resides within the confines of the state does not defeat its jurisdiction over him.”

Calabrese is represented in the litigation by Benjamin Allee, a partner at Yankwitt in White Plains. Allee was not immediately available for comment Monday.

The archdiocese is represented by Joanne Filiberti and Peter James Johnson from Leahey and Johnson in Manhattan. They deferred comment to the church, which did not immediately comment on the decision.

It’s not the first time Ruderman has evaluated a pre-action request under the Child Victims Act. She rejected a different victim’s request for pre-action discovery and disclosure last month in a planned lawsuit against Edward Flanagan, a member of the clergy at Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers in Westchester County. The reasoning in her decision was the same.

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