{"id":372486,"date":"2026-10-14T00:22:31","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T00:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/372486\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T00:22:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T00:22:31","slug":"lavine-named-to-panel-to-review-ny-sexual-assault-statutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/372486\/","title":{"rendered":"Lavine named to panel to review NY sexual assault statutes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"Assembly\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Assembly member Charles Lavine (D-North Shore) has been named as part of a panel that will convene before the end of the year to develop legislative recommendations on the state\u2019s sexual assault statutes.<\/p>\n

Office of Assemblymember Charles Lavine<\/p>\n

A panel made up of New York State Assembly members, including one from Long Island, will convene before the end of the year to develop legislative recommendations on the state\u2019s sexual assault statutes in the wake of the Cornell University gang rape case.<\/p>\n

The Assembly members in the working group named by Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) included Charles Lavine (D-Glen Cove). The panel\u2019s primary focus will be to examine issues and perspectives on the state\u2019s sexual assault statutes, according to a statement from Lavine\u2019s office.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The panel was announced on Sept. 30, and comes weeks after a former Cornell University student, known as Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit on Sept. 16, which alleges she was sexually assaulted by multiple Cornell fraternity brothers in 2024.\u00a0Doe named the university, the Chi Phi fraternity and several individuals as defendants in the lawsuit and alleges she was gang raped by several members of the fraternity, according to previously published reports.\u00a0 In legal filings, Doe said she arrived at the fraternity house voluntarily intoxicated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI am deeply troubled by the allegations surrounding the Cornell rape case, particularly the vile attempts by so many to blame the victim,\u201d Lavine said in a statement. \u201cThe voices of crime victims must be listened to. Those responsible must be prosecuted and held accountable. I am honored to have been selected for this profoundly significant task. I thank Speaker Heastie and hope that something positive will come out of this that will help protect the people of New York State.\u201d<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s current sexual assault statutes are defined in Article 130 of the state\u2019s penal law and state that a sex offense is deemed to have occurred if the victim did not consent to engage in sexual acts. The statutes state a person is unable to give consent if they are less than 17 years old, mentally disabled, mentally incapacitated or physically helpless.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to the Syracuse Law Review<\/a>, a person is \u201cmentally incapacitated\u201d when something done without a person\u2019s consent makes the person unable to appraise a situation.\u00a0 A person is \u201cphysically helpless\u201d if the person is unconscious or is physically unable to communicate consent, according to the law review.\u00a0<\/p>\n

New York is also one of 19 states across the country with voluntary intoxication laws, which state that individuals who choose to consume alcohol or drugs are not automatically considered unable to give consent.\u00a0Under state law, someone is only deemed mentally incapacitated if the person was administered an intoxicating substance without the person\u2019s consent.\u00a0The statute also states that if the person became intoxicated voluntarily, the definition of \u201cmentally incapacitated\u201d is no longer applicable.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Assembly member Charles Lavine (D-North Shore) has been named as part of a panel that will convene before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[137166,895,9,11,10,49,51,50,3019,33853],"class_list":["post-372486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-chuck-lavine","tag-governor-kathy-hochul","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-sexual-assault","tag-the-daily"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}