What Can You Actually Win? Understanding Damages in an NYC Sexual Assault Civil Lawsuit.
When survivors consider filing a civil lawsuit, one of their first questions is often: “What am I actually trying to get from this?”
To some, it’s accountability — making an institution answer for what they allowed to happen. For others, it’s financial support to cover ongoing therapy, lost income, or medical bills caused by the trauma. Still, for many, it’s both.
Here’s what you can recover under the NYC Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Law
Compensatory Damages
These are designed to compensate you for real losses and harm you have suffered. They include:
Medical and Psychological Treatment
Past and future costs for therapy, psychiatric care, medication, and other treatment directly related to the trauma of the abuse.
Lost Income and Earning Capacity
If the trauma affected your ability to work — whether immediately after the abuse, or over a lifetime — you can recover for lost wages and reduced earning capacity.
Pain and Suffering
This is often the largest component of a sexual assault civil verdict. It covers the physical pain, emotional anguish, fear, humiliation, loss of enjoyment of life, and ongoing psychological harm resulting from the abuse.
Other Economic Losses
Any other out-of-pocket expenses caused by the abuse — including relocation costs, costs of additional security, or other harm-related expenses.
Punitive Damages
Where the defendant’s conduct was especially egregious — for example, an institution that knowingly covered up serial abuse — courts can award punitive damages on top of compensatory damages. These are designed to punish the wrongdoer and deter similar conduct in the future.
What About Suing Institutions?
When the defendant is an institution rather than an individual, the potential for significant recovery is often much greater. Large organizations — hospitals, school systems, the City of New York — have resources that individual abusers typically do not. Institutional defendants may settle cases to avoid the reputational damage of a public trial.
This is one reason why the 2026 amendment’s explicit inclusion of institutions as defendants matters so much. Many survivors whose abusers are deceased, poor, or unreachable can still achieve meaningful accountability and compensation through institutional defendants.
The Bigger Picture: Why Civil Justice Matters
Criminal prosecution, when it happens at all, results in a sentence for the abuser. It puts nothing in your pocket and gives you no platform to tell your story. Civil litigation is different — it centers you, compensates you, and forces institutions to reckon with what they did or failed to prevent. Many survivors describe the civil litigation process — even when difficult — as part of their healing. Being believed, having your story documented in court filings, watching an institution pay for its failures: these things matter.
You deserve accountability. You deserve compensation. And you deserve an attorney who treats your case — and your life — with the seriousness it requires. Schedule a consultation with The Law Firm of Andrew M. Stengel, P.C. by emailing info@stengellaw.com or by using our scheduler at https://calendly.com/stengellaw.
