In a state that has learned, through painful and protracted scandal, to listen to those who come forward with whispers of old wounds, a veteran lawmaker is demanding the country now heed a most disturbing allegation.
State Senator Joe Vitale, a Democrat from Middlesex who has spent years shepherding laws to lift the statute of limitations for victims of childhood sexual abuse, called Tuesday for an immediate investigation into allegations that President Donald Trump raped and abused minors.
The call, pointed and unambiguous, draws a direct line from New Jersey’s hard-won legal reforms to a national figure now implicated in newly unsealed court documents related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“Any allegation of child sexual abuse in our State deserves a full and complete investigation,” said Vitale, who noted that at least one of the allegations against Trump is said to have occurred in New Jersey. “Why? Because in New Jersey, we know that no one is above the law.”
The senator’s statement carries the weight of precedent.
In 2018, he was among the first to demand that the state’s attorney general empanel a grand jury to investigate sexual abuse within New Jersey’s Catholic dioceses, following a devastating Pennsylvania report.
He later championed the 2019 Child Victims Act and its subsequent clarifying amendments, which opened a two-year window for victims of any age to sue their abusers, regardless of when the abuse occurred.
“Their lives have been changed since the day they were raped, and they’ve never improved,” Vitale said of abuse victims in 2018. “It’s a crime against humanity.”
That same moral framework now extends to the highest office.
Vitale’s demand presses against the inertia of national politics, framing the question not as a partisan matter but as a test of a foundational principle his legislation enacted: that time should not shield an alleged perpetrator, and influence should not inoculate them.
“He has already been found civilly liable for sexual abuse of an adult,” said Vitale, referring to a 2023 verdict in a New York case. “He needs to be investigated for the rape and abuse of children.”
The mechanism for such an investigation remains unclear. Vitale urged state attorneys general across the country to act if the U.S. Department of Justice will not.
His position implies that the laws he helped write, designed to confront institutional power and secrecy in churches and schools, must apply with equal force to any individual, regardless of the magnitude of their platform.
The senator’s career, rooted in health and human services policy, has been defined by a focus on vulnerable populations.
His work on the KidCare health program and protections for homeless youth now forms a consistent pattern with his advocacy for abuse survivors.
The transition from investigating dioceses to demanding scrutiny of a former president is, in this context, a logical step rather than a leap.
“We are not protecting children, we are not trusting victims, and we are failing future generations,” his statement concluded.
The allegations referenced by Vitale stem from civil court filings and have not resulted in criminal charges.
Trump has consistently denied all accusations of sexual misconduct. The call for an investigation lands in an election year, ensuring it will be met with both fervent support and sharp dismissal.
A woman using a pseudonym filed a lawsuit in 2016 alleging that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein raped her at a private party in Manhattan in 1994 when she was 13 years old. The suit was filed in California in April 2016, voluntarily dismissed, and then refiled in New York in June and September 2016 before being voluntarily dropped again on November 4, 2016, just days before the presidential election.
Newly released documents related to Jeffrey Epstein include an FBI form detailing this 1994 allegation, which mirrors the claims made in the 2016 lawsuits.
This allegation is separate from the civil suit brought by E. Jean Carroll, in which a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in 2023.
Yet in Trenton, where Vitale’s legislative efforts have permanently altered the calculus of justice for survivors, the statement stands as a stark artifact: a formal demand, etched in the plain language of statute and precedent, asking when a principle applied locally becomes a duty applied nationally.
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