Abuse survivors accuse LA Co of victim blaming, seek AG’s help

In the months since Los Angeles County agreed to pay $4 billion to settle thousands of sexual abuse claims linked to its juvenile halls and foster homes, sexual abuse survivors believe the narrative has flipped to victim blaming – and they’re asking Attorney General Rob Bonta to do something about it.

Citing failed bills this year by Sens. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) and John Laird (D-Santa Cruz) to protect vulnerable public entities in the wake of the settlement as well as a recent Los Angeles Times reporting into a law firm that allegedly paid people to sue the county, five survivor groups wrote Bonta this month asking that his office launch a wide-ranging investigation into the systemic causes of decades of sexual abuse at the county’s three juvenile  detention centers, in part to refocus statewide dialog on the victims.

“Enough is enough. The LA County spin must stop and the real facts must be brought into public view,” wrote Caroline Heldman, professor of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at Occidental College and the president and CEO of Stand With Survivors, in the Oct. 16 letter.

Heldman told Bonta that her call to action is also endorsed by the survivor advocacy organizations Global Hope 365, the Zero Abuse Project, the Female Composer Safety League and Survivors.org, formerly known as Promoting Awareness | Victim Empowerment or PAVE.

“The public needs to know who was really responsible for this systemic sexual abuse of minors and its coverup going back decades,” Heldman wrote. “We know it’s not the victims themselves.”

Heldman’s letter represents just the latest twist in a slowly unfolding drama that has pitted sexual abuse survivors against county finances.

“Enough is enough. The LA County spin must stop and the real facts must be brought into public view.”

LA County announced the historic settlement of thousands of sexual abuse cases in April, after it became the target of a flood of claims thanks to 2019’s AB 218 by then-Assemblymember Lorenza Gonzalez, now the head of the California Federation of Labor Unions.

AB 218 opened a special, three-year window where the survivors of childhood sexual abuse could file civil lawsuits over incidents that were past California’s traditional statute of limitations. The legislation allowed victims to file claims on events that occurred decades in the past, opening numerous institutions within the state to unfathomable liability.

Los Angeles County was hit especially hard due to what has been described as hellish conditions at its juvenile facilities dating back to 1959. Immediately upon announcing the settlement, the largest in U.S. history, county officials warned it could affect public services.

Indeed, as far back September 2024, months before the settlement was even announced, seven representatives from the county, including employees of the Office of County Counsel, the county’s contract lobbying firm Actum and even county COO Joe Nicchitta, met with this Capitol Weekly reporter on a video call to explain how child sexual abuse claims threaten county services not only in L.A. but across the state.

Legislative response
On March 26, nine days before the county disclosed the settlement, Allen (D-Santa Monica) swapped out spot bill language in SB 832 for text that would change the rules in California for filing civil lawsuits against public entities for child sexual abuse.

The bill would raise the standard of evidence for such cases from preponderance of the evidence (greater than 50 percent chance the claim is true) to clear and convincing (85 to 90 percent) and automatically dismiss any cases that rely solely upon a plaintiff’s testimony without any corroborating evidence.

SB 832 would change the law only for child sexual assault lawsuits filed against public entities. Child sex assault lawsuits filed against corporations, nonprofits or individuals, or other lawsuits filed against public entities, would remain unchanged.

The bill has never been heard in committee. Its first hearing, scheduled to be held by the Senate Judiciary Committee, was cancelled at Allen’s request in April.

On April 28, Laird, D-Santa Cruz, amended SB 577, which already sought to limit the refiling of select childhood sexual assault claims, to include elements of Allen’s bill to restrict lawsuits against public entities for child sex abuse. That bill failed to get out of the Legislature before the end of session.

On September 10, Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry  (D-Winters) ordered the bill to the inactive file.

Less than a month later, Times reporter Rebecca Ellis published a blockbuster investigation that found the Downtown L.A. Law Group paid plaintiffs to sue the county over alleged abuse at juvenile detention centers.

Ellis got the story by spending two weeks outside the county social services office in South Los Angeles, where she encountered a steady stream of people applying for food stamps and cash aid. She spoke with seven people who told her they were paid to sue the county for sexual abuse.

Less than a week after the story ran, Ellis reported that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to investigate possible misconduct by “legal representatives” in response to her story.

In her letter to Bonta, Heldman wrote that the survivor organizations agree that even if one sexual abuse case against the county was filed by an unscrupulous lawyer, “it should be fully investigated and those responsible held accountable.”

But Heldman also made clear the organizations are unhappy with how the issue is being portrayed.

What did LA County know?
Heldman wrote that while there appears to have been “little done prior to this settlement agreement to determine the causes and potential solutions to the decades long systemic sexual abuse of minors in the three LA country juvenile detention facilities,” the county mobilized to spin the story to its advantage.

“(S)tarting months before the announced settlement, the media relations/public affairs office for LA County, presumably with the knowledge and support of County Counsel, the CEO, and the entire Board of Supervisors, launched an aggressive media strategy to shop articles to many publications that in essence ‘blamed the victims’ for the cost to the County taxpayers,” Heldman wrote to Bonta. “That strategy continues to this day.”

She added, “(O)ur request to your office for a broader investigation is driven by knowing that the real issue to be investigated is not only why there were so many child sexual predators allowed to roam free for decades in these three facilities, but also the classic questions of:

“What did LA County know about such sexual predators, when did they know it, and, most importantly, what did the County do about it?”

The questions are bold and appear on their own line in the letter, underscoring the depth of the accusations.

In fact, as part of the request for an investigation, Heldman specifically asks that Bonta look into “signed secrecy agreements” that she says could have been used to cover up sexual abuse in county facilities.

“We fear the answers could be what likely most everyone suspects,” Heldman wrote. “That is, LA County knew long ago about child sexual predators employed in those three juvenile detention facilities, turned a blind eye to it for decades, and insisted on secrecy agreements as part of any settlement as claims arose one by one over the last few decades.”

Heldman also notes that “the survivor community nationwide” is frustrated that LA County officials have “spent taxpayer’s dollars spinning a false narrative that the survivors who have filed legitimate claims against those three facilities during the three year window provided by AB218 are somehow to blame for LA County’s $4 Billion settlement of those cases.”

(W)e of-course [sic] hope on behalf of the entire nationwide survivor community that the CA State Legislature will end its game of ‘blaming the victims’ for their sexual abuse inside those facilities and, based on that blame, introducing hostile legislation attempting to roll back hard fought survivor rights achieved over the past 30+ years,” she wrote.

Heldman closes the letter asking that Bonta “seriously consider our request,” writing, “Only your office is capable of conducting a truly independent investigation into the true cause of the systemic sexual abuse of minors, and its coverup, in the three LA County owned and operated juvenile detention facilities going back decades.”

Nearly $1 billion more
Heldman told Capitol Weekly that the letter was emailed to the attorney general on the day it was dated, Oct. 16. The very next day, LA County announced it had reached an additional tentative settlement on AB 218 cases for another $828 million, bringing the total payout to nearly $5 billion.

Neither Allen nor Bonta responded to Capitol Weekly’s requests for comment. Laird provided a statement in which he said he was disappointed that SB 577 did not advance this year.

“I had hoped to protect survivors access to justice while finding some fiscal relief to local governments,” he said.

Laird said for seven months he “worked in public,” engaging in “extensive dialogue with my colleagues, survivor advocacy organizations, public entities, and other stakeholder.” Some conversations, he said, were “very difficult.”

“Despite these months of hard work, it was just impossible to balance these interests to get to a successful outcome this year,” he said.  “Hopefully the parties will continue the conversations to see if there is a path toward these goals in the next legislative session,” in 2026.

“I had hoped to protect survivors access to justice while finding some fiscal relief to local governments.”

LA county’s chief executive office also provided a statement, saying that the county “consistently expressed strong support for those harmed by childhood sexual assault while also publicly articulating the very real impacts that these settlements will have on municipal budgets and services to the public.”

The statement said that the county has “enacted systemic safeguards to protect young people in its care” over the past 25 years, with a link to a document summarizing county forms and policy changes to address the sexual abuse of minors. The county added that more reforms and changes are on the way, including:

• A new hotline and website to be up and running by the end of the year to report county employees for alleged child sexual abuse;
• An “enhanced countywide Zero Tolerance policy” that the county said will ensure it takes “immediate action to the fullest extent of the law” when child sexual abuse is substantiated;
• Mandatory countywide child sexual abuse training; and
• Civil Service Rule reforms to address “egregious conduct.”

“The County has a duty to make sure the public understands the unintended consequences of AB 218, and to pursue common sense reforms that reduce the potential for fraud by unscrupulous actors and protect the very budgets that our vulnerable populations rely on,” the statement said. “It is wrong to suggest that bringing these issues to public attention is in any way intended to diminish the experiences of those who were victimized by these reprehensible acts.”

Survivor suspicions abound
Heldman also spoke with Capitol Weekly about the genesis of the letter.

“I think it’s telling that they’re paying out $5 billion and we still don’t know the scope and extent of the problem,” she said. “What we decided as this coalition of survivors is that we want to know who knew about this widespread, systemic issue of sexual violence in youth detention centers in LA. Who knew about it? When did they know about it? We would like to know.”

Heldman said the organizations went to attorney general because they’ve lost trust in Los Angeles County leaders, including the Board of Supervisors, due to what they perceived as both a lack of transparency on the causes of the abuse in their juvenile facilities and a coordinated media campaign to shift the focus away from survivor justice to things like potential bad actors in the plaintiffs’ bar.

“We don’t have assurance that the problem has been properly addressed,” she said, “and given the fact that it’s been going on for at least four decades that doesn’t inspire confidence. We need more from the Board of Supervisors.”

Heldman said the survivor groups want to see fraudulent claims rooted out to ensure money only goes to bona fide survivors. But they’re discouraged that “the Board of Supervisors and others are spending resources really trying to get the public to focus on what may be a small number of bad attorneys,” she said.

“Survivor advocacy groups across the nation are looking at this and wondering why a PR campaign is shifting public attention away from where it should be,” she said.

Heldman said they have not heard back from Bonta, but she hopes he “would see the need for transparency just as we do, not only to understand what happened for the past four decades, but also to ensure that it’s not happening today.”

But if he doesn’t respond, she promised survivors will not go away.

“We will definitely put as much pressure as we can on public officials to not continue the coverup,” Heldman said.

Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that SB 832 would cap damages for child sexual abuse lawsuits against public entities at $750,000, no matter the facts of the case. We regret the error.