Sexual Abuse Civil Lawsuits: What $14.8 Billion in Settlements and Verdicts Means for Survivors
You are reading this at a hour when most people are asleep. Maybe you have carried what happened for decades — through a childhood that was stolen, through an institution that was supposed to protect you and instead became the place where the harm happened. Maybe you are reading for someone you love who cannot yet read for themselves. What we want you to know before anything else: the law has been changing, and changing in your direction. Since 2003, individuals and institutions have agreed to pay out over $14.875 billion in publicly reported sexual abuse settlements and verdicts to survivors. That number is not a ceiling. It is proof that the wall that used to shut survivors out — the expired statute of limitations, the institutional cover-up, the fear of coming forward — has been cracking, state by state, year by year, in courthouses across the country. And the crack may still be open for you.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are trial lawyers. Ralph Manginello has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court, and before he was a lawyer he was a journalist — someone trained to find the story the institution does not want told. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm, in the rooms where claims like yours are priced, delayed, and devalued — and he now sits on your side of the table, in English or in Spanish. We do not represent any of the survivors or institutions named in the publicly reported cases below. What we do is handle cases like these — cases where an institution failed to protect the person in its care — and we are writing this page so that you understand, clearly and completely, what your rights are, what the evidence looks like, what these cases are worth, and what the first steps are. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting us is free and confidential. And we do not get paid unless we win your case.
The Scale of Institutional Sexual Abuse in America
The settlements and verdicts compiled here — $14.875 billion and counting — are not anomalies. They are the visible portion of a pattern that has repeated across every type of institution this country trusts with its children, its patients, its athletes, and its detained youth. The pattern is always the same: an individual abuser given access to vulnerable people, an institution that received warnings and ignored them or concealed them, and survivors who were silenced — by shame, by power, by the law’s own expiration date — until a legislative window opened and let them speak.
Consider what these numbers represent. A $4.8 billion settlement by Los Angeles County in 2025 resolved approximately 11,000 claims of abuse in juvenile detention centers and foster care facilities dating back to 1959. A $2.46 billion settlement by the Boy Scouts of America in 2023 resolved claims by more than 82,000 men who reported being abused as children — with more than 12,400 survivors over the age of 70 and more than 2,200 over 80, proving that justice is possible even decades after abuse has occurred. A $2.28 billion jury verdict in California in 2023 against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints involved a woman abused by her stepfather from ages 5 to 14, with allegations that Church officials ignored repeated warnings and used intimidation tactics to keep the abuse hidden. Nearly $1 billion in combined settlements went to survivors of sports physician Larry Nassar — $500 million from Michigan State University in 2018, $380 million from USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee in 2021, and $138.7 million from the U.S. Department of Justice in 2024 for the FBI’s failure to act on early warnings.
These are not isolated failures. They are the results of institutional systems that placed reputation, finances, or convenience above the safety of the people in their care. And the law is catching up.
What the Law Says: Your Right to Seek Compensation
Sexual abuse compensation refers to financial support for survivors who were harmed by an abuser or by an institution that failed to protect them. These payouts recognize the profound physical and emotional impact of abuse. Compensation can help cover medical care, prescriptions, and hospital stays; mental health therapy and counseling; lost wages or reduced earning capacity; and emotional pain, trauma, and reduced quality of life.
Survivors can seek compensation through civil lawsuits filed against individuals — such as teachers, clergy, physicians, coaches, or staff — as well as against the organizations that enabled the abuse: school districts, religious institutions, universities, youth organizations, employers, and government agencies. The legal question is never just “who touched you.” It is “who put that person in a position to do it, who knew or should have known, and what did they do — or fail to do — when the warning signs appeared?”
Settlements vs. Verdicts: Two Roads to Resolution
Sexual abuse claims may be resolved in two main ways. A settlement is an agreement between the survivor and the defendant(s) to resolve the case for a set amount of money without going to trial. A trial verdict is the outcome when no settlement is reached and the case proceeds to court, where a judge or jury determines liability and damages.
Settlements often allow survivors to receive compensation sooner and with more privacy. In one publicly reported case, a $1.6 million sex abuse settlement was reached for a client who was assaulted by their doctor just a few months after they first contacted counsel. But settlements can also include institutional concessions beyond money — changes in policies, the release of confidential personnel files, or the implementation of new safeguards — that serve the broader goal of prevention.
Verdicts carry a different power. They are public. They force the institution to answer in open court. And they can include punitive damages — money meant not to compensate but to punish — when the institution’s conduct was especially outrageous. A 2024 New Hampshire jury, for instance, awarded $38 million to a man sexually abused as a teenager while in state custody at a youth services center, including $20 million in punitive damages reflecting the severity of the trauma and the state’s responsibility.
The Theories of Liability: How Institutions Are Held Accountant
Every sexual abuse civil lawsuit against an institution rests on one or more legal theories that connect the institution’s own choices to the harm done to the survivor. These are not abstract legal concepts. They are the specific arguments that force an institution to answer for what it did and what it failed to do.
Negligent Supervision
An institution that places a person in a position of authority over vulnerable individuals — a priest over children, a physician over patients, a coach over athletes, a staff member over detainees — has a legal duty to supervise that person adequately. When the institution fails to monitor, oversee, or restrict the abuser’s access, and abuse results, the institution is liable for its own failure. The question is never just “did the abuser do it?” but “did the institution exercise the supervision that a reasonable organization in its position would have exercised?”
Negligent Retention
Even more powerful than negligent supervision is the claim that an institution knew about the danger and kept the person anyway. At UCLA, Dr. James Heaps was allowed to continue practicing for 35 years despite complaints. At Ohio State University, an independent investigation found that university personnel were aware of complaints about Dr. Richard Strauss’s conduct as early as 1979 — nearly two decades before his tenure ended. At the University of Michigan, complaints about Dr. Robert Anderson spanned the 1960s to 2003. In each case, the institution had the information to act and chose not to. Negligent retention is the theory that turns “we didn’t know” into “you knew, and you let him keep going.”
Failure to Protect / Breach of Duty of Care
Entities legally responsible for the safety of children, patients, students, or detainees owe a duty to implement reasonable safeguards and respond to known dangers. This duty is especially acute in custodial settings — juvenile detention centers, foster care homes, state-run youth facilities — where the people in the institution’s care cannot leave. The $4.8 billion Los Angeles County settlement involved accounts of physical and sexual violence by staff members and other youth, along with allegations that officials ignored reports of abuse and failed to protect those in their care. When the state has custody of a child, the state’s duty to protect that child is at its highest.
Institutional Cover-Up and Concealment
Some of the largest verdicts and settlements in this area involve not just passive failure but active concealment — institutions that hid abuse, intimidated victims, protected perpetrators, or moved known abusers to new positions where they had fresh access to victims. The $2.28 billion Mormon Church verdict involved allegations that Church officials ignored repeated warnings and used intimidation tactics to keep the abuse hidden. Catholic dioceses across the country have been forced to release confidential personnel files of accused clergy as part of settlement agreements — documents that highlighted years of failures to remove accused priests. When an institution goes beyond negligence into deliberate concealment, the case moves from simple compensation into the territory of punitive damages — and the numbers reflect it.
Violations of Mandatory Reporting Laws
Mandatory child abuse reporting statutes exist in all 50 states and impose reporting obligations on designated professionals and institutions. A teacher, a physician, a clergy member, a social worker, a coach — these are mandated reporters. When an institution fails to report suspected child abuse as required by state law, that failure can constitute negligence per se — meaning the violation of the statute itself is evidence of negligence, and in some jurisdictions, negligence as a matter of law. The institutional failure to report is not just a regulatory violation. It is the legal bridge between the abuser’s conduct and the institution’s liability.
Civil Rights Claims for Government-Run Facilities
When the abuse occurred in a government-run facility — a juvenile detention center, a state-run youth services center, a public school — a separate and powerful legal theory may apply. Under federal civil rights law (42 U.S.C. § 1983), a person acting under government authority who deprives someone of their constitutional rights can be held liable in a civil action. For government-run detention facilities, the failure to protect individuals in state custody from known harm can be a constitutional violation. The municipality itself — the county, the state agency — can be held liable when the harm flowed from an official policy or an unwritten custom so routine it became the real rule. This is the theory that drove the LA County juvenile detention settlement and the New Hampshire youth facility verdict.
“No settlement will ever magically restore hundreds of stolen childhoods, betrayed psyches, shattered self-esteem and damaged relationships. But a settlement can be an important first step in healing, exposure, accountability and prevention.”
That statement — from a survivor advocacy organization — captures the dual purpose of these cases. Compensation is real and necessary. But so is the public record. So is the forced release of documents. So is the institutional change that follows when a jury or a settlement makes the cost of silence higher than the cost of safety.
The Statute of Limitations: Lookback Windows and Revived Claims
For decades, the single greatest barrier to justice for survivors of sexual abuse was the statute of limitations — the legal deadline by which a lawsuit must be filed. In most states, that deadline ran from the date of the abuse itself, which meant that a child abused at age 8 by a priest, a coach, or a doctor had lost the right to sue before they were old enough to understand what had happened to them, let alone process it enough to come forward.
That landscape has changed dramatically. Many states have now extended or eliminated statutes of limitations for childhood sexual abuse. Several have enacted temporary revival windows — periods during which previously time-barred claims can be filed, regardless of how long ago the abuse occurred. California’s legislative framework has been among the most aggressive nationally, enabling survivors to pursue decades-old claims and driving the majority of the largest settlements in the compilation above. Minnesota’s Child Victims Act opened a three-year window that eliminated the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse victims, triggering the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis bankruptcy and $210 million settlement. A 2026 California jury verdict of $59.25 million against Bill Cosby for a 1972 assault was made possible by a state law that created a lookback window for sexual abuse cases, allowing survivors to pursue claims that were previously barred.
The critical point: these windows may have already closed or may remain open, depending on your state. Survivors should confirm the current filing deadline in their specific state immediately, because the difference between an open window and a closed one is the difference between a case and no case. Some states impose an outer deadline (a statute of repose) that can cut off a claim even before discovery. The discovery rule — which starts the clock when the survivor connects the harm to the abuse, rather than when the abuse occurred — may extend the deadline in some jurisdictions, but it is not universal and does not defeat a repose statute.
For claims against the federal government — such as the $138.7 million DOJ settlement for the FBI’s failure to act on Nassar warnings — a separate and unforgiving federal claims process applies, with a two-year deadline to present an administrative claim and then only six months to file suit after denial.
We cannot tell you on this page whether your specific deadline has passed, because the answer depends on your state, the type of institution, your age at the time of the abuse, and the current status of any revival window. What we can tell you is this: the single most important thing you can do is find out, today, whether your window is still open. That phone call is free.
Who Can Be Sued: The Institutional Defendant Map
One of the most important strategic decisions in a sexual abuse civil lawsuit is identifying every entity that bears legal responsibility. The abuser is one defendant. The institution is often a stack of defendants — each with a different role, a different insurance policy, and a different argument for why it should not be held accountable.
Religious Institutions
Catholic dioceses and archdioceses have been the most visible institutional defendants in sexual abuse litigation, and for good reason. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles alone has paid more than $1.5 billion in total settlements — $740 million previously plus the $880 million resolution in 2024. The Archdiocese of San Francisco’s proposed $395 million settlement in June 2026, resolving 530 lawsuits, is believed to be the largest ever reached by a Catholic diocese in bankruptcy. Many dioceses have sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as a mechanism to resolve claims — not because they are broke, but because bankruptcy creates a structured process for compensating survivors while capping the institution’s total exposure. The Diocese of San Diego was accused of using delay tactics during its bankruptcy proceedings before ultimately settling 144 claims for $198.1 million.
Universities and Healthcare Institutions
When the abuser is a campus physician — as at USC, UCLA, the University of Michigan, and Ohio State — the university faces liability not just for the physician’s conduct but for its own failure to act on complaints, its failure to supervise, and its failure to protect students and patients. USC’s settlement exceeded $1 billion when combined with an earlier class action. UCLA reached approximately $690 million in multiple settlements. The University of Michigan resolved approximately 1,050 claims for $490 million. Ohio State has now committed more than $161 million to resolve claims related to Dr. Richard Strauss, with an independent investigation confirming at least 177 victims and university awareness dating to 1979.
Youth Organizations
The Boy Scouts of America settlement — $2.46 billion resolving claims by more than 82,000 men — exposed decades of misconduct and cover-ups that allowed known predators to remain in positions of authority. Penn State University paid more than $100 million to at least 33 survivors of Jerry Sandusky, who used his role at the university and his youth charity to gain access to vulnerable boys. Concerns about Sandusky’s behavior were reported to university officials long before his arrest.
Government and Custodial Facilities
Los Angeles County’s $4.8 billion settlement — the largest single sexual abuse settlement in U.S. history — resolved claims involving abuse in juvenile detention centers and foster care facilities dating back to 1959. The State of New Hampshire faces more than 1,100 lawsuits filed by former residents alleging decades of systemic abuse at the state-run Sununu Youth Services Center. These cases involve a government’s direct failure to protect people in its custody — the most vulnerable relationship the state can have with a human being.
The Corporate Structure Shell Game
Institutions do not make it easy to identify who actually holds the money. A university may operate through a medical group, a board of trustees, and a self-insurance trust. A Catholic diocese may separate its operating entity from its real estate holdings. A youth organization may have a national charter and thousands of local councils, each with its own insurance. Naming the wrong entity — or failing to name a layer of the corporate stack — can mean leaving the deepest pocket out of the case entirely. Part of what we do is map the institutional structure, identify every entity with legal responsibility and financial resources, and make sure the case reaches every layer.
The Evidence: What Records Exist and How Fast They Disappear
The proof in an institutional sexual abuse case lives in documents the institution created, controlled, and — in many cases — would prefer to destroy. Knowing what records exist, who holds them, and how fast they can legally vanish is the difference between a case that can be proven and one that cannot.
Personnel Files of Accused Abusers
When an institution employed the abuser, it was required to maintain a personnel file — and in many cases, that file contains the most damning evidence in the case: prior complaints, internal investigations, disciplinary actions, performance reviews, and any documentation of the institution’s knowledge of the abuser’s conduct. The 2004 settlement with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County, California, included the diocese consenting to release confidential personnel files of accused clergy after judicial review — because survivors understood that those documents were where the truth lived.
Who holds it: The institution’s HR department, diocesan records office, university office of compliance, or equivalent. How fast it can disappear: There is no uniform federal retention requirement for personnel files of church employees or private youth organization staff. State law varies. Some records are retained for decades; others are destroyed on shorter schedules. The preservation letter — sent the moment a case is contemplated — is what freezes these records before they can quietly vanish.
Internal Investigation and Complaint Records
Every institution that received a complaint about an abuser should have generated a record of that complaint. The independent investigation at Ohio State found that university personnel were aware of complaints about Strauss as early as 1979. At UCLA, survivors claim the university ignored complaints and allowed Heaps to continue practicing. These internal records — complaint logs, investigation files, grievance records, email chains discussing the abuser’s conduct — are the documentary spine of the negligent retention and failure-to-protect theories.
Who holds it: The institution’s internal compliance office, general counsel’s office, Title IX office (for universities), or equivalent. How fast it can disappear: Internal investigation files are subject to the institution’s own retention policies, which can be short. Email and internal communications may be purged on routine IT schedules. A litigation hold letter directed to the institution and its IT department is the first line of defense.
Mandatory Reporting Compliance Records
In all 50 states, designated professionals and institutions are required to report suspected child abuse. The record of whether a report was made — or was not — is itself evidence. A missing mandatory report, where one was legally required, is not just a regulatory violation. It is the proof that the institution knew and chose silence.
Who holds it: The institution, the state child welfare agency, and law enforcement. How fast it can disappear: State agency records are retained per state retention schedules, which vary. The institutional side of the reporting record may be destroyed on shorter cycles. Request both sides early.
Insurance Policies and Coverage Towers
Institutions that face sexual abuse claims typically have layers of insurance — commercial general liability, excess/umbrella, directors and officers, and in some cases, self-insured retentions or captives. For religious institutions in bankruptcy, the insurance tower is often the primary source of recovery. For universities, self-insured retention layers sit beneath commercial towers. For government entities, sovereign immunity caps and tort claims act procedures may limit recovery — but the limits are often far higher than survivors assume.
Who holds it: The institution and its insurance carriers. How fast it can disappear: Insurance policies themselves are typically retained for long periods, but coverage positions and reservations of rights can be issued quickly after notice of a claim. Identifying the full coverage tower early is essential to maximizing recovery.
Physical and Forensic Evidence
In cases involving recent abuse, physical evidence — forensic medical examinations (rape kits), DNA, clothing, photographs of injuries — may exist and must be preserved immediately. In cases involving decades-old abuse, physical evidence is often gone, and the case rests on documentary evidence, witness testimony, and the survivor’s own account. This is why the institutional records are so critical: they are the substitute for physical evidence in cases where the abuse occurred years or decades ago.
Surveillance and Facility Records
For abuse that occurred in institutional settings — detention centers, schools, medical facilities — surveillance footage, key-card access logs, visitor logs, and facility security records may exist. These records are subject to the institution’s own retention policies and can be overwritten on short cycles. A preservation demand directed to the facility’s security department is essential.
What These Cases Are Worth: Settlements and Verdicts
Every case is different, and the value of a sexual abuse civil lawsuit depends on multiple factors: the age of the survivor at the time of the abuse, the severity and duration of the abuse, the long-term emotional and physical impact, whether there was an institutional cover-up, the strength of the evidence, and the resources and insurance coverage of the defendant institution. What follows are publicly reported settlement and verdict figures that provide context for what these cases can be worth. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The Largest Sexual Abuse Settlements and Verdicts
The following are among the top publicly reported sexual abuse settlements and verdicts in the United States:
- $4.8 billion — Los Angeles County (2025), resolving approximately 11,000 claims of abuse in juvenile detention and foster care facilities. Payouts range between $100,000 and $3 million per person.
- $2.46 billion — Boy Scouts of America (2023), resolving claims by more than 82,000 men. Survivors may qualify for payouts between $3,500 and $2.7 million depending on severity and victim age.
- $2.28 billion — Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (2023, California jury verdict), later settled its portion for $1 million while denying wrongdoing.
- Nearly $1 billion — Larry Nassar survivors, including $500 million from Michigan State University (2018), $380 million from USA Gymnastics/USOPC (2021), and $138.7 million from the U.S. DOJ (2024).
- $880 million — Archdiocese of Los Angeles (2024), resolving 1,353 clergy sexual abuse claims. If divided evenly, approximately $650,000 per survivor before legal fees.
- $852 million — University of Southern California (2021), more than 700 women abused by campus gynecologist Dr. George Tyndall. Combined with an earlier class action, total exceeded $1 billion.
- $690 million — UCLA (2021-2023), multiple settlements with former patients of Dr. James Heaps.
- $490 million — University of Michigan (2022), approximately 1,050 survivors of Dr. Robert Anderson.
- $395 million — Archdiocese of San Francisco (June 2026), 530 lawsuits. Approximately $745,000 per claimant before attorney fees.
- $210 million — Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis (2018), 450 survivors.
- $198 million — Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego (2007), 144 claims.
- $161 million — Ohio State University (combined, 2026), approximately hundreds of former students abused by Dr. Richard Strauss.
- $100 million — Penn State University / Jerry Sandusky (by 2014), at least 33 survivors, averaging approximately $2.8 million per survivor.
- $100 million — Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County, California (2004), 87 survivors.
- $85 million — Diocese of Covington, Kentucky (2006), 361 claims. Individual amounts ranged from $5,000 to $450,000.
- $85 million — Archdiocese of Boston (2003), more than 500 lawsuits. Survivors received between $80,000 and $300,000 each.
- $59 million — Bill Cosby (2026, California jury verdict), a woman assaulted in 1972.
- $38 million — New Hampshire Youth Detention Center (2024, jury verdict), including $20 million in punitive damages.
Factors That Influence Case Value
Type and severity of abuse. More severe or repeated instances of violence often lead to higher settlement amounts. Courts may also award punitive damages in these cases to hold perpetrators or institutions accountable.
Long-term effects. Survivors who face lasting trauma — post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, substance use, suicidal ideation — may be entitled to greater compensation. Settlement amounts often account for both immediate treatment costs and the long-term expenses of therapy, medical care, and lost earning capacity.
Victim’s age. Childhood sexual abuse cases typically result in larger settlements. Because minors are especially vulnerable, the long-term harm and recovery needs are often greater. When the abuse occurs at an institution legally responsible for a child’s safety, the stakes are even higher.
Duration of abuse. When abuse occurs over many years — especially in churches, schools, boarding schools, or health care settings — settlement amounts tend to increase. Ongoing abuse that reflects institutional negligence may also result in punitive damages.
Strength of evidence. Documentation, witness testimony, and law enforcement or institutional records can strengthen a lawsuit. Strong evidence may increase the likelihood of a successful outcome, encouraging defendants to settle rather than risk a public trial.
Institutional accountability. If organizations ignored complaints, concealed misconduct, or failed to protect victims, additional compensation may be awarded. These damages not only raise the settlement amount but also help ensure institutions are held responsible for their failures.
The Medicine of Trauma: Why the Injury Is Real
One of the cruelest aspects of sexual abuse litigation is that the most devastating injuries are the ones that cannot be seen on an X-ray. The defense in these cases will routinely argue that the survivor’s psychological injuries are exaggerated, pre-existing, or fabricated for money. The science answers every one of those arguments — and the science is not in dispute.
PTSD Is a Diagnosis, Not an Opinion
Post-traumatic stress disorder is not a label a lawyer picks. It is a formal medical diagnosis with eight separate requirements under the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), and a survivor has to meet every one: the traumatic event itself, the nightmares and flashbacks that will not stop, the avoidance of places and people that trigger memories, the negative changes in mood and thinking, the alterations in arousal and reactivity — hypervigilance, exaggerated startle, sleep disruption — symptoms that last more than a month and that wreck the ability to work or be close to anyone. This is a clinical diagnosis, not a complaint.
Rape Is the Single Most PTSD-Generating Event There Is
In the largest epidemiological study of its kind — the National Comorbidity Survey — researchers found that of all traumatic events measured, rape carried the highest conditional probability of producing PTSD for both men and women. Not combat. Not natural disasters. Not car wrecks. Rape. When an institution ignores a known danger and a person is sexually abused, the lifelong psychological harm that follows is not speculative. It is the most predictable outcome in trauma medicine.
“She Didn’t Fight Back” Is a Symptom, Not a Defense
One of the most damaging myths about sexual abuse is that a “real” victim fights back. The science says the opposite. In clinical studies, the majority of rape survivors experienced tonic immobility — an involuntary, brainstem-mediated paralysis where the body locks up, the muscles freeze, and the voice will not come. It is a survival reflex, like a flinch. It is not consent. It is not a choice. And the survivors who froze are the ones who go on to suffer PTSD at far higher rates.
The Lifetime Cost of Sexual Abuse
Federal public-health researchers have estimated the lifetime cost of a single rape at more than $122,000 per survivor — and that figure, calculated in 2014 dollars, only counts the things you can put on an invoice: therapy, doctor visits, lost work. It does not begin to measure the nightmares, the marriage that strained, the front door the survivor cannot walk through alone, the years of education that were interrupted, the career that was never started. A complete damages model in a sexual abuse case includes life-care planning for ongoing mental health treatment, vocational and earning-capacity loss, and the full human cost of what was taken.
The Proof Problem: Invisible Does Not Mean Fake
Because PTSD and complex trauma are invisible — no scan proves them, no blood test detects them — the defense will argue the injury is not real. The counter lives in the medical record built from day one: the first therapy intake, the PTSD checklist score, the treating clinician’s diagnosis, the neuropsychological testing, the testimony of people who knew the person before. Contemporaneous mental-health records — the closer to the event, the more powerful — pre-date any “litigation motive” accusation. And the diagnostic instruments used (the CAPS-5, the PCL-5) are validated, structured clinical tools, not self-reported feelings. The injury is invisible. The proof is not.
The Institutional Defense Playbook: What to Expect
Institutions that face sexual abuse claims do not roll over. They defend, they delay, and they deploy a predictable set of strategies designed to minimize what they pay and maximize what the survivor gives up to get it. Here is what to expect — and here is how each play is countered.
Play 1: “The Statute of Limitations Has Expired”
This is the institution’s first and favorite move. The argument: too much time has passed, the deadline has passed, the case is barred. The counter: the landscape of statutes of limitations has been changing rapidly. Many states have enacted lookback windows that revive previously time-barred claims. Some have extended or eliminated SOLs for childhood sexual abuse entirely. The discovery rule may apply in some jurisdictions, starting the clock when the survivor connected the harm to the abuse. The first question is never “has the deadline passed?” — it is “what is the current deadline in this state, and has a revival window opened or closed?” That question must be answered by someone who knows the current law, not by the institution’s lawyer.
Play 2: “We Didn’t Know”
The institution claims it had no knowledge of the abuser’s conduct. The counter: the personnel files, the complaint records, the internal investigation files, the mandatory reporting compliance records, and the testimony of former employees and fellow survivors. In case after case — Ohio State, UCLA, the University of Michigan, the Catholic dioceses — the institution’s own records showed awareness long before the abuse stopped. The preservation letter that freezes those records is the first move. The deposition where the institution’s safety director explains those records under oath is where “we didn’t know” becomes “you knew, and here is the document that proves it.”