When a Teacher Betrays Trust: Your Rights After Sexual Assault in a Massachusetts School
You learned what happened to your child, and the ground under your family shifted. Maybe it was a disclosure — a sentence that stopped your heart. Maybe it was a call from the school, or from police, or from another parent who heard something. The teacher who was supposed to protect your child is now facing criminal charges, has pleaded not guilty, and the criminal system will grind forward at its own pace. But that system is not your only option, and it is not your fastest one.
What we want you to know — right now, before you read another word — is that the criminal case and the civil case are two separate fights. The criminal court decides whether the teacher goes to prison. The civil court decides whether the school that hired that teacher, supervised that teacher, and put your child in that teacher’s care answers for what happened. The criminal prosecutor does not represent your family. The criminal process does not pay for your child’s therapy, their lost future, or the years of harm that follow a child who was betrayed by an adult they were told to trust.
A teacher in Massachusetts has been accused of child rape and has pleaded not guilty. We are not that family’s lawyers, and we take no position on that specific case. But we handle sexual assault civil cases, and the questions that family is asking right now are the same questions every family in this situation asks: Can we sue the school? How long do we have? What is the case worth? What evidence do we need to save before it disappears? We are going to answer every one of those questions, and we are going to do it in plain English, because you have enough to carry without decoding legal jargon at 2 a.m.
Can You Sue the School When a Teacher Sexually Assaults a Student?
Yes. In Massachusetts, a school that fails to properly screen, supervise, or respond to warning signs about a teacher can be held civilly liable for the harm that follows — even though the school did not commit the assault itself. The legal theory is called negligent supervision (or negligent hiring, or negligent retention, depending on when the failure occurred), and it is the backbone of every institutional sexual assault case.
The claim is not that the school assaulted your child. The claim is that the school had a duty to protect your child from a foreseeable danger, that it failed in that duty, and that the failure is what allowed the assault to happen. If the school hired a teacher without a proper background check, if it ignored prior complaints about that teacher’s behavior around students, if it allowed that teacher to be alone with children in violation of its own policies, or if it received red flags and did nothing — each of those failures is a breach of the school’s duty, and each one is a place where civil liability attaches.
Massachusetts recognizes this claim against both public and private schools, though the path differs. Against a private school, the claim proceeds as ordinary negligence. Against a public school district, the claim must be brought through the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act, which has its own procedural requirements and deadlines — and those deadlines are shorter than most people expect.
Massachusetts Civil Claims for Sexual Assault by a Teacher
Massachusetts law gives a sexual assault survivor several civil causes of action, and a complete case usually pleads more than one. Here is what each claim means and why it matters.
Assault and battery is the intentional tort — the direct claim against the teacher for the physical act of sexual contact without consent. A child cannot consent. This claim carries the possibility of punitive damages, which means a jury can award money specifically to punish the wrongdoer, not just to compensate the victim. In practice, however, individual teachers often have limited personal assets, which is why this claim is usually paired with claims against the institution that employed them.
Negligent hiring, supervision, and retention is the claim against the school. It asserts that the school owed your child a duty of reasonable care, that it breached that duty by failing to properly vet, monitor, or respond to the teacher, and that the breach caused the harm. This is where the school’s personnel records, its complaint history, its training protocols, and its internal communications become the evidence that decides the case. If the school knew — or should have known — that this teacher posed a risk to students, and did nothing, the school is on the hook.
Intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress addresses the psychological harm. Sexual assault of a child by a trusted authority figure is the kind of extreme conduct that supports an intentional infliction claim. The negligent version reaches the school for the emotional damage caused by its failure to prevent the assault.
Loss of consortium is a claim that family members — parents, in the case of a child victim — can bring for the loss of the relationship they had with their child before the assault. The damage here is real: a child who was open, trusting, and engaged may become withdrawn, angry, or fearful, and that transformation is a loss the family can recover for.
The deadlines that kill cases
Massachusetts generally requires civil personal injury claims, including sexual assault civil claims, to be filed within three years from the date the cause of action accrues. That is the general statute of limitations for tort actions in Massachusetts.
But if the defendant is a public school district — a public employer — the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act adds a critical layer: you must formally present your claim in writing to the public employer before you can file suit, and that presentment deadline is generally two years from the date the cause of action accrues. Miss the presentment deadline and you can lose the right to sue the district entirely, even if the three-year SOL has not run.
For childhood sexual abuse claims, Massachusetts courts have recognized that the clock may not start when the abuse happens — it may start when the survivor discovers, or reasonably should discover, that they were harmed by the abuse. This is the discovery rule, and it matters because many survivors do not connect their current suffering to the assault until years later. The exact application of this rule is case-specific, and some categories of claims may have different or extended deadlines — which is exactly why talking to a lawyer early, while the clock is still running in your favor, is the single most important step.
“No action may be maintained under subsection (a) unless it is commenced not later than the later of — (1) 10 years after the cause of action arose; or (2) 10 years after the victim reaches 18 years of age, if the victim was a minor at the time of the alleged offense.”
— 18 U.S.C. § 1595(c), the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act statute of limitations. While this federal SOL applies specifically to trafficking-related civil claims, it illustrates the principle that the law recognizes: survivors of childhood sexual exploitation need more time, not less, to come forward. Massachusetts has its own SOL framework, and confirming the deadline that applies to your specific situation is something we do on the first call.
Massachusetts comparative fault
Massachusetts follows a modified comparative negligence rule. If the injured person is found to be 51% or more at fault, they cannot recover. If they are 50% or less at fault, their recovery is reduced by their percentage of fault. In a child sexual assault case, the idea that a child could be assigned a percentage of fault is repugnant — and in practice, the defense rarely succeeds in pinning fault on a minor victim in a teacher assault case. But the defense will try, which is why the case must be built to make the school’s failures — not the child’s behavior — the central story.
Who Is Responsible: The Teacher, the School, and the System That Failed
A sexual assault case against a teacher is rarely a single-defendant case. The teacher is the one who committed the act, but the institution that put the teacher in a position of power over children is where the real accountability — and the real resources — usually live. Here is the defendant map.
The teacher (individual defendant): The teacher faces criminal charges and civil liability for assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and potentially other claims. But a teacher’s personal assets are often limited, and their personal insurance almost certainly excludes intentional criminal acts. The teacher is named in the lawsuit, but the teacher is rarely the primary source of recovery.
The school district (if public): Public school districts in Massachusetts are sued through the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act. The claim is not that the district committed the assault — it is that the district was negligent in hiring, supervising, retaining, or responding to the teacher. The district’s insurance or self-insurance pool is where the compensation comes from. But the Tort Claims Act has procedural requirements and potential damage caps that private-school claims do not, which makes getting the presentment letter right — and right on time — essential.
The school (if private): Private schools face the same negligent supervision claims but without the Tort Claims Act’s procedural barriers. However, private school insurance policies frequently contain assault-and-battery exclusions — clauses that say the policy does not cover claims arising from assault. This is one of the biggest coverage fights in these cases, and it is why the insurance policy itself becomes a piece of evidence that must be demanded early.
School administrators: In some cases, individual administrators who knew about prior complaints and did nothing can be named. Their liability depends on whether they had personal knowledge of the danger and personally failed to act — a fact question that comes out in depositions.
The corporate-structure shell game: School districts are layered entities. The school itself, the district administration, the superintendent’s office, the school committee, and sometimes a separate municipal entity each play a role. Naming the right entity — the one that employed the teacher, the one that set the supervision policies, the one that holds the insurance — is foundational work. Name the wrong entity and the case can be delayed or dismissed on a technicality while the clock keeps running.
The Injury You Cannot See: What Sexual Assault Does to a Child
Sexual assault by a trusted adult does not just harm a child’s body. It rewires a child’s brain. The medical reality is that the deepest wounds are the ones no X-ray can capture, and the defense knows this — which is why the medical proof in these cases is built differently than in a car crash.
PTSD is a diagnosis, not a feeling. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a formal psychiatric condition with eight separate diagnostic criteria in the DSM-5, published by the American Psychiatric Association. A survivor has to meet every one: the traumatic event, the intrusive memories or nightmares that will not stop, the avoidance of anything that triggers the memory, the negative changes in mood and thinking, the changes in arousal and reactivity — hypervigilance, exaggerated startle, sleep disruption, concentration problems — and symptoms that last more than a month and impair the ability to function. This is not a label a lawyer picks. It is a clinical diagnosis a treating psychiatrist or psychologist makes, and it is provable with validated instruments like the CAPS-5 and the PCL-5.
Rape is the single most PTSD-producing event researchers have measured. In the landmark National Comorbidity Survey, rape carried the highest conditional probability of producing post-traumatic stress disorder of any traumatic event studied — more likely to cause lasting PTSD than combat, than a car wreck, than a natural disaster. When a school ignores a known danger and a child is assaulted, the lifelong harm that follows is not a surprise. It is the most predictable outcome in trauma medicine.
“She didn’t fight back” is a symptom, not a defense. One of the cruelest myths about sexual assault is that a real victim fights back. The science says the opposite. When the body senses it cannot escape, it can lock up — an involuntary survival reflex called tonic immobility. The muscles freeze. The voice will not come. The person cannot move or speak even though no one is holding them down. In a clinical study of rape survivors, the majority experienced this involuntary paralysis.
“70% reported at least significant tonic immobility and 48% reported extreme tonic immobility during the assault.”
— Möller et al., Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica, 2017. Tonic immobility predicted later PTSD at approximately 2.75 times the rate and severe depression at approximately 3.4 times the rate.
A child who froze when a teacher assaulted them was not consenting. They were experiencing the most severe form of a documented, involuntary trauma response — and the research shows the children who froze are the ones who go on to suffer the worst PTSD.
The invisible injury problem. The defense’s favorite move in a sexual assault case is to point to the absence of a cast, a scar, or a broken bone. But the damage from sexual assault by a trusted adult is neurological and psychological — and it shows up on advanced imaging (MRI showing stress-related changes, EEG showing altered brain-wave patterns) and in validated clinical testing (neuropsychological assessment, structured PTSD interviews). The injury is real, it is documented, and it is provable. The proof problem is not that the harm does not exist — it is that the harm is invisible to a camera, which is exactly why the medical evidence has to be built carefully, from the first therapy intake forward.
The lifetime cost. Federal public-health researchers at the CDC estimated the lifetime economic cost of a single rape at more than $122,000 per survivor — and that figure, 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 relationships that strain, the front door a survivor cannot walk through alone, the childhood that was stolen. For a child assaulted by a teacher, the cost stretches across decades — years of trauma-focused therapy, potential medication, educational disruption, lost earning capacity, and the compounding effect of trauma on every future relationship and opportunity.
Evidence That Is Dying Right Now: What to Preserve
The proof that wins a school sexual assault case is fragile, and much of it is on a clock. Every day that passes before a preservation demand goes out, evidence is being legally erased, overwritten, or quietly discarded. Here is what exists, who holds it, and how fast it can disappear.
School security camera footage: Most schools have surveillance systems in hallways, parking lots, and common areas. This footage is typically overwritten on a rolling cycle — often 30 to 60 days, sometimes less. If no one orders the school to preserve the footage from the dates in question, it records over itself and is gone forever. This evidence can show whether the teacher was alone with the student, whether the student appeared distressed, and whether the school’s supervision policies were actually being followed. A preservation letter must go out immediately.
The teacher’s personnel file: The school holds the teacher’s complete employment record — the application, the background check, references, training records, performance evaluations, and any prior complaints or incidents. This file is the single most important document in a negligent supervision case. If there were prior complaints about this teacher’s behavior around students, if the background check was incomplete or missing, if prior employers flagged concerns that were ignored — that is the case. Personnel files are not permanently retained; they can be purged on the school’s own retention schedule, and a teacher who has been arrested or fired may have their file “cleaned up” in the aftermath.
Prior complaints and incident reports: Any complaint — from a student, a parent, a colleague, or another staff member — about the teacher’s behavior is a piece of the foreseeability puzzle. Each complaint should have generated a record: an incident report, an internal investigation file, a human-resources note, emails between administrators. These records are the proof that the school knew or should have known. They are also the records most likely to be “lost,” “misfiled,” or “can’t be located” once a case is contemplated.
Email and communication records: Internal emails between teachers, administrators, counselors, and staff can reveal what was known, when it was known, and who decided to do nothing. Email systems have their own retention policies, and deleted emails may be recoverable only if a litigation hold is in place before the system purges them.
Student records and CPS/DCFS reports: Your child’s school records — attendance, grades, counseling notes, behavioral changes documented by teachers — can show the before-and-after picture that proves the harm. If the Department of Children and Families was involved, their investigation records are also evidence. These records have their own retention schedules and access restrictions.
Police investigation records: The criminal investigation generates reports, witness statements, forensic evidence, and a case file. While criminal records are generally more durably retained than school records, access to them during an active criminal case may be restricted — which is another reason the civil case and criminal case need to proceed on parallel tracks with a lawyer coordinating both.
The preservation letter is the first move. The day you call us, the first thing we do is send a written preservation demand — to the school, the district, and any other entity that holds evidence — ordering them not to destroy, alter, or delete any records related to the teacher, your child, and the events in question. That letter is what converts routine deletion into sanctionable destruction. If the school lets evidence die after receiving that letter, a judge can tell the jury to assume the missing evidence was as bad for the school as we say it was.
What a Sexual Assault Case Is Worth in Massachusetts
We are going to be honest with you about value, because honesty is what you need right now — not a sales pitch.
Economic damages are the costs you can add up on a spreadsheet: therapy bills (trauma-focused treatment can run for years, and a single course of specialized treatment like EMDR or trauma-focused CBT can cost thousands), psychiatric medication, medical visits, lost wages if a parent had to leave work, and the cost of educational support if your child’s schooling was disrupted. For a child, projected lost earning capacity — the income they will not earn because trauma derailed their education and career trajectory — can be the largest economic line item, and it is proven with a forensic economist who projects the loss across a working lifetime.
Non-economic damages are the human losses no receipt can measure: pain, suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of innocence, loss of trust, and the permanent alteration of a child’s relationship with the world. Massachusetts does not impose a general cap on non-economic damages in most personal injury cases — which means a jury is free to award what the harm is actually worth, without an artificial ceiling.
Punitive damages may be available against the individual teacher for the intentional tort of assault and battery. Punitive damages are designed to punish and deter, not just compensate, and they can substantially increase the value of a case — though they are only effective if the defendant has the resources to pay them.
The coverage reality. If the school is public, the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act may impose a statutory cap on damages recoverable from the public employer — a ceiling that can limit recovery even when the negligence is proven. The current cap should be confirmed at the time of filing. If the school is private, its commercial general liability policy is the primary source of recovery, but many CGL policies contain assault-and-battery exclusions that the insurer will invoke to deny coverage. Fighting that exclusion — or finding alternative coverage through an umbrella policy, a professional liability policy, or the school’s self-insured retention — is its own battle.
Case value range. Every case is different, and we will not pretend otherwise. A sexual assault case with documented PTSD, clear school negligence (prior complaints ignored), and strong insurance coverage can reach well into the seven figures. A case where the school’s negligence is harder to prove, or where coverage is disputed, may settle for less. The CDC’s $122,461 per-victim lifetime cost figure is a floor, not a ceiling — it captures only quantifiable economic harm, and it was calculated in 2014 dollars. A child assaulted by a teacher carries that cost plus the non-economic devastation of betrayal by a trusted adult, plus the future-care needs that a life-care planner will document, plus the lost potential that a forensic economist will project. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — and anyone who tells you a specific number before reviewing the evidence is not giving you advice, they are giving you a sales pitch.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook — and How We Counter It
If you think the school’s insurance company is going to treat your family fairly because your child was hurt, you are about to learn what every family in this situation learns: the adjuster’s job is to pay you as little as possible, as fast as possible, before you understand what your case is actually worth. Here are the plays they run — and the counter to each one.
Play 1: “The school had no idea.” The adjuster will frame the assault as an unpredictable, one-time event that no one could have seen coming. This is the foreseeability defense, and it is beaten by the school’s own records. If there were prior complaints about this teacher — from students, parents, or staff — the assault was not unforeseeable. It was the predictable result of ignored warnings. The personnel file, the complaint log, and the internal emails are what demolish this defense, which is exactly why we demand them before they can be destroyed.
Play 2: The fast, friendly settlement offer. Within weeks, someone may reach out to your family with a check and a release form. The amount will sound significant to a family in crisis. It will be a fraction of what the case is worth. The release will waive every future claim — including claims for therapy costs that have not been billed yet, earning capacity that has not been lost yet, and emotional harm that has not fully manifested yet. The counter is simple: never sign anything from the school or its insurer without a lawyer reviewing it. A check that arrives before the medical evidence is complete is designed to close the case before the truth comes out.
Play 3: “The victim’s story changed.” The defense will look for inconsistencies in your child’s account — a timeline that shifted, a detail that was remembered differently the second time — and use them to argue the child is not credible. The science answers this directly: trauma scrambles the bookkeeping of memory before it scrambles the horror itself. A child who recalls the smell of the room with brutal clarity but cannot put the events in chronological order is describing exactly how trauma affects recall. A disjointed account is not a dishonest account. We retain trauma experts who explain this to a jury in plain terms.
Play 4: The assault-and-battery coverage exclusion. If the school is private, the insurer’s first move may be a coverage denial — arguing that the CGL policy excludes claims arising from assault. The counter is to fight the exclusion’s applicability (the negligent supervision claim is not an assault claim — it is a negligence claim against the school), to seek alternative coverage (umbrella, professional liability, errors and omissions), and to pursue the school’s own assets if insurance is denied. What you should never do is accept the insurer’s first word that “there is no coverage.” That determination is the insurer’s self-serving position, not the final word.
Play 5: “The child should have told someone sooner.” Delayed disclosure is the norm in childhood sexual assault, not the exception. A child who was assaulted by a teacher — an authority figure who controls their grades, their school day, their reputation — has every reason to stay silent. Fear, shame, manipulation, and the trauma response itself all suppress disclosure. We use the clinical literature on delayed disclosure to neutralize this defense before it gains traction.
How a Sexual Assault Civil Case Is Built
Here is what the process actually looks like, from the day you call to the day the case resolves.
Week one: the preservation letter goes out. The day we are retained, a written demand goes to the school, the district, and every entity that holds evidence. That letter orders them to freeze all personnel records, complaint files, email archives, security footage, training records, and internal communications related to the teacher and your child. This is not a request — it is a legal demand that creates consequences for destruction. If they let evidence die after that letter, the jury can be told to assume the worst.
Weeks one through four: records and intake. We pull your child’s medical records, therapy intake notes, school records, and any CPS or police reports. We identify the treating providers who will form the medical proof spine. We begin building the before-and-after picture — who your child was before the assault, and who they are now.
Months one through three: investigation and expert retention. We retain a board-certified forensic psychiatrist or psychologist to evaluate your child, administer validated PTSD instruments, and prepare a clinical opinion that will hold up under cross-examination. We may retain a life-care planner to project the future cost of therapy, medication, and support across your child’s lifetime. If earning capacity is at issue, we retain a forensic economist.
Months three through six: filing and discovery. The complaint is filed. The school produces its records — the personnel file, the complaint history, the training records, the internal emails. We take depositions of the administrators who supervised the teacher, the HR staff who hired the teacher, and anyone who received a complaint and did not act. The depositions are where the school’s story comes apart — because under oath, the question is not “did you mean to hurt this child” but “what did you know, when did you know it, and what did you do about it?”
Months six through eighteen: the case matures. Medical evidence solidifies. Expert reports are exchanged. The defense makes its arguments, we respond, and the case moves toward mediation or trial. Most cases settle — but they settle for fair value only when the defense sees that we are prepared to try the case and win.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do and What Never to Do
Do this:
Get your child to a medical professional. A pediatrician, an emergency department, or a sexual assault forensic examiner can document any physical evidence and begin the medical record. This is not just about physical evidence — it is about establishing the medical timeline that the case will be built on. The earlier the medical documentation, the stronger the proof.
File a police report. The criminal investigation is separate from the civil case, but it generates records that can support the civil claim. Your child’s disclosure to law enforcement, the forensic exam if one is performed, and the police report itself are all evidence.
Get your child into trauma-focused therapy. The first therapy intake note is one of the most powerful pieces of evidence in the case — it pre-dates any “litigation motive” accusation and documents the harm while it is raw. A therapist trained in childhood trauma can begin the clinical record that a PTSD diagnosis will later rest on.
Document everything. Write down what your child told you, when they told you, and what you did. Keep every communication from the school — emails, letters, phone call notes. Do not delete texts. Do not throw away anything the school sent you.
Call a lawyer. The preservation letter that freezes the school’s evidence is the most time-sensitive step in the entire case, and it cannot go out until you have counsel. Every day before that letter is a day the school’s security footage is one day closer to being overwritten.
Never do this:
Never give a recorded statement to the school’s insurer or the school’s attorney. That call is designed to get you to say something — anything — that can be quoted against you later. “How is your child doing?” is not a courtesy. It is a question designed to produce an answer like “she’s holding up okay” that the defense will use to minimize the harm.
Never sign anything from the school or its insurance company. A release is a permanent waiver of your child’s right to compensation. Once signed, it cannot be undone.
Never discuss the case on social media. Do not post about the teacher, the school, or the assault. Do not discuss the case in texts or messages that could be discovered. The defense will mine every public statement for inconsistencies.
Never confront the teacher or the school directly. Your anger is justified, but direct confrontation can complicate both the criminal investigation and the civil case. Channel that anger into the legal process — it is what the process is for.
Never assume you have plenty of time. The Massachusetts Tort Claims Act presentment deadline can be as short as two years for claims against public school districts, and the general tort SOL is three years. But the evidence dies much faster than the deadline — the security footage in 30 days, the personnel files on the school’s own schedule. The clock on the proof is shorter than the clock on the claim.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the school if the teacher is the one who assaulted my child?
Yes. The school can be held liable for negligent hiring, supervision, or retention if it knew or should have known that the teacher posed a risk to students and failed to act. The claim is that the school’s negligence allowed the assault to happen — and this claim is often where the real recovery lives, because the school has insurance and assets that the individual teacher usually does not.
How long do I have to file a civil lawsuit in Massachusetts?
Massachusetts generally requires civil personal injury claims to be filed within three years. If the defendant is a public school district, the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act requires you to formally present the claim to the district first, generally within two years. The discovery rule may extend the deadline in childhood sexual abuse cases where the survivor did not immediately connect their harm to the abuse. These deadlines are case-specific, and the only safe approach is to confirm the exact deadline with a lawyer as early as possible.
What if the teacher pleads not guilty in the criminal case?
A not-guilty plea is not a defense to the civil claim. The criminal case and the civil case are separate proceedings with different burdens of proof. The criminal case requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The civil case requires proof by a preponderance of the evidence — more likely than not. A teacher can be acquitted in criminal court and still be found liable in civil court, and vice versa. The civil case does not wait for the criminal case to finish.
What if there were no prior complaints about the teacher?
Prior complaints are the strongest evidence of negligent supervision, but they are not the only evidence. A school can be liable if it failed to conduct a proper background check, failed to follow its own supervision policies (allowing a teacher to be alone with a student behind a closed door, for example), failed to train staff on boundaries and reporting, or ignored warning signs that fell short of a formal complaint — inappropriate comments, excessive personal communication with a student, or boundary-crossing behavior that a properly trained administrator would have recognized.
Will my child have to testify?
In most cases, the child’s testimony can be presented through carefully managed procedures designed to minimize further trauma — videotaped depositions, closed-circuit testimony, or other protective measures that Massachusetts courts can order. The decision to have a child testify is never made lightly, and the case is built to minimize the need for it. In many cases, the documentary evidence — therapy records, expert testimony, the school’s own records — is sufficient to prove the harm without putting the child on the stand.
What if the school says its insurance does not cover sexual assault?
Many commercial general liability policies contain assault-and-battery exclusions, and the insurer’s first response to a claim may be a coverage denial. This is the insurer’s self-serving position, not the final word. Coverage can often be found through alternative policies (umbrella, professional liability, errors and omissions), through the school’s self-insured retention, or by framing the claim as negligent supervision rather than assault. A coverage fight is its own litigation, and it is one we are prepared to handle.
How much does it cost to hire a lawyer for a sexual assault case?
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33% of the recovery before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. The consultation is free. You do not pay anything out of pocket to start. If there is no recovery, there is no fee. We take on the cost of investigation, experts, and litigation — and we absorb that risk because we believe in the case before we take it.
Is what happened to my child my fault?
No. The only person responsible for the sexual assault of a child is the person who committed it, and the institution that failed to prevent it. Parents in this situation carry enormous guilt — for not seeing it sooner, for not asking the right questions, for trusting the school. That guilt is real, and it is normal, but it is not legally or morally yours to carry. The school had a duty to protect your child. The teacher had a duty not to harm them. You trusted an institution that betrayed that trust. The law recognizes this — and the law gives you a way to hold the people who actually failed accountable.
Why Attorney911 — and What Happens When You Call
We are The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — known as Attorney911, the Legal Emergency Lawyers. We have spent more than 24 years in courtrooms fighting for people whose lives were torn open by someone else’s failure, and we handle sexual assault civil cases because we know what they cost a family — not just in dollars, but in sleep, in trust, in the future a child was supposed to have.
Ralph Manginello is our Managing Partner — 27+ years licensed, a journalist before he was a lawyer, admitted to federal court, and a trial attorney who has spent decades cross-examining the people and institutions that cause catastrophic harm. Ralph has been lead counsel in the active $10 million hazing lawsuit against a university and a fraternity — a case about institutional failure to protect a young person from foreseeable harm, which is the same fight at the heart of a school sexual assault case. He built Attorney911 on the principle that the people who hurt the vulnerable should face someone who will not back down.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney — a former insurance-defense attorney who spent years inside a national defense firm, in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. Lupe sat on the other side of the table. He knows how the insurer values a PTSD claim, how it selects an IME doctor to challenge your treating therapist, and how it uses surveillance and social-media mining to undermine credibility. Now he uses that knowledge for injured clients. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter — because your family deserves to understand everything in the language you think in.
When you call 1-888-ATTY-911, you reach a live person, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — not an answering service. The consultation is free and confidential. We will listen to what happened, answer your questions, and tell you honestly whether we are the right firm for your case. If we are not the right fit, we will tell you. If we are, the first thing we do is send the preservation letter that freezes the evidence before it disappears.
We work on contingency. You pay nothing out of pocket. We do not get paid unless we win your case. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — but every case we take gets the full force of a firm that has recovered more than $50 million for injured clients and has been fighting since 2001.
Hablamos Español. Your family does not have to work through this in a second language. Lupe conducts consultations fully in Spanish, and our staff is bilingual — because the worst moment of your life should not also be a language barrier.
The evidence is dying. The clock is running. The school has people protecting its interests — you need people protecting yours. Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. And the first letter goes out the day you hire us.
Free consultation. No fee unless we win. 24/7. 1-888-ATTY-911.