When the School You Trusted Fails Your Child: The Ursuline Hazing Lawsuit
You are sitting at your kitchen table at two in the morning, and you just read the headline. A second former Ursuline High School football player has joined a federal lawsuit alleging a culture of hazing and sexual abuse going back to at least 2022. The attorney for the victims says his office has more than a dozen videos of players filming the abuse of multiple teammates. And the allegation that stops your heart: when the principal was presented with videos of assault and child pornography, his response was to tell students to destroy the evidence and keep quiet.
Your child played football at Ursuline. Or your child is there now. Or your child knows someone on that team. And the question that is keeping you awake is the one no parent should ever have to ask: was my child one of them — and who is going to be held accountable for what happened?
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes catastrophic injury and institutional accountability cases, and right now we are lead counsel in an active hazing lawsuit — a $10 million case against a university fraternity. We know this fight. We know what it takes to build it, what the institution will do to deflect it, and what the evidence looks like when the adults who were supposed to protect children chose to protect a football program instead. This page is not a news summary. It is the legal and medical map of what happened in Youngstown, what Ohio law says about it, and what you can do if your child was there.
What the Federal Lawsuit Alleges Happened at Ursuline
Here is what the public record shows. An amended federal complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio — the Youngstown division — naming Ursuline High School and the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown as defendants. The complaint alleges a culture of hazing, sexual abuse, and assault within the football program going back to at least 2022. Players sexually abused, hazed, and assaulted fellow students — and filmed it. The plaintiffs’ attorney has stated that his office possesses more than a dozen videos depicting the abuse of multiple players.
The initial complaint, filed in early September 2025, alleged that a player was hazed and sexually assaulted at a football camp over the summer. The amended complaint added a second former player who was allegedly hazed at the 2024 camp. A separate federal lawsuit, also filed in September, was brought by a female student who alleged that a football player assaulted and sexually harassed her.
The most damning allegations are not about the players who committed the abuse. They are about the adults who knew and what they did with that knowledge. The amended complaint alleges that the school possessed evidence of the hazing and abuse — including player confessions — but did not discipline the perpetrators and allowed them to keep playing football. It alleges the school did not report the conduct to law enforcement or children’s services until June 2025, despite possessing evidence that the abuse had been occurring since at least 2022. And it alleges that when the principal was presented with videos of the assault, his response was to tell students to destroy the evidence and keep quiet.
Ursuline High School has denied the cover-up allegations. In a public statement, the school said it “timely opened an internal investigation,” reported the alleged conduct to child services in two counties and the Youngstown Police Department, interviewed students, and issued discipline consistent with its code of conduct. The school said it provided documents to police pursuant to subpoenas.
“As with the allegations previously raised, these latest allegations are extremely upsetting. No students or their parents should have to deal with such challenges, and we will continue to cooperate with any investigating authorities.”
That is the school’s public position. But the timeline in the complaint tells a different story: if the conduct goes back to 2022, and the school did not report to law enforcement or children’s services until June 2025, that is a gap of years — not days, not weeks, years — during which the school allegedly possessed evidence, confessions, and videos and did nothing with them. In mid-September 2025, Ursuline canceled the remainder of its 2025 football season. That decision speaks louder than any press release.
Ohio’s Anti-Hazing Law Gives You a Civil Cause of Action
Ohio has a specific civil statute designed for exactly this situation. The state’s anti-hazing statute provides a civil cause of action against organizations, associations, or societies whose members engage in hazing — and it applies to school athletic programs. A football team at a private high school is exactly the kind of organization this law was written to reach.
The law means this: you do not have to prove that the school wanted the hazing to happen. You have to prove that hazing occurred within the organization, that the organization knew or should have known about it, and that the organization failed to take reasonable steps to prevent it. When the complaint alleges the school possessed videos, confessions, and multiple reports going back to 2022 — and the principal’s response was to tell students to destroy the evidence — the failure is not subtle. It is a documented, deliberate institutional choice to protect the football program over the children in its care.
This is where the law and the facts weld together. Ohio’s anti-hazing statute is the civil door. The evidence the plaintiffs’ attorney says he already possesses — more than a dozen videos — is the key that opens it. But the statute is not the only door. There are several others, and each one reaches a different defendant and a different kind of damage.
The Mandatory Reporter Failure: When Silence Becomes Liability
Ohio law imposes a legal duty on school officials and employees that is not optional, not discretionary, and not subject to the school’s internal policies. The state’s mandatory reporter law requires school personnel to report suspected child abuse to children’s services or law enforcement. The duty is immediate. The duty is individual — it runs to every teacher, coach, administrator, and staff member who suspects abuse. And failure to fulfill it is not just a civil wrong; it is a criminal offense.
If the allegations are true — if the school possessed evidence of sexual abuse and player confessions as far back as 2022 and did not report to law enforcement or children’s services until June 2025 — then every day of that gap is a day the school was in violation of this law. Not a day the school was deliberating. Not a day the school was conducting an internal investigation. A day the school was breaking the law.
The mandatory reporter law is the spine of the institutional liability case because it converts the school’s silence from a mere negligence claim into something far more serious. When a school official is told that children are being sexually abused and the response is to tell the students to destroy the evidence, that is not a failure to supervise. That is obstruction. That is a conscious, deliberate choice to conceal a crime against children — and the law provides a civil remedy for the harm that choice caused.
The timeline is the proof. The gap between 2022 and June 2025 is not a detail. It is the case. Every month the school sat on evidence it was legally required to report is a month the abuse continued, a month the perpetrators remained on the team, a month the victims were told by the institution’s silence that what happened to them did not matter enough to act on.
The Federal Dimension: Child Pornography and Title IX
The allegations in this case reach beyond Ohio law into federal territory. The production and possession of recordings depicting minor students in sexual or abusive situations implicates federal child exploitation statutes. When players filmed the abuse of their teammates — minors — those videos are not just hazing evidence. Under federal law, they are potentially child pornography. The production, distribution, and possession of such material carries severe federal criminal penalties, and the existence of these recordings transforms the civil case from a school discipline matter into a potential federal criminal investigation.
This matters for the civil case in two ways. First, the videos are the most powerful evidence a civil plaintiff can have — they are visual, timestamped, and irrefutable. Second, the allegation that the principal instructed students to destroy these recordings is not just spoliation of civil evidence. If those recordings constitute child pornography under federal law, instructing someone to destroy them is potentially obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence in a federal criminal matter. The civil case and the criminal exposure are welded together — what proves the civil case also exposes the criminal liability, and the school’s alleged response to the videos may be its own separate wrong.
There is also the question of Title IX. If Ursuline High School receives any federal financial assistance, Title IX obligations to address sexual harassment and assault may apply — though religiously affiliated schools may have exemptions that need to be examined. The separate lawsuit by a female student alleging assault and sexual harassment by a football player adds another dimension to the Title IX analysis, because the school’s response to one report of sexual violence is evidence of its institutional posture toward all such reports.
Who Can Be Held Accountable: The Defendant Structure
A case like this is never about one defendant. It is about a web of institutions and individuals, each with a different role and a different kind of responsibility. Understanding that web is the first step in building the case — because the entity that is easiest to sue is not always the entity that has the money, and the entity that has the money is not always the one whose choices caused the harm.
Ursuline High School is the operating entity — the institution that had direct custody of these children, that ran the football program, that employed the coaches and administrators, and that owed the students a duty of supervision and protection. As a private school, Ursuline does not enjoy sovereign immunity, which means every available damage theory — including punitive damages — is potentially recoverable against it.
The Catholic Diocese of Youngstown is the governance and oversight entity. The Diocese has authority over Catholic educational institutions within its jurisdiction, and its potential liability runs to its own policies, training, monitoring, and institutional response. The Diocese is also the deeper-pocket defendant — with institutional assets and insurance that may exceed what the school itself can satisfy. In institutional sexual abuse cases, the diocesan structure is often where the real coverage and the real accountability live.
Individual school administrators — including the principal — face potential liability for the alleged instruction to destroy evidence, obstruction of justice, failure to fulfill mandatory reporter obligations, and deliberate concealment. These are not just institutional failures; they are individual choices made by named people who held positions of trust over children.
Football coaching staff had supervisory duty during football camps and team activities. The complaint alleges knowledge of and failure to intervene in the hazing culture. Coaches who knew, or should have known, that players were being abused at their camps and did nothing are individually liable for that failure.
Individual perpetrator students are the direct tortfeasors — the players who committed the assault, battery, sexual abuse, hazing, and production of recordings. Their parents may also face liability under Ohio’s parental responsibility statutes for the intentional or malicious acts of minor children.
The shell game in this case is the relationship between the school and the Diocese. The school may argue it is an independent entity. The Diocese may argue it did not control day-to-day operations. The truth is in the governance documents, the insurance policies, and the financial relationships — and finding it is the work of discovery.
The Evidence That Is Disappearing Right Now
This is the section that should make every family who might have a claim pick up the phone today, not next month. The evidence in this case is on multiple clocks, and some of those clocks are very short.
The videos. The plaintiffs’ attorney has stated his office possesses more than a dozen videos depicting the abuse. But additional copies may exist on student phones, in group chats, on social media platforms, and in cloud storage — and every one of those copies is on a clock. Cell phone data is routinely overwritten. Social media platforms purge data on their own cycles. Students who were involved may be deleting evidence right now, especially in light of the allegation that the principal already told students to destroy recordings. Every additional video that can be secured is another piece of the pattern — and the pattern is what proves the culture, not just the individual incident.
School internal investigation records and disciplinary files. The school says it conducted an internal investigation. The records of that investigation — who was interviewed, what was said, what was found, what discipline was imposed, and when — are the documentary spine of the institutional liability case. But personnel turnover, ongoing litigation, and routine document retention policies can lead to document loss. A litigation hold letter must be served on the school immediately to freeze these records.
Principal and administrator electronic communications. Emails, text messages, internal memos, and Slack or messaging-app communications among school administrators, coaches, and Diocese officials from 2022 forward are the records that will prove or disprove the cover-up allegation. The instruction to destroy evidence, if it happened, was communicated somehow — and electronic communications are subject to routine deletion and retention policies that can legally erase them. These are the most critical and most fragile records in the entire case.
Children’s services and Youngstown Police Department records. The timing and content of the school’s mandatory reports are central to the liability case. The gap between 2022 conduct and June 2025 reporting is the proof of the mandatory reporter failure. Government records are obtainable through public records requests, but they should be requested promptly.
Football camp attendance, supervision, and transportation records. Who was present at the camps where the abuse occurred? What was the supervisory ratio? Who was responsible for oversight during off-site activities? These institutional records have retention schedules that may be expiring.
Cell phone records and social media communications. Communications among involved students and staff about the abuse, the distribution of recordings, and any coordination of a cover-up are critical evidence. Carrier retention policies typically overwrite within 60 to 90 days. Social media platforms may purge data on shorter cycles.
School surveillance footage. Footage from camp facilities and school grounds that could show physical locations, access patterns, and who was present during incidents. CCTV systems typically overwrite within 30 to 90 days — and camp facility footage from the 2024 camp may already be gone.
The preservation letter is the single most important first step. The day you call a lawyer is the day that letter goes out — to the school, to the Diocese, to every individual custodian of evidence — ordering them to freeze every record, every communication, every video, every file. Once that letter is on file, any destruction of evidence is spoliation, and a court can instruct the jury to assume the worst about what was destroyed.
What This Does to a Child: The Medicine of Sexual Trauma
The injuries in this case are not the kind that show up on an X-ray. They are the kind that show up in a child’s sleep, in their relationships, in their ability to trust, in the trajectory of the rest of their life. And the science of how sexual trauma damages a developing brain is not soft or speculative — it is documented, measured, and diagnosable.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a formal medical diagnosis with eight separate criteria, and a survivor has to meet every one of them. The event itself — the abuse. The intrusive symptoms — the nightmares, the flashbacks, the physical reactivity when something triggers the memory. The avoidance — the streets the child will no longer walk, the rooms they will not enter, the activities they have abandoned. The negative alterations in cognition and mood — the distorted self-blame, the persistent negative beliefs, the loss of interest, the detachment. The alterations in arousal and reactivity — the hypervigilance, the exaggerated startle, the concentration problems, the sleep problems. Duration of more than a month. Functional impairment. And not attributable to any other cause.
This is not a checklist a lawyer picks. It is a diagnosis a clinician makes, and the diagnosis is the proof.
The medical literature is clear about one fact that is central to this case: of every kind of traumatic event researchers have measured, sexual assault carries the highest conditional probability of producing PTSD. Not combat. Not car crashes. Not natural disasters. Sexual assault. For nearly half the women and roughly two-thirds of the men who experience it, PTSD follows. And these are minors — children whose brains are still developing, whose capacity to process trauma is not yet mature, and whose identity is being formed in the environment that abused them.
There is a phenomenon called tonic immobility that every parent of a survivor needs to understand, because the defense will use the child’s failure to fight back as evidence that the abuse was not really abuse. Tonic immobility is an involuntary, brainstem-mediated freeze response — the body’s brakes slam on, the muscles lock, the voice will not come. It is not consent. It is not a choice. In clinical studies of rape survivors, 70 percent experienced at least significant tonic immobility during the assault, and 48 percent experienced extreme tonic immobility. The children who froze were not consenting. They were experiencing the most extreme form of a survival reflex that the defense will try to twist into something it was not.
Then there is the layer of trauma that makes this case different from a single-assault case: institutional betrayal. These children were abused by their teammates — and then the adults they trusted, the adults their parents paid to protect them, allegedly chose to conceal the abuse rather than report it. The principal’s alleged instruction to destroy evidence is not just a legal wrong. It is a psychological injury. The child who is abused and then told by the institution that the evidence should be destroyed learns that the abuse does not matter to the people in charge. That lesson — that your pain is less important than the program’s reputation — is a recognized amplifier of PTSD symptoms. It is called institutional betrayal trauma, and it predicts worse outcomes than the abuse alone.
The lifetime cost of this harm is real and measurable. Federal public-health researchers have estimated the lifetime cost of a single rape at more than $122,000 per survivor — and that figure, from 2014 data, 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 strains, the front door the child can no longer walk through alone, the career trajectory that bends because a teenager could not focus in school after what was done to them. For minors who were filmed during the abuse, the trauma is compounded — the knowledge that a recording exists, that it was distributed, that it may still be out there somewhere, creates a continuous, open-ended injury that does not resolve when the abuse stops.
The treatment these children will need is specific and long-term. Trauma-informed therapy — including EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) and specialized sexual abuse counseling. Psychiatric medication management for the depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders that follow PTSD. Years of treatment, not months. And the life-care plan that a case like this demands is not a wish list — it is a formal medical-economic document, built to a published professional standard, that prices out every therapy session, every medication, every psychiatric consultation, and every year of care the child will need across their lifetime.
What the School’s Defense Will Look Like
The school has already telegraphed its defense in its public statement. It said it “timely opened an internal investigation,” reported to child services and police, interviewed students, issued discipline, and provided documents pursuant to subpoenas. That statement is the framework the defense will build on, and here is how to dismantle each piece.
Play 1: “We reported to the authorities.” The school says it reported to child services in two counties and the Youngstown Police Department. But the complaint says the school did not report until June 2025 — while the conduct goes back to 2022. The counter is the timeline itself: if the school possessed evidence and confessions for years before it reported, the fact that it eventually reported does not erase the years of mandatory reporter violations. The duty was immediate, not optional, and not satisfied by a delayed report made only after the evidence became impossible to contain.
Play 2: “We disciplined the students.” The school says it issued discipline consistent with its code of conduct. But the complaint alleges the school possessed evidence and confessions but did not discipline the perpetrators and allowed them to keep playing football. The counter is to demand the disciplinary records — what discipline was actually imposed, when, and against whom. If the perpetrators continued to play after the school knew, the “discipline” was either inadequate or illusory.
Play 3: “We cooperated with police and provided documents.” The school says it provided documents to police pursuant to subpoenas. A subpoena is not voluntary cooperation — it is a legal command. The difference between reporting voluntarily and producing documents only because a subpoena demanded them is the difference between choosing to protect children and being forced to stop hiding. The counter is to establish what the school provided voluntarily versus what it was compelled to produce.
Play 4: “These are just allegations.” The school will frame the amended complaint as unproven accusations. The counter is the evidence — more than a dozen videos, player confessions, and the school’s own internal investigation records. When the plaintiffs’ attorney says he has the videos, the “just allegations” defense collapses. You cannot call something an unproven allegation when the video of it exists.
Play 5: Ohio’s tort reform caps. The defense will lean on Ohio’s statutory caps on non-economic damages and punitive damages to limit exposure. The counter is that intentional torts and sexual abuse claims may fall outside or have different treatment under the caps — and the alleged instruction to destroy evidence, if proven, moves the conduct from negligence to intentional obstruction, which is where caps are weakest.
Play 6: Comparative fault. The defense may try to assign fault to the victims — they participated, they did not report, they were part of the culture. The counter is that these are minors, that the school owed them a non-delegable duty of protection, and that the eggshell-plaintiff doctrine means the school takes the victims as it finds them. A child’s failure to report their own abuse is not negligence — it is a symptom of the abuse itself.
How a Case Like This Is Actually Built
Building an institutional sexual abuse case is not about filing a complaint and waiting. It is a chronological campaign, and the order of the steps matters as much as the steps themselves.
Week one: preservation. The litigation hold letter goes out to the school, the Diocese, and every individual custodian of evidence — the principal, the coaches, the athletic director, the Diocese officials. That letter names every category of evidence: videos, internal investigation files, disciplinary records, emails, texts, phone records, surveillance footage, camp records, coaching staff files. It puts every recipient on notice that destruction of any of these records is spoliation, with consequences that can include adverse inference instructions and sanctions.
Weeks two through eight: records demands and public records requests. Children’s services records, Youngstown Police Department records, and any state education oversight filings are requested through public records channels. The school’s own internal investigation file is demanded through discovery. The gap between what the school says it did and what the records show it did is the case.
Months two through six: discovery. Depositions of the principal, the coaches, the athletic director, the Diocese officials. The questions are specific: when did you first learn of the abuse? What did you do with that information? Who did you tell? When did you tell them? What discipline did you impose? When did you report to law enforcement? Why did you wait? The principal’s deposition is the settlement fulcrum — what the principal says under oath about the alleged instruction to destroy evidence will determine whether this case settles or tries.
Expert witnesses. A child and adolescent psychiatrist specializing in sexual abuse trauma. A forensic psychologist for PTSD and complex PTSD diagnosis. A school administration expert on mandatory reporting and hazing prevention standards. A digital forensics expert to recover and authenticate video evidence. These experts are not optional — they are how the invisible injuries are made visible to a jury.
The federal court venue. This case is in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Youngstown division. The federal forum provides procedural advantages — broader subpoena power, a more sophisticated jury pool for complex institutional liability claims, and the weight of a federal courthouse. Mahoning County juries tend to be working-class, community-oriented, and deeply connected to local institutions. That cuts both ways: sympathy for child victims is strong, but institutional loyalty to a prominent Catholic school with a football program that has been a civic institution for decades is real. Voir dire must screen carefully for connections to Ursuline, the Diocese, and the football program.
What a Case Like This Is Worth
The case value analysis for the Ursuline lawsuit, based on the allegations in the public record and the comparable verdicts and settlements in school hazing and sexual abuse cases nationally, runs from approximately $3 million to $20 million per plaintiff. With at least three plaintiffs in separate suits, the aggregate institutional exposure could push toward $30 to $60 million.
These ranges are driven by several factors. The allegations describe severe child sexual abuse with video documentation — the single most powerful evidence a civil plaintiff can have. The institutional cover-up spans years, not days. The mandatory reporter violations are documented in the timeline itself. The alleged evidence destruction, if proven, supports punitive damages. The defendants — a private school and a Catholic Diocese — are collectible, with insurance and institutional assets.
The deflators are real and must be stated honestly. Ohio’s tort reform statutes cap non-economic damages in most tort actions and limit punitive damages to two times compensatory damages. However, intentional torts and certain sexual abuse claims may fall outside or have different treatment under the caps — the alleged instruction to destroy evidence, if proven, moves the school’s conduct from ordinary negligence toward intentional obstruction, which is where caps are weakest. The school’s claim that it eventually reported and cooperated is a deflator, but the timeline gap undercuts it. And the community’s deep connection to the school is a jury-risk factor that a skilled trial lawyer must account for in voir dire and trial strategy.
The economic damages are the floor: past and future psychiatric and psychological treatment, trauma-informed therapy, medication management, and loss of future earning capacity if educational disruption or psychological impairment affects the child’s career trajectory. The non-economic damages are the human losses: pain, suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, and the profound psychological impact of institutional betrayal. The punitive damages are the punishment — and in a case where the institution allegedly chose to protect a football program over children, the argument for punishment is strong.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Every case is different, and the value of any individual claim depends on the specific evidence, the specific injuries, and the specific defendants. What we can tell you is what the law allows, what the evidence supports, and what the process looks like — so you can make the decision that is right for your family.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do Now
If your child was at Ursuline during the period covered by the lawsuit — or if you suspect they were affected — there are steps you should take and steps you should refuse to take.
Medical and psychological care first. If your child has not been seen by a mental health professional, get them in. The diagnosis is the proof, and the treatment is the priority. A child and adolescent psychiatrist or a trauma-informed therapist can begin the diagnostic process — the DSM-5 PTSD criteria, the structured clinical interview, the validated instruments like the CAPS-5 or PCL-5 that create an objective record of the injury. The closer to the event these records are created, the more powerful they are — because they pre-date any “litigation motive” accusation the defense will make.
Do not talk to the school’s insurance company or investigators. If someone from the school, the Diocese, or their insurance carrier contacts you to “check on your child” or “get your side of the story,” do not give a recorded statement. Anything you say can and will be used to minimize the school’s exposure. The friendly call is not a check-in. It is evidence gathering.
Do not sign anything. If you are offered a settlement, a release, or any document from the school or its representatives, do not sign it without having it reviewed by an attorney. A release signed by a parent may not bind a minor child in Ohio — but it can complicate the case and limit your own rights.
Do not post about it on social media. Everything you post is discoverable. Everything. A photograph of your child smiling at a family event can be used by the defense to argue the child is “fine.” A statement about the case can be taken out of context. The rule is silence until you have counsel.
Preserve everything. If your child has any evidence — text messages, screenshots, videos, social media posts, journals, anything — save it, back it up, and do not delete it. If your child told someone — a friend, a teacher, a counselor — document who, when, and what was said. The first person the child told is the outcry witness, and their memory degrades with time.
Call a lawyer. Not next month. Not after the school responds. Now. The evidence is on clocks. The videos on student phones may be overwritten. The school’s internal records may be subject to routine destruction. The electronic communications that prove the cover-up may be on deletion schedules. The preservation letter that freezes all of it has to go out in days, not seasons.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue Ursuline High School if my child was hazed or abused there?
Yes. Ohio’s anti-hazing statute provides a civil cause of action against organizations whose members engage in hazing, and this applies to school athletic programs. You may also have claims for negligent supervision, negligent retention, failure to report as mandatory reporters, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and premises liability. As a private school, Ursuline does not have sovereign immunity, which means all applicable damage theories are potentially recoverable.
How long do I have to file a lawsuit?
Ohio has extended the statute of limitations for civil claims based on childhood sexual abuse, giving survivors significantly more time to come forward than ordinary personal-injury deadlines allow. The specific deadline depends on the nature of the claim — whether it is a childhood sexual abuse claim, a hazing claim under the anti-hazing statute, or another theory of liability. Do not assume you have missed the deadline. Talk to a lawyer who can evaluate the specific facts and the current law. The deadline to sue and the deadline to preserve evidence are different — the law may give you years, but the evidence may be gone in weeks.
What if the school says it already reported the abuse to authorities?
The school’s public statement says it reported to child services and police. But the complaint alleges the school did not report until June 2025, despite possessing evidence going back to 2022. The question is not whether the school eventually reported — it is when the school first knew, how long it waited, and what it did with the evidence in the meantime. Ohio’s mandatory reporter law requires immediate reporting, not delayed reporting at the school’s convenience. The gap between knowledge and reporting is the liability.
What if my child did not fight back during the abuse?
This is one of the cruelest myths about sexual assault, and the science directly contradicts it. Tonic immobility — the body’s involuntary freeze response — affects the majority of rape survivors. The muscles lock, the voice stops, the body cannot move. It is a brainstem-mediated survival reflex, not a choice, and it is not consent. A child who froze during abuse was experiencing a documented, predictable physiological response to extreme threat. The defense will try to use the failure to fight as evidence that the abuse was not real. The medical literature says the opposite.
What if the school offered us a settlement?
Do not sign anything without having it reviewed by an attorney who handles institutional sexual abuse cases. A settlement offered by the school or its insurance carrier is designed to close the case for the lowest possible amount and to prevent you from pursuing further claims. A release signed by a parent may not bind a minor child in Ohio, but it can complicate the case and limit your own rights. The first offer is almost always a fraction of what the case is worth — and the school knows that families who are overwhelmed and grieving are the most likely to accept it.
What if my child is afraid to come forward?
This is the most common reason families wait, and it is the most understandable. But the law recognizes delayed disclosure as the norm for sexual abuse, not the exception. The DSM-5 — the diagnostic manual doctors use — expressly recognizes a “delayed expression” specifier for PTSD, meaning the full symptoms may not appear until six months or more after the event. And the 10-year statute of limitations under the federal trafficking and sexual abuse laws, plus Ohio’s extended deadlines for childhood sexual abuse claims, are built to accommodate the reality that children often cannot process and report what happened to them for years. Your child’s fear is not a legal barrier. It is part of the injury.
What is the case worth?
Based on the allegations in the public record and comparable cases nationally, the estimated range is approximately $3 million to $20 million per plaintiff, with aggregate institutional exposure potentially reaching $30 to $60 million across multiple plaintiffs. The actual value of any individual claim depends on the specific evidence, the specific injuries, the life-care plan, and the defendants’ coverage. Ohio’s tort reform caps on non-economic and punitive damages are a deflator, though intentional torts and sexual abuse claims may partially or fully escape the caps. No lawyer can guarantee a specific outcome — but an honest lawyer can tell you what the law allows and what the evidence supports.
Is this a criminal case or a civil case?
Both. The production and possession of recordings depicting minor students in sexual or abusive situations potentially implicates federal child exploitation statutes and Ohio’s child exploitation laws. That is a criminal matter for law enforcement and prosecutors. The civil lawsuit — the one this page is about — is separate. It is the families’ action to hold the school and the Diocese financially accountable for the harm. The two cases run on different tracks, but the evidence that proves one often proves the other. The videos that the plaintiffs’ attorney says he possesses are both civil evidence and potential criminal evidence.
What if my child was not a football player but was affected?
The separate federal lawsuit filed by a female student alleges that a football player assaulted and sexually harassed her. If your child was a student at Ursuline and was assaulted, harassed, or abused by a football player — whether or not your child was on the team — you may have a claim. The school’s duty of protection extends to all students, not just athletes. The culture the complaint describes does not stop at the locker room door.
How do I talk to my child about this?
This is a medical question as much as a legal one, and the answer is: carefully, with professional support, and without pressure. Do not interrogate your child. Do not demand details. Let a trained trauma therapist guide the conversation. Your role is to believe your child, to validate what they tell you, and to get them the professional help they need. The legal case can wait until your child is safe and supported. The evidence preservation cannot — which is why calling a lawyer early, even before your child is ready to talk about what happened, is the right move. The lawyer can begin preserving evidence without requiring your child to relive the trauma.
Why This Firm
Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is the managing partner of our firm and the lead counsel in an active hazing lawsuit — a $10 million case against a university fraternity in Harris County, Texas, filed in November 2025. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he knows how to find the story the institution does not want told. He built this firm to hold institutions accountable when they choose to protect themselves over the people in their care. You can read more about Ralph here.
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like the families in this case. He sat in those rooms. He knows the plays. And now he sits on your side of the table. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. You can read more about Lupe here.
We handle hazing and institutional abuse cases — and we are currently litigating one. The transfer is direct: the medicine of sexual trauma does not change because the institution is a Catholic school in Youngstown instead of a fraternity house in Houston. The corporate-accountability fight — piercing the institution’s defenses, finding the evidence the school tried to destroy, and making the people who chose to protect a football program over children answer for that choice in front of a jury — is the same fight, in any courthouse, in any state.
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. And the number is answered 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by live staff — not an answering service.
If your child was at Ursuline — or if you are a parent who suspects your child was affected by what happened there — you can reach us at 1-888-ATTY-911. Contact us here. We will listen. We will tell you honestly whether we can help. And if we are not the right fit for your case, we will tell you that too.
For parents navigating the aftermath of a child’s injury, our guide to child injury lawsuits walks through what to expect from the legal process.
Hablamos Español. Lupe conducts full consultations in Spanish, and our staff is bilingual. If your family is more comfortable in Spanish, we will serve you fully in the language you speak.
The evidence in this case is disappearing. The videos on student phones. The emails between administrators. The surveillance footage from the camps. The internal investigation files. Every day that passes is a day the school’s records can be legally destroyed, a day a student’s phone can overwrite a video, a day a social media platform can purge a message. The preservation letter that freezes all of it goes out the day you call. Not the day after. Not next week. The day you call.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting the firm is free and confidential. We do not get paid unless we win your case. Call 1-888-ATTY-911.