by Chuck Sharman

Los Angeles County officials were set to begin making the first $600 million in payouts in early July 2026, under an historic $4 billion settlement agreement with some 6,800 former detainees subjected to sexual abuse in County juvenile lockups. Payouts were also getting underway under a separate $828 million settlement negotiated with an additional 414 victims. Since County Commissioners approved both agreements in late 2025, the number of claimants under the larger settlement has swelled to 11,000, with potentially 5,000 more who may join them, County officials have estimated. See: Doe 1 v. Cty. of L.A., Cal. Super. (Cty. of L.A.), Case No. 21STCV20949; and Doe v. Doe 1, Cal. Super. (Cty. of L.A.), Case No. 22STCV25691.

The staggering sum of public money—$4.828 billion in total—represents a huge hit for residents in the country’s largest county by population, costing each of them over $500. But the alternative for the County was even more grim, since the law that opened the window for these suits also authorizes treble damages against the municipal employers of abusers.

To set aside funds for the initial payouts, the County has already skimmed 3% off its budgets for the current fiscal year, and completing its obligations will eat up reserve funds and bond interest through 2051, officials told LAist. The two settlements represent what is apparently the country’s largest payout for childhood sexual abuse claims ever, dwarfing a $2.6 billion agreement made by the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) in 2022 or the $1.5 billion settlement reached in 2024 with the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which covers part of Los Angeles County as well as Ventura County and Santa Barbara County.

In the wake of the settlements with L.A. County over claims from its juvenile detention system, controversy has grown around the law that made the legal claims possible, along with concerns of widespread fraud. County District Attorney (DA) Nathan Hochman sought to delay payment of the larger settlement because he believed “thousands of claims” were fraudulent. Based on an initial review that he said cast doubt on up to 81% of claims that had then been filed, Hochman predicted savings in the “hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars” in a February 2026 report to the County Board of Supervisors. But after receiving his request to pause the settlement payouts, state Superior Court Judge Lawrence P. Riff decided on June 25, 2026, that the DA had no standing to challenge the agreement made between Supervisors and victims—meaning the payouts would proceed on schedule.

Meanwhile, anxious County officials have for months been urging state lawmakers to tighten the statute of limitations on childhood sex assault that was relaxed with passage of Assembly Bill (AB) 218. When it took effect in January 2020, the state measure extended the filing period for such claims from three years to five years after the victim “knew or should have known” of the abuse. Victims also now have until age 40 to file those claims, 14 years longer than the previous filing bar at age 26. Furthermore, the law widened the definition of sexual abuse to include sexual assault, meaning no penetration or copulation is required to hold to account a perpetrator and his or her employer. With surviving victims thus freed to file, and the cap on damage awards against the County raised three-fold, those now a part of the two settlement agreements alleged sexual abuse in County juvenile lockups that dated back decades.

History of AB 218

Prior to passage of the new law, suits alleging childhood sex abuse were subject to California’s three-year statute of limitations for civil claims, and that was subject to an additional limitation on the victim’s age, which could be no more than 26 at the time a claim was filed. However, research has shown that there are a host of complex psychological factors that typically result in delayed disclosure of the abuse a juvenile has suffered.

In the immediate aftermath of the abuse, psychological distress is often expressed in self-destructive behaviors, according to a 2022 analysis by Irish researchers Lucy McGill and Rosaleen McElvaney. In adolescents, this ranged from being disruptive in school or skipping school to substance abuse and hanging out with “people with whom [they] wouldn’t normally … associate[].” Such antisocial behavior typically makes it only less likely that adults might intervene to address the abuse that is the cause of the problems.

Reflecting their psychological immaturity, most juvenile victims blame themselves for the abuse, at least in part. They also withhold disclosure for fear of the consequences for the abuser—for whom they are typically “groomed” to feel affection. For those in a group setting like a juvenile detention center, there is also fear that the personal consequences of speaking out will include being blamed and targeted for retribution by the other juveniles. This mixture of powerful emotions typically then coalesces into a belief that telling “will only make things worse.” As a result, the unaddressed trauma and the acting out in response follows the victim into adulthood, slowly building like a pressure cooker until disclosure suddenly bursts forth. By that point, the researchers found, victims were far past age 26, reaching a mean age between 40 and 50. See: “Adult and Adolescent Disclosures of Child Sexual Abuse: A Comparative Analysis,” J. Interpers. Violence (2022 Apr 28).

With studies placing the average age of disclosure so high—nearly twice the age limit in the former statute of limitations—there was a fundamental question of fairness involved in setting lower limits for the point when a victim “knew or should have known” of his or her abuse. Scandals over child sex abuse in the Catholic church and the BSA prompted state lawmakers to pass legislation, SB 131, which lifted the statute of limitations for one year for claims against private organizations. But then-Gov. Jerry Brown (D) vetoed that bill in 2013, taking issue with its failure to include public institutions.

That sent supporters back to the drafting board, where they came up with AB 218. When it passed the state Assembly in 2019, it went beyond the prior measure by allowing claims against any abusers and their employers, both public and private. It also took the earlier law’s one-year “look back” window and opened it even wider, allowing claims to be filed from any point in history over the next three years. Since that “look back” window closed at the end of 2022, childhood survivors of sex abuse can still file claims up to five years after they “knew or should have known,” up to age 40. This is also one reason why County officials estimate the number of victims making a claim against the settlement fund will continue to swell.

AB 452 and AB 2777 Make Additional Claims Possible

Additional reasons that the number of claimants is expected to keep growing are found in two other laws. One was AB 452, passed by the state Assembly in 2023, which permanently eliminated the statute of limitations on claims of sexual abuse suffered by a victim under the age of 18. The law was not made retroactive, however, so it covers claims for abuse that occurred only after it took effect at the beginning of 2024.

Another law AB 2777, which passed in 2022, opened a three-year “look back” window for claims of sexual abuse suffered by a victim age 18 or older after the beginning of 2009. Many of those held in County juvenile detention were older than 17, so they may file claims for sex abuse suffered there until the law’s “look back” window closes permanently at the end of 2026.

Claims in Larger Case
Number in Thousands

The first two plaintiffs, both identified as “Jane Doe,” filed claims in 2021 alleging that they were sexually abused as children while detained at the County’s MacLaren Children’s Center. Known colloquially as “MacLaren Hall,” the lockup opened in 1961 as a temporary shelter for children on their way to foster care. But 20 years later, those “temporary” stays had stretched to months at a time, and the facility routinely held 250 juveniles in a space designed for 161.

Complaints from detainees of abuse and substandard living conditions sparked transfer of facility control in 1976 from the County’s Probation Department to its Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). The continuing crisis eventually resulted in litigation and a 1986 consent decree that obligated the County to make improvements to juvenile detention—including policy changes designed to shift detainees into smaller, community-based facilities.

But things still didn’t measurably improve for juvenile detainees, especially those suffering from mental illness, according to a lawsuit filed by the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 2002. Under the resulting settlement reached the following year, the County shuttered MacLaren Hall for good, focusing efforts of the DCFS on “wraparound” services to keep juveniles with their parents or with just one foster family. By the end of 2025, the number of juveniles in foster care had plummeted from 50,000 to just 11,700, the DCFS reported.

MacLaren Hall’s closure left the Probation Department in control of the County’s remaining juvenile detention facilities, including Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall and Central Juvenile Hall. Continued overcrowding and understaffing led officials to employ diversion to community-based treatment centers where underlying problems could be better addressed for “justice-involved” juveniles. Nine more lockups were also shuttered, and the County’s daily population in juvenile halls fell to 571 by 2019, with another 287 in lower-security juvenile camps.

But problems persisted. The Probation Department lost its license to run Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in December 2024. Three months later, 30 guards and staffers were indicted for staging fights between juvenile detainees, three of whom somehow got hold of fentanyl and overdosed in April 2025. The County Superior Court ordered a depopulation plan for the lockup, which lowered its headcount to 224 by April 2026, according to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

Meanwhile, opening of the “look back” window with AB218 unleashed a torrent of sex abuse claims dating back as far as 1959. Claims for assaults before 1976 named the Probation Department as Defendant, while later claims named the DCFS. Most of the early claims arose from incidents at MacLaren Hall, with later claims spreading to new juvenile lockups as they emerged over the last four decades of the 20th century—a period of rapid growth in the County that saw its population mushroom from 6 million to almost 10 million.

Nearly 6,800 claims had been verified by the end of 2022. Later, when County officials finished the claim verification process, the actual number reached almost 11,000. Frighteningly, many claimants said that they had overcome their initial reluctance as kids and reported the abuse to management at MacLaren and other juvenile lockups, but staffers failed to do anything—other than frequently accusing the victims of lying, that is. Attorneys for the victims pounced on a two-year investigation by the state Department of Justice (CDOJ), which reported in 2008 that only 4% of MacLaren Hall staffers had received any formal training in dealing with child sexual abuse. As the CDOJ concluded, what resulted was a “systemic failure” to protect these detainees from abuse by staff.

Plaintiffs Tell Their Stories

Three plaintiffs recounted some of their abuse to the New York Times. Two recalled running into one another at MacLaren Hall in 1968, when MaryAlice Ashbrook, now 65, said that she rescued Shirley Bodkin, now 58, from a closet. Both were young girls at the time, with moms whose problems had landed the two there—Ashbrook’s mother was addicted to pills, while Bodkin’s mother was mentally ill. A guard who played with them on his lap later tranquilized them with drugs and took them to a “special room” where their sexual abuse took place.

The third victim who spoke to the news outlet, J.C. Wright, 42, also had a mother whose addiction left him in the care of MacLaren staffers, some of whom drugged and abused him, as well. Like many other juveniles traumatized this way, he ended up on the street as a teen and then in prison as an adult, convicted of attempted murder in what he recalls was an act of self-defense—against another attempted sexual assault. Now a truck driver with a stable marriage, Wright said that his greatest fear in coming forward with his story was the risk to his relationships with his two sons.

“I’m so afraid that one day they’re going to find out what happened to their dad,” Wright said, “and I’m not going to be their dad no more.”

Three more victims recounted details of abuse at other County juvenile lockups to The Guardian. One named “Maisha” said that her mother’s drug addiction left her relying on a street gang for protection, eventually leading to criminal charges that stranded her in Los Padrinos Hall in 1997, when she was 13. While there, she was repeatedly sexually assaulted by a guard, but she never reported him for fear of retaliation by other staffers. “Snitches get stitches,” she explained. A fellow plaintiff identified as “John SV Roe” also refused to report his attacks because the staffer responsible threatened to track down his family members and hurt them.

Another victim who identified herself as “Ms. Jones” made one of the most damning accusations: that on her second stint in County juvenile detention at age 15, a nurse gave her birth control to avoid any pregnancy that might result from the sexual assaults she endured. “This woman knew what was going on, and she didn’t stand up and help us,” she observed. “I needed somebody to talk to me, to tell me they love me and that they are here for me, to let me know there is a light at the end of the tunnel. But I was treated like trash—thrown away into a dungeon with monsters.”

“Maisha,” “Ms. Jones” and “John SV Roe” were among 279 Plaintiffs who filed suit with the aid of attorneys from ACTS Law in Los Angeles. Another unnamed victim at MacLaren Hall was just 5 when he was abused, according to his attorneys with Ben Crump Law. A fellow Plaintiff in his suit, referred to as “Jane Roe 9 K.A.,” blamed not guard staff but the lack of it for her sexual assault, which was committed by a fellow detainee in the early 2000s when there was no one keeping watch over their housing area.

The massive settlement consolidated these and almost 6,800 other claims from victims represented in large part by attorneys with ACTS Law and Ben Crump Law, along with several other firms, including Becker Law Group, Boucher LLP, Herman Law, DTLA Law Group, McNicholas & McNicholas, LLP, and Slater Slater Schulman LLP. Attorney Adam P. Slater noted that when MacLaren Hall was operated by the Probation Department, it was “run like a child prison, with sky-high walls, barbed wire fences, floodlights, and massive gates and doors guarded by probation officers.” He called the lockup “a literal house of horrors for the children who were brought there, often taken from an abusive home only to be re-abused at MacLaren.”

Claims in Smaller Case and Allegations of Fraud

The 414 victims covered by the second settlement were represented by attorneys with a smaller group of Southern California firms including DTLA Law Group, McNicholas & McNicholas LLP and the Arias Sanguinetti Criminal Law firm. They clearly scored a huge victory for their clients, each of whom received an average of $2 million under the $828 million agreement.

But in announcing the agreement in October 2025, County officials took pains to stress that “an independent allocator” would be put in charge of distributions from the fund, “with individual awards set by the allocator based on factors including the severity of abuse alleged.” Importantly, “[t]he credibility of every individual claim will be reviewed,” the announcement continued, “and plaintiffs determined to have submitted fraudulent claims will receive no money from the settlement.” Similar safeguards were announced for the larger $4 billion settlement fund, awards from which will be made by an “independent team of allocation experts.”

The timing of these caveats was no accident. The previous March, just days before the initial $4 billion settlement was announced, state Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) introduced legislation to change the standard of proof in child sex assault claims against public entities from a “preponderance of the evidence”—meaning the chance that the allegation is true exceeds 50%—to “clear and convincing evidence,” which usually raises the odds to 85% or higher in most courts. Allen withdrew his bill, SB 832, the same month, under fire from victims’ advocates. A similar measure introduced by state Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz), SB 577, died before the year’s legislative session ended.

In October, just as anguish over the horrors inflicted on helpless juvenile victims finally reached a resolution that offered them some long-delayed justice, the Los Angeles Times reported that seven people said they were paid to sue the County for abuse they allegedly endured while in juvenile detention. If true, that would be not only a huge ethical lapse for the attorneys involved but also a violation of state law; 2025 Calif. BPC Div. 3, ch. 4, art. 9 expressly prohibits such “unlawful solicitation.”

Suddenly, fretting over the victimization of children grew less anguished, and fretting over the public purse threatened to drown out the claims. The Board of Supervisors, which was just wrapping up its vote to approve the $828 million settlement, voted also to investigate the “pay to play” allegations. County Counsel Dawyn R. Harrison then launched a probe focusing on DTLA, a Los Angeles firm whose attorneys filed claims for all seven of those who said that they were paid.

DTLA represented a large share of those covered in the initial settlement, too—over 2,700 victims, which the firm said were the only ones to survive a strict internal vetting process from more than 13,000 people who brought their claims to be considered. DTLA was then one of the three firms whose clients were covered by the second, smaller agreement. The law practice vehemently denied paying vendors whom the seven said paid them for their claims. In reporting those allegations, the Los Angeles Times said that its reporters “could not reach the vendors for comment.” But the allegations alone were sufficient for Harrison, who—without offering more proof—called out DTLA for the “absolutely outrageous” behavior it was accused of. She also referred the firm to the state Bar, which launched its own investigation in January 2026.

Meanwhile, Hochman also got involved, throwing the resources of the D.A.’s office in the nation’s largest county behind a criminal investigation into the alleged fraud. In June, the state Bar probe yielded charges against DTLA founding partners Daniel Azizi and Farid Yaghoubtil—but not for paying clients to file claims. Rather, they were charged with filing personal injury claims on behalf of clients in states where the attorneys were not licensed. None of those clients was involved in the two settlements for sex abuse at County juvenile lockups, and DTLA has continued to deny all allegations that it paid victims to sue.

That same month, Hochman announced that his investigators had found vaguely described “markers” of fraud in 81% of the claims they reviewed from those covered in the two settlements. He filed a motion in the Superior Court to intervene in the consolidated case covered by the $4 billion settlement, seeking to delay payouts while the investigation continued. Without that, Hochman told the Los Angeles Times, it “will make it more difficult … getting that money back from the fraudsters.” The D.A. told the Court that he had voiced his concerns to County Supervisors through their counsel, noting the referral to the state Bar that Harrison then made.

“And yet they proceed” with the payout, Judge Riff replied, clearly not persuaded. He denied Hochman’s motion to intervene, leaving the payouts to proceed on schedule.

Anti-Fraud Countermeasures

With the brouhaha over fraudulent claims erupting at the same time that Harrison announced the smaller settlement, she also outlined measures that she and Plaintiffs’ attorneys had put in place to prevent undeserved payouts.

“Every plaintiff must complete a detailed, multi-page written factual summary, under penalty of perjury, of the circumstances of the alleged misconduct and resulting harms,” the County counsel began, emphasizing that “[n]o one will be exempt from this process.”

Moreover, “Plaintiffs suspected of fraudulent claims will be required to make a substantiated showing” to the independent allocator, “who may require additional proof of claims.” Claims from victims represented by DTLA will also “undergo an additional level of review,” Harrison said.

Any claim kicked up to a “higher level review” may mean that the independent allocator requires an interview with the Plaintiff, as well as “additional proof of allegations, depending on the nature of the claim and the suspected fraud.”

All allocators evaluating claims from both settlements “are retired judges with decades of experience in conducting similar reviews.” If any of them “finds claims to be fraudulent, the plaintiff submitting that claim will not receive any payment and can be removed from the settlement process.”

Attorneys from Peiffer, Wolf, Clark, Kane, Conway & Wise explained to Judge Riff the risk to their client Plaintiffs from slowing the payout process. “They are being deprived of the use of their funds to address medical care, counseling, and the rising cost of living necessities,” they said, noting that many had taken high-interest personal loans to cover medical and other debts while waiting for their settlement money. The judge ultimately agreed with them that Hochman’s office had no direct interest in the settlement payments, which were negotiated between Plaintiffs and the Board of Supervisors—who had earlier been warned by their own attorneys when proposing the settlements that failing to approve them and proceeding to trial risked bankrupting the County.

Fortunately, judge Riff agreed with the attorneys that Plaintiffs were being forced to watch while Hochamn, “a non-party, with no standing in the settlement, publicly brands them potential fraudsters.” But that did little to quell the calls for rolling back AB 218—even from within the Board itself.

In February 2026, just after Hochman announced his investigation, Supervisor Kathryn Barger called on state lawmakers to revise AB 218 and “fix it,” arguing that the budget crunch L.A. County now faced from the massive settlement payouts represented “just the tip of the iceberg.” Barger didn’t say how all those victims left underwater would float to any level of relief. But former Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, who wrote AB 218 while in the legislature, said that County officials were attempting to triangulate victims’ claims against the interests of the state’s powerful union lobby—blaming the settlements for robbing the state of funds for raises and perks. So far, she said, that effort has gone nowhere.

Additional Pending Claims,
New Prevention Measures

As many as 5,000 more claims could be forthcoming, County officials estimate. Some could come from people subjected to juvenile sex abuse since AB 452 took effect at the beginning of 2024. Some may come from those subjected to sex abuse in a juvenile lockup who were 18 or older, provided that their claims are filed before the “look back” window under AB 2777 closes at the end of 2026. Still others could come from juvenile sex abuse victims outside the now-shuttered “look back” window for AB 218; these claimants still fall within the statute of limitations if they are no older than 40 and if it has also been five years or less since they “knew or should have known” of the abuse.

Meanwhile, several reforms have been proposed by the County’s Chief Executive Office and its Risk Management team, including the creation of a County-wide hotline for reporting child sexual abuse allegations against County employees. There is another proposal to develop a new system to expedite investigations into these allegations, including an independent review of the investigative findings by an outside expert. Both proposals would require new policies and even new legislation.

Still another proposal involves nothing more than strictly enforcing the County’s existing “Zero Tolerance” policy prohibiting child sexual abuse committed by an employee; whenever such an allegation is substantiated, the County is supposed to take “immediate action to the fullest extent allowed by law, including but not limited to termination and referral to law enforcement.” That it hasn’t done so in the past may be no small part of the reason that County residents are now being forced to pay such huge settlements to victims.

It would be ideal if County leaders could mobilize their outrage over the abuse inflicted by their employees as quickly and loudly as they spun the allegations of fraudulent settlement claims. As noted in a letter to state Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) from Monica Heldman, a professor of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at Occidental College who helms the nonprofit Stand With Survivors, “little [was] done prior to this settlement agreement to determine the causes and potential solutions to the decades long systemic sexual abuse of minors in the three LA county juvenile detention facilities”; in contrast, “the media relations/public affairs office for LA County, presumably with the knowledge and support of County Counsel, the CEO, and the entire Board of Supervisors, launched an aggressive media strategy to shop articles to many publications that in essence ‘blamed the victims’ for the cost to the County taxpayers.”

The “real issue,” Heldman continued, boils down to this: “What did LA County [officials] know about such sexual predators, when did they know it, and, most importantly, what did the County do about it?” The answers to those questions, she concluded, “could be what likely most everyone suspects. That is, LA County knew long ago about child sexual predators employed in those three juvenile detention facilities, turned a blind eye to it for decades, and insisted on secrecy agreements as part of any settlement as claims arose one by one over the last few decades.”

Bonta has not responded to Heldman’s request for a state-level investigation into the abuse claims. However, the day after that letter was sent to him, the County announced the second settlement for $828 million.

Meanwhile, the fight continues to lower the time bar to such claims. That certainly might make fiscal sense for L.A. County and other municipalities, though it would do nothing to help these victims of sexual predation at the hands of public employees who were tasked with guarding them and guiding them toward rehabilitation.

Time will tell if any lasting reform follows these enormous settlements. Meanwhile, perhaps, throwing money at victims and blaming them for taking it appears to be the best that the County can manage.  

Sources: Capitol Weekly, The Guardian, LAist, Legal Newsline, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, San Gabriel Valley Tribune

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