Los Angeles County has agreed to pay a staggering $4 billion to address sexual abuse claims for generations of children in its juvenile detention and foster care system, which lawyers say will be the largest payment of its kind in U.S. history.
The Comprehensive Agreement, announced Friday, is the latest in a wave of settlements, and one more five-year state law has contributed to the state that significantly expands the number of child sexual abuse lawsuits filed against municipalities and school districts.
The settlement is expected to formally approve the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the County Claims Committee within the next two weeks, covering more than 6,800 claims for child sexual abuse in 1959.
County officials say most cases stem from allegations of abuse that occurred in probation and foster care facilities in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. There are a large number of happenings at the Maclaren Children’s Center, a county-run children’s shelter that is 42 years east of the city of El Monte, east of downtown Los Angeles.
MacLaren opened as a temporary foster home in 1961 and closed permanently in a lawsuit in 2003, claiming serious abuse of children. A civil jury report at the time found that Manager McLaren allowed convicted thieves and drug dealers to take care of children and had not examined employees’ criminal background for decades. In the subsequent lawsuit, former residents said staffers climbed into double decks at night and sexually assaulted them, and if they reported abuse, they would punish them. Some people say they were only 5 years old at the time.
“On behalf of the county, I apologize with all my heart and soul to all those who have been hurt by these reprehensible behaviors,” the county CEO Fesia Davenport said in a statement Friday. “The historical scope of this reconciliation clearly demonstrates our commitment to helping survivors recover and rebuild lives and to carry out and implement the systemic changes needed to ensure the safety of young people.”
The proposed payment will over 80,000 plaintiffs’ $2.4 billion plan against the Boy Scouts of the United States will be eclipsed. It far exceeded the $1.5 billion cumulative spending in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, accusing Clergy of child abuse, while USC paid $1.1 billion for hundreds of patients who said they had been abused by George Tyndall, a longtime gynecologist.
The solution stems from a change in California law that expands employees’ responsibility for public agencies that are sexually abused and also expands the window for victims to file lawsuits. Assembly bill 218 extends the age limit for child sexual abuse claims to age 40 and opens a three-year window for people to file lawsuits that go back decades.
When the window closed in late 2022, municipalities, school districts in California and other public institutions faced a series of lawsuits that have since generated millions of dollars in spending. In 2023, a jury’s $135 million ruling left a school district in a harassment case involving a middle school teacher in Riverside County, with a total of $121.5 million. Last year, the Los Angeles Unified School District agreed to pay $24 million to former students who claimed they had sexually abused by an elementary school teacher in 2006 and 2007.
In a January report, the fiscal crisis and management aid team could help California schools manage their financial situation, with public school districts in the state alone facing a total cost of about $3 billion in “AB 218” lawsuits and warned that the situation could force some districts into takeovers.
Officials in the state’s largest Los Angeles County warned ahead of the settlement that the lawsuit could go bankrupt, with a budget of over $45 billion but are currently dealing with not only the threat of the current recession, but also the recovery costs of the devastating Los Angeles wildfires.
On Friday, officials said the county will likely have to cut budgets, immerse reserves and borrow to pay settlement costs, which will cover the most but not all claims against the county under the new law. They added that the county is seeking to pay bonds that do not cover settlement fees for insurance will require annual payments “hundreds of millions of dollars” that “will have a significant impact on budgets in the coming years.”
Los Angeles attorney Patrick McNicholas, who represented 1,200 plaintiffs in the case against the county, said in an interview that the parties had negotiated for more than a year and a half to strike a balance to compensate the victims and to get the county’s hit rate settled.
“There are a lot of claims,” he said. “The county is huge. We have to balance the goal of restorative justice and the county’s ability to pay.”
