Sexual Abuse

The California Healthy Youth Act, which has been in place since 2016, provides “integrated, comprehensive, accurate, and unbiased sexual health and HIV prevention instruction” for public school students. Erin Prangley, associate director of government relations for the American Association of University Women, told EdSource that “Many school cultures trivialize harassment, tolerate language that degrades girls…

Larry Nassar, George Tyndall, James Heaps, Bayard Allmond and countless other physicians have faced the legal and professional consequences of sexual misconduct against patients most of whom were young and vulnerable. A story in the Los Angeles Times reports that since the fall of 2017, complaints against California physicians have increased by 62%. Those numbers…

The Washington Post recently reported that a Boy Scout identified as S.D., was sexually assaulted hundreds of times by a scout leader. The incidents happened in the 1970s in Pennsylvania. A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of the plaintiff against the Boy Scouts, the Penn Mountains Council, and the alleged abuser. It is one…

George Tyndall, a former gynecologist for USC, was arrested and charged with 18 counts of sexual assault and 11 counts of sexual battery by fraud. He faces up to 53 years in prison if he is convicted on all charges. At this time, the charges stem from accusations posed by 16 different women. However, the…

A recent NPR article shined a light on overlooked victims of sexual assault – adult survivors of sexual abuse by nuns. Awareness and acknowledgement of the abuse and molestation of girls and boys by priests and clergy is growing, and this validation is helping survivors of abuse by religious sisters come forward with their allegations.…

The Catholic Church has been at the heart of multiple sexual abuse scandals for more than a decade now, with more and more victims. The survivors are generally males (though woman have come forward in record numbers, too) who attended all-boy grade schools and high schools throughout the United States. This type of systemic abuse…

Aimee Palmitessa was charged with 12 felony counts for having sex with one of her students at Brentwood School; the student was a minor at the time. Last August, the student – “John Doe” – sued Brentwood School: “The 33-page complaint documented Palmitessa’s history of suggestive behavior toward students, even before Doe ended up in…

Thousands of credible accusations have been leveled against the Catholic Church over the last few years alone, and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is no exception. Having just secured the largest individual settlement for a sex abuse case ever offered by Archdiocese, we know firsthand how important it is that survivors come forward. That is…

If you have turned on the news or looked online in the last couple of days, you’ve seen the headlines: almost 8,000 Boy Scouts leaders have been accused of sexual abuse over the last 72 years. We knew it was bad. We just didn’t know it was this bad. The idea that the Boy Scouts…