“People with parasitic interests will see you as their prey.” So says Elijah Wood, who generally commands a bit of attention when he speaks. And the reason for that is obvious, given that Wood, now 35 years old, has already had a decades-long acting career on television and in movies. Most notably, of course, he…
Perpetrators of child sexual abuse often go to great lengths to work with or be near children in order to “groom” them for abuse. Employers, and especially religious and youth organizations, should implement proper screening, monitoring and reporting processes in order to protect children from sexual predators. Unfortunately, even when an organization has rules designed…
Is the sexual abuse of children by teachers in what a recent New York Times articles calls “the insular, privileged world of American prep schools” a singular or outsized problem as compared with what occurs in public schools? That’s debatable. And it certainly is being debated across the country these days in light of recurring…
We know that all our readers would fervently welcome the day when acts of child sexual abuse would simply cease to exist in California, nationally and across the rest of the world. The victimization of young people — from toddlers and adolescents to teens and beyond — by adult sexual perpetrators is a stark and…
In May 2016, the Los Angeles Unified School District agreed to pay $88 million to settle sexual misconduct claims filed on behalf of 30 students involving two elementary school teachers. The claims brought against the District state that although there were warnings and concerns regarding predatory behavior, administrators did nothing to penalize the teachers. Both…
He flat-out got it wrong and, in the process, materially harmed the entire student body at his national university. Although a recent editorial goes far beyond that narrow and pointed condemnation, the single sentence above conveys quite accurately the central gist of criticisms levied against the president of Penn State University for a letter he…
We have often noted in our Los Angeles personal injury blog devoted to advocacy on behalf of sexual abuse victims (especially children) that no demographic is exempt when it comes to sexual predators. That is, the sexual abuse of children and other people is sadly, a flatly egalitarian practice. Our past posts have spotlighted criminal…
In our last post, we began looking at the California Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act and its requirements. As we noted, there are various forms of abuse and neglect which must be reported under the act by certain categories of individuals identified as legally mandated reporters. Such individuals are required to report when, in their…
For victims of child abuse, seeking compensation from those responsible for or who contributed to the abuse is critical to achieving a just resolution to their case. For the victim, of course, this may entail filing a civil suit and seeking damages to compensate for costs and suffering result from the abuse. It is also…
Technology that is unavailable to the public that can transform blurred images into sharply focused material. Fingerprints that can actually be pulled from a photo and enhanced to the point where positive identification of an individual can be made. So-called “Photo DNA” technology that enables criminal investigators poring over computers to review data 100 times…