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…
A certain aspect of child sexual abuse eradication efforts is progressively emerging into public light in a manner that is most assuredly heartening to all but the most perverted and dangerous people living in the United States and foreign countries. At the same time, though, and even as dramatically exciting announcements are being made that…
Readers seeing the words “grooming behaviors” might typically have no particular reaction to them at all, simply viewing them in the commonplace vein of actions taken to render oneself presentable in public. We clean, we comb … we groom. Given that this is a blog focused on advocacy for sexual abuse victims in California, though,…
Statutes of limitation are so-called “repose” laws, meaning that they impose some cut off point in the future attaching to a criminal investigation for matters of fundamental fairness. Evidence grows old. Memories fade. Witnesses die. Prosecuting a case after, say, 40 years of an alleged crime occurring yields a heightened possibility for error and a…