Huge LA Times Investigation of Public School Abuse Allegations But Fraudulent Claims Ignored

It's raining taxpayer money in California.

More than 1,100 abuse lawsuits since just 2020 … $700 million in abuse settlements with projections reaching as high as $3 billion … Decades-old accusations dating back to the 1970s.

Sound familiar? Of course. But in this case, a recent investigation (archive link) by the Los Angeles Times is not referring to the Catholic Church but about abuse accusations in California public schools.

A familiar story with a new name

The Times' investigation details how the majority of abuse accusations arose as a result of California legislation called AB 218, which was passed in 2019 and lifted the state's statute of limitations for three years, allowing individuals to sue organizations for abuse no matter how long ago it allegedly occurred. And as we have reported before, California had passed similar legislation in the past that allowed individuals to sue the Catholic Church and the like but not public institutions no matter how long ago the alleged abuse occurred. That cost the Catholic Church some $2 billion. But AB 218 changed this, making public school districts now vulnerable to lawsuits claiming abuse by educators from many decades ago.

Well, as the Times chronicles, the results of the lawsuits against school districts have been predictable: Districts were forced to sell properties, trim staffing, and cut programs. Again, this should sound familiar to anyone who has followed the Catholic Church sex abuse story for the past two decades. The Times quoted the superintendent of one small California school district:

"The district will be living with this for years … It's unreasonable to expect a district that is small like ours — with $42 million in our operating budget, of which we spend 86% on staffing … that we should be totally responsible for something that happened in 1970."

Of course, without an ounce of public or media sympathy, exasperated Catholic laity and leadership have expressed similar sentiment for the past two-plus decades, as the Church in the United States has been forced to dole out billions in settlements to accusers over claims from forever ago often with respect to long-dead priests and over claims which were were frequently questionable and many times downright absurd.

The missing element: False accusations

So while we salute the Times for its excellent investigative work – a rarity in today's media landscape – we found it still failed to address an important question: Are the decades-old claims against educators actually true? While it is undeniable that some of the accusations are tragically valid, common sense alone would suggest that many fraudsters, flimflammers, and unscrupulous tort lawyers would seize on the statute of limitations to make phony old claims and score some big money.

But don't take our word for it. A different investigation (archive link) by the Times back in October accused a large Los Angeles law firm of the blatantly illegal practice of doling out cash to people for them to file lawsuits against Los Angeles County shelters and juvenile facilities accusing them of abuse decades ago. According to the Times:

Some plaintiffs say they were explicitly told to make up claims.

"They tell you what to say," said Carlshawn Stovall, 43, who said he was given about $20 by a vendor outside the benefits office to sue. "You're supposed to make it up." …

The vendor handed him a postcard-sized "script" of how to respond, he said. He didn't need to worry about getting fact-checked, the vendor told him, as the county had no records of who was in its facilities decades ago. It seemed "a good way to get some quick money," he said …

[Days later, the vendor's law firm] filed a lawsuit on his behalf alleging he was "sexually harassed and abused" by staff in Central Juvenile Hall. Stovall said he was never in juvenile hall — much less abused there.

What percentage of all of these old abuse accusations are bogus? Well, if decades-old accusations against Catholic priests are any indication, the vast majority are. According to the most recent independent annual audit report, only 7% of all historical accusations against Catholic priests in 2024 were even deemed "credible" by the lenient standards of diocesan review boards, with the majority of accusations deemed either "unsubstantiated" (indeed false), "unable to be proven," or still under review.

Kudos to the Los Angeles Times for its excellent reporting, but a larger story still needs to be told: Fraud and false accusations of abuse are rampant.

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Want to learn about the rampancy of false accusations against priests?:
- "The Great Shakedown Keeps A-Rollin': Phony Claims Continue at Epic Pace, Here Are The Facts" (January 2024)
- The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church (Amazon.com)