In unprecedented payout, L.A. County will settle sex abuse claims for $4 billion

Los Angeles County plans to pay $4 billion to settle nearly 7,000 claims of childhood sexual abuse that allegedly occurred inside its juvenile facilities and foster homes, dwarfing the largest sex abuse settlements in U.S. history.

The mammoth settlement, which still needs to be approved by both the county claims board and county supervisors, is a billion dollars more than what county officials had anticipated as the worst-case scenario to resolve a flurry of lawsuits — and far more than other organizations notorious for allowing unchecked sex abuse have paid victims.

The Boy Scouts of America, by comparison, agreed to pay $2.46 billion. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has paid out about $1.5 billion for alleged abuse at the hands of Catholic priests. Victims of USC gynecologist George Tyndall got $1.1 billion. Michigan State University paid $500 million to victims of team doctor Larry Nassar.

“This is the largest sex abuse settlement in history,” said Adam Slater, a lead attorney in both the L.A. County and Boy Scouts settlements.

The unprecedented settlement arose from Assembly Bill 218, a 2020 state law that gave victims of childhood sexual abuse a new window to sue, even though the statute of limitations had expired.

Many California counties, which are responsible for the care of children in foster homes and juvenile halls, saw an uptick in lawsuits. For L.A. County, it was a deluge that still hasn’t stopped.

Thousands of men and women came forward to say they had been molested or raped by probation officials decades ago while incarcerated as children in the county’s sprawling network of juvenile halls and camps.

Thousands more alleged sexual abuse at the now-shuttered MacLaren Children’s Center, a county-run home for foster children that plaintiffs’ attorneys have compared to a “house of horrors.” A report found that the facility went decades without doing criminal background checks on its staff.

“When I heard the news, it felt like my heart had a door and it slammed shut,” said MaryAlice Ashbrook, 65, who was sent to MacLaren as an 8-year-old in the early 1960s. “I’ve gone to great lengths to block this out, and still, I deal with reoccurring nightmares.”

Both Ashbrook and her friend Shirley Bodkin, 58, who filed some of the earliest AB 218 cases against L.A. County, said the hall where they spent part of their childhoods was rife with predatory staff.

“I’m in total shock,” said Bodkin, who recalled being drugged, beaten and sexually abused in bathtubs and closets. “I’ve been waiting all these years for this outcome.”

Taken together, the thousands of lawsuits, most of which involve alleged abuse from the 1980s through the 2000s, paint a picture of a government that failed to intervene as its facilities turned into hunting grounds for predators, who held immense power over the children in their custody.

“On behalf of the county, I apologize wholeheartedly to everyone who was harmed by these reprehensible acts,” said L.A. County Chief Executive Officer Fesia Davenport in a statement.

She said the county has worked in recent years to crack down on sexual abuse of minors. Improvements touted by the county include bolstering the vetting of foster parents and probation staffers and winding down the use of group homes like MacLaren Children’s Center.

Davenport made headlines in 2023 when she estimated in a public budget hearing that the county could be looking at $1.6 billion to $3 billion in liability for the roughly 3,000 sex abuse claims it expected.

Her estimate was met with shock and a dash of skepticism from seasoned attorneys suing the county, who said it would blow any previous sex abuse payout out of the water.

Since then, thousands of additional victims have sued, with more coming forward every month. In addition to creating a three-year window for victims, which closed at the end of 2023, the new state law let plaintiffs sue if they were under the age of 40 or had recently discovered the abuse they suffered as children.

The county said the $4-billion settlement covers most — but not all — of the childhood sexual abuse lawsuits. Some attorneys were not willing to participate in the “global mediation process,” and negotiations are underway with plaintiffs in those cases, according to the county.

The settlement does not include any of the 150 cases filed by Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, one of the most high-profile sex-abuse law firms negotiating with the county, according to Courtney Thom, a partner with the firm. Resolving those cases could end up costing the county millions more.

Patrick McNicholas, whose law firm is representing 1,200 plaintiffs, said he was mindful during settlement discussions to reach for a number that would bring some justice to the thousands of victims without bankrupting the county, which serves as the region’s social safety net. He reasoned that the government could stay solvent with a $4-billion payout — and yet it was still the largest sex abuse payout he has ever heard of.

“This is a historic settlement,” he said. “It recognizes the horrific harm that has been done.”

Dominique Anderson, pictured around age 11, is one of thousands of plaintiffs who have sued over abuse at the county’s juvenile faculties. Anderson said her probation officer’s boss molested her in a motel room when she was around 13.

(Dominique Anderson)

The $4-billion payout will be a huge blow to a county already in tumultuous financial waters, thanks to threats of funding cuts from the Trump White House and the cost of recovering from the devastating Palisades and Eaton wildfires. Davenport has warned that the county government, which has a roughly $49-billion budget, could face “a fiscal crisis” unless hiring is frozen.

County officials have said the money will come from draining the county’s rainy day fund and taking out bonds. The county is expected to owe hundreds of millions of dollars in interest on those bonds, which have to be paid off by 2051.

The county budget will also need to be slashed, Davenport warned department heads in a Friday email.

“It is unprecedented by all accounts,” she wrote. “After you recover from the shock of the settlement amount and how it will impact your budgets, we must regain focus and turn towards the work ahead of us.”

The county said it will pay out the money between January 2026 and Jan. 30, 2030, providing the billions to “independent allocators” who will decide how to divvy it up among the roughly 6,800 plaintiffs.

“We hope that this settlement, once approved, can bring some measure of healing to those who experienced abuse and help them in rebuilding their lives,” the Board of Supervisors, which is expected to approve the settlement later this month, wrote in a joint statement.

There have been few criminal prosecutions of county staffers accused of abuse in the lawsuits. The probation department presented the L.A. County district attorney’s office with evidence against two staff members, Thomas Jackson and Altovise Abner, in December 2023. The status of those cases was not immediately available.

Some of the employees accused of being the most prolific abusers were on the county payroll until recently. Jackson resigned from the probation department in fall 2023, ending a 33-year career during which at least 20 women accused him of sexually abused them when they were girls.