To this point, victims have filed greater than 1,000 lawsuits towards college districts and counties, with some leading to huge payouts. A jury in Riverside County in 2023 handed Moreno Valley Unified a $135 million verdict over abuse allegations, and Los Angeles Unified faces greater than $500 million in claims.
Total, California colleges face practically $3 billion in intercourse abuse claims from former college students, in accordance with the Fiscal Disaster and Administration Help Staff, a state company that helps college districts with monetary issues. A few of the incidents occurred many years in the past, as early because the Nineteen Forties, and a few of the payouts have been so massive that they’ve led districts to monetary insolvency.
College accountability
Whereas the brand new legislation doesn’t handle the lawsuits, it does institute measures meant to cease future abuse and maintain colleges extra accountable. It requires colleges to write down complete insurance policies on applicable conduct, and prepare college students, lecturers, coaches and different college workers on recognizing and reporting misconduct. It additionally broadens the variety of workers who’re required to report abuse allegations.
Maybe essentially the most noteworthy requirement is making a database of lecturers credibly accused of abuse. The database, to be administered by the California Fee on Trainer Credentialing, might be accessible to varsities throughout their hiring processes. The intention is to cease lecturers who’ve abused college students from quitting and getting rehired elsewhere, solely to abuse extra college students. Academics who’ve been cleared of wrongdoing might be faraway from the database.
Pérez, a Democrat from Alhambra, stated she was impressed to creator the brand new legislation after studying about generations of abuse at Rosemead Excessive College, which is in her district. She additionally advised CaMatters that she was the sufferer of a trainer’s undesirable consideration when she was in highschool.
“There are actually {dollars} and cents being assigned to those circumstances,” she stated in September. “It’s actually opened up this dialog about what can we do to raised stop this abuse from occurring.”
This text was initially revealed on CalMatters and was republished underneath the Artistic Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
