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U.S.|Los Angeles County Plans to Pay $4 Billion to Settle Sex Abuse Claims
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/us/los-angeles-county-plans-to-pay-4-billion-to-settle-sex-abuse-claims.html
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The settlement, which still needs formal approval, covers more than 6,800 claims of abuse, some of which date back to 1959.
April 4, 2025, 6:41 p.m. ET
Los Angeles County has agreed to pay a staggering $4 billion to settle sex abuse claims from generations of children in its juvenile detention and foster care systems in what lawyers said would be the largest payout of its kind in U.S. history.
The sweeping agreement, announced Friday, was the latest in a wave of settlements precipitated by a 2019 state law that dramatically expanded the number of child sexual abuse lawsuits filed against municipalities and school districts. The settlement is expected to be formally approved over the next two weeks by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the county’s claims board, covering more than 6,800 claims of childhood sexual abuse that date as far back as 1959.
Most of the cases stem from abuse allegations that occurred in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s at probation and foster care facilities, county officials said. A significant number took place at the MacLaren Children’s Center, a county-run children’s shelter that operated for 42 years east of downtown Los Angeles in the city of El Monte.
Opened in 1961 as a temporary foster home, MacLaren permanently closed in 2003 amid lawsuits that claimed severe mistreatment of children. A civil grand jury report at the time found that MacLaren managers had allowed convicted burglars and drug traffickers to care for children and had not checked the criminal background of employees for decades.
“On behalf of the county, I apologize wholeheartedly to everyone who was harmed by these reprehensible acts,” the county’s chief executive, Fesia Davenport, said in a statement on Friday. “The historic scope of this settlement makes clear that we are committed to helping the survivors recover and rebuild their lives — and to making and enforcing the systemic changes needed to keep young people safe.”
The amount involved eclipses the $2.4 billion plan to settle lawsuits brought against the Boy Scouts of America by more than 80,000 plaintiffs. And it far exceeds the $1.5 billion in cumulative payouts made by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for alleged abuses of children by clergy and the $1.1 billion paid by the University of Southern California to the hundreds of patients allegedly abused by George Tyndall, who was a longtime gynecologist there.
