The Statten Act takes a financial toll on the budgets of California

In 2018, an anonymous tip led the authorities In California to Eric Uller, who had done volunteer work for decades An after -school program associated with the police of Santa Monica. A study showed that Mr Uller, 50, had abused at least four boys on the city’s watch.

Allegings of dozens of others soon emerged, Dating until the 1980s and 1990s. Weeks after his arrest, Mr. Uller hung up In his apartment on the day he would appear in court.

Seven years later, Santa Monica still pays for his crimes. At the last count, the bill had reached nearly $ 230 million.

That is how much money the city spread among 229 claimants who said they had been sexually abused by Mr Uller. There are more than 150 extra cases.

Budget reserves are now so low that the creditworthiness agency S&P Global last year lowered the bond of Santa Monica. Insurance has only covered about 10 percent of the city’s expenditure. By one Budget workshop in MarchThe city council discussed the sale of a library to supplement a fund that it had exhausted to pay the claimants of sexual abuse.

“I am afraid that we will flow to bankruptcy,” then Hall, a city councilor, told his colleagues.

Los Angeles County International headlines brought Last month after it agreed to pay $ 4 billion to arrange nearly 7,000 claims for sexual abuse submitted by adults who had been children in his youth prison and foster care systems. The deal, recently approved by leaders of the province, is the largest in its kind in American history.

But in California it was a payout among many.

Cities such as Santa Monica, together with provinces and school districts in the entire state, are struggling with their own steep judgments and settlements that are not as records as those of Los Angeles County, but some of them push to the edge of the financial crisis. A state law signed in 2019 by GOV. Gavin Newsom has extended the number of lawsuits for sexual abuse of children that can be submitted against public institutions. The law, known as Assembly Bill 218 or AB 218, has set up a wave of lawsuits that gave birth to the ideals of California as a defender of the vulnerable against her money -stacked financial realities.

Inspired by the #Metoo movement and revelations of child abuse covered by the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts, the law increased the age limit for submitting lawsuits for sexual abuse in children against employers who have such abuse take place and opened a three-year window for claims that had expired under the old status of restrictions. Now hundreds of lawsuits that represent thousands of claimants have led to dozens of judgments and settlements of millions of dollars, and even the author of the law has called for a retooling to give entities funded by the taxpayer.

In the South California community of Moreno Valley, a jury judgment left the school district in 2023 with a total judgment $ 121.5 million. Although the district, which serves around 34,000 students, has negotiated its payment at $ 45 million, insurance costs have risen.

At the Central Coast, Montecito Union, a primary school district, could lose its full budget of $ 20 million to uninsured claims for sexual abuse. “A big verdict like so many of those who are seen in the entire state would be devastating, and we don’t know how we could possibly pay such a large amount,” said the chief inspector of Montecito, Anthony Ranii, in an E -mail.

A recent analysis of AB 218 Done for the Californian legislative power by a state agency that monitors the finances of the school district, estimated that school districts are only confronted with up to $ 3 billion in claims with regard to the law. The agency warned that some districts may not survive and ordered the state to create the compensation fund of a victims as it started after the terrorist attacks of 11 September.

During a recent press conference, Governor Newsom called the impact of the law ‘challenging’.

Adult victims of sexual abuse in children View the settlement as long -awaited reimbursement for irreparable trauma. She and their lawyers say that the damage caused by such an abuse often only becomes clear after the deadline for submitting claims. In the Santa Monica matters in which Mr Uller was involved, many of the claimants were young boys when they were attacked, Spanish men from families with a low income who had remained silent for years out of fear or shame, or to protect relatives without papers.

“Imagine your child going to a school, for example, and the school district knows that your child’s teacher is a perpetrator – and it does nothing” female gymnasts who have been attacked By the former Doctor of the National Gymnastics team, Lawrence G. Nassar. “That’s what this is.”

But for the communities that have the financial victims of ‘AB 218 claims’, as they are now known, the payouts represent a distraction of scarce public means to pay for the sins of previous generations.

“Our students and families and teachers from the moment are essentially asked to pay something long ago that was completely outside of their control and that they had nothing to do,” said Andy Shaffer, the vice -president of a school board in a national part of Santa Barbara County.

The district of Mr. Shaffer, the Carpinteria Unified School District, is being sued by four men in the 50s and 60s who say they were youth victims of a former director who was that convicted of child abuse in 1986. The company that insured the district at that time is no longer in business, records are incomplete “and everyone who keeps track of then is dead,” said Mr. Shaffer, including the perpetrator. The legal accounts of Carpinteria Unified are already approaching $ 1 million.

If a settlement cannot be reached, he said, a judgment of the size of the juries in other cases would have been able to expel the $ 42 million budget of $ 42 million, and the management of Carpinteria Unified could fall to the state in a process known as a recipient.

The claimants’ lawyers say that such situations are rare and that a balance can be affected in settlement negotiations. In some cases, judges have reduced the payouts and others are, at least partially, noted by insurance.

For local governments in California, the many lawsuits have exacerbated tax tribes such as forest fires and lost federal financing. In general, lawsuits against public entities in California tend to make fewer restrictions than in most other states. Civil servants in the city of Los Angeles, for example, recently reported that the liability costs of all species tripled in the past year, only by claims on issues such as police forces and sidewalks offered by tree roots, which contributes to one Almost $ 1 billion projected deficit.

Last month, Los Angeles officials traveled to Sacramento to ask state laws to ask for help, not only lobbying for state money to prevent dismissals, but also for a change in the State Act to limit the assets of the claimants to recover compensation from municipalities in civil court cases.

The Chief Executive of Los Angeles County, Fesia Davenport, was also in the Capitol that day and testified about the payment of the record of sexual abuse of the province in children in children. Mrs. Davenport said that the province would tap into the reserves, spend bonds and make budget reductions to cover the obligation of $ 4 billion. Nevertheless, the province will make annual payments up to and including 2050 or longer, and the lawsuit has not been terminated. Hundreds of more claimants did not take on the scheme.

Like most provinces in California, Los Angeles County acts as the health care provider and the last resort for the inhabitants, around 10 million people. The province’s budget this year is also almost $ 2 billion peculiar” Requirements for increases From more than 100,000 public employees in several trade unions and the potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal health fairs under the Trump administration.

“Victims have the right to make their voices heard,” said Mrs. Davenport in an interview. “I think it is important as a society to recognize these historical mistakes. At the same time, we must be able to offer the social safety net.”

It is unclear how much lighting, any legislators in California, will offer public institutions. Last month, the Democratic Staatsenator who represents Santa Monica introduced Ben Allen, a former member of the school board, a bill that would have increased the standard of the evidence for AB 218 Legal cases. It was suspended before the first hearing in the midst of fierce pushback of the state lawyers of the state, which are generally unforeseen costs worth 30 percent or more of such settlements and judgments.

Mr. Manly, the lawyer who represented Olympic gymnasts in the case against Mr. Nassar – and whose clients include several hundreds of outstanding claimants against Los Angeles County – personally sponsored an online advertisement in which Californians were asked to stop Ben All’s Predator Shield Law “. A grainy black and white photo of Mr. All with sunglasses and a blunt beard anchored the plea.

“There is a huge problem with sexual abuse in our public schools, and not just in California, and it must be cleared,” said Mr. Manly.

But public employees have exerted their own pressure because their powerful trade unions are concerned about possible fired.

Lorena Gonzalez, the Democrat that AB 218 wrote when she served in the state meeting, said in an interview that she was alerted in the attack of a lawsuit, much of it generated by heavy advertising and with external investors who offer financial support.

“It got out of hand very quickly,” said Mrs. Gonzalez, now the president of the California Labor Federation. “The only way you stop these patterns of abuse is to let people take it seriously. But that should not mean that you have to do the state bankrupt.”