This story was originally published by . for their newsletters.

When Samantha Muñoz was a second grader at Fancher Creek Elementary in Clovis, her teacher told her she “wasn’t that bright” and needed extra help with schoolwork. He’d make her stay in the classroom at recess, or tell her to sit on his lap while other students were busy with assignments.

During those quiet times in the classroom, she said, he sexually abused her — over and over, for at least a semester, even after the school principal walked in on him.

“No one knew. I just didn’t know who to run to. I ran to the school, and they shut me down into silence,” said Muñoz, who’s now 28. “But (now) I’ve figured, no one should be living like this. It’s time to speak your truth and make it OK to talk about. It’s a sensitive topic, but it needs awareness and closure.”

Muñoz, who lives in Fresno County, is part of a multi-plaintiff lawsuit against the Clovis Unified School District alleging the district knew about Muñoz’s teacher but — for at least seven years, from 2005-2012 — did not stop him from abusing students. Clovis Unified had no comment on the case because of the litigation.

Muñoz’s case is one of at least 1,000 lawsuits against California school districts and counties stemming from , a sexual abuse reform law that took effect in 2020. It temporarily dropped the statute of limitations, provided a three-year window for victims to file claims and otherwise made it easier for them to sue school districts and counties.

The cases span decades, some as early as the 1940s. In many cases the perpetrator is dead, the district staff has turned over, and there’s no longer a paper trail of the original complaint, if there ever was one.

The new law has resulted in a slew of payouts to abuse survivors, most in the range of $5 million to $10 million but some much higher. In 2023 a jury delivered a $135 million verdict against Moreno Valley Unified in Riverside County. Los Angeles Unified is expecting to pay more than $500 million to settle a portion of its claims. Overall, the claims against schools total nearly $3 billion.

Counties also have paid out large sums of money. In April, Los Angeles County to settle 6,800 abuse claims from victims who were abused in foster care or in probation department facilities. Like many government entities, Los Angeles County is self-insured.

The settlements have been so large that they’ve brought some school districts to the brink of financial insolvency and state takeover. They’ve also resulted in steep spikes in insurance payments for all school districts, regardless of whether they’ve been sued.

‘UČÔłÙ±đČÔČčČú±ô±đ’

Carpinteria Unified is among those districts facing financial collapse.

The predominantly low-income Latino district near Santa Barbara has been served with four sexual abuse lawsuits, all involving the same perpetrator: a principal who was in the 1970s and early 1980s.

“These suits are settling for $5 million to $10 million each, and we have a $42 million budget. You do the math,” said Superintendent Diana Rigby. “It’s untenable.”

The district has already spent $750,000 on legal fees, and has had to lay off staff, increase class sizes and cut field trips, enrichment activities and other programs to pay its legal bills. Although the district had insurance at the time of the abuse, the company has since gone out of business and its current insurance company won’t cover old claims.

The perpetrator is dead and the district staff has turned over 100% since the incidents occurred. Years ago, the district instituted strict protocols for abuse claims, immediately contacting the police and placing the alleged perpetrator on leave until an investigation is complete.

Rigby worries about how her district will survive. If the state takes it over, it’ll lose its school board and superintendent, and further cuts will be inevitable.

“We believe all the victims need to be compensated for these heinous crimes,” Rigby said. “But AB 218 is causing current students and taxpayers to pay for crimes that happened 50 years ago, that they had nothing to do with. There has to be a better solution.”

Legislative solution?

Several current bills in the Legislature would curb the law, at least somewhat. A bill by Sen. John Laird, , would bring back a statute of limitations, make it easier for districts to issue bonds to pay off settlements and take other steps to give some relief to school districts and other public agencies. But it doesn’t cap attorneys’ fees or settlements.

The political reality, Laird said, is that there’s not enough support in the Legislature to limit legal settlements in abuse cases.

“We’re trying to walk between the poles of avoiding billions of dollars in settlements, while not neglecting the rights of victims,” said Laird, a Democrat from Santa Cruz.

The bill passed the Senate and is now in the Assembly judiciary committee.

Consumer Attorneys of California is neutral on the bill, but several school lobbying groups have opposed it, saying it doesn’t go far enough. One group, the Association of California School Administrators, would also like to see school districts share responsibility for paying settlements with the perpetrator or other groups that might be involved, such as sports or after-school organizations. The group also wants the state to study the possibility of a victims’ fund that’s not entirely monetary; it could also include mental and physical health services.

The abuse settlements are the worst financial threat to school districts since the Great Recession of 2008-2009, said Mike Fine, director of the Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team, which advises the state and school districts on financial matters.

His that the state create a database of abuse claims as well as teachers who have been accused, to prevent perpetrators from bouncing from one district to another. The group also recommends more flexibility on settlement payment plans, and an alternative to state takeover for districts that are out of money.

Like Laird, Fine’s group is not calling for a cap on settlements or attorney fees. “We didn’t think tort reform was within our scope,” Fine said.

They’re also not calling for a state-financed victims’ fund, something school districts have asked for. Laird said the state lacks the money for such a fund. Fine’s group omitted it from its recommendations because a victims’ fund could preclude a trial, and Fine said that victims should have a right to go to court and have their voices heard.

But schools’ top priority, Fine said, should be setting tough protocols to prevent abuse from happening in the first place. Although some districts have instituted safeguards, not all have, and the state doesn’t have a uniform policy because it’s deemed a local issue.

“Schools have to hold themselves to a higher standard, and we’ve clearly failed in this regard,” Fine said. “This simply has to stop.”

‘Prime time’ for trial attorneys

The sexual abuse law has been a windfall for trial attorneys. Billboards seeking clients have cropped up around the state, and lawyers from throughout the country have come to California to file claims.

Typically attorneys in abuse lawsuits work for free until there’s a resolution, and then collect a portion of the payout if the plaintiff prevails — in some instances up to 40%, depending on the complexity of the case.

Dorothy Johnson, legislative advocate for the Association of California School Administrators, called the current scenario “prime time” for trial attorneys in California, but forcing impossible burdens onto school districts and other agencies. Schools are already contending with financial hardships due to declining enrollment, the end of pandemic relief funds and federal education cuts. These settlements are pushing some districts over the edge — while attorneys are making millions, she said.

“We don’t think trial attorneys should be profiting at the expense of current students,” Johnson said. “We want to make sure victims get resolution but at the same time put some guardrails up. Right now, there are no guardrails.”

The trial attorneys’ association is not opposed to changes in the law, as long as victims’ rights aren’t curtailed, said Nancy Peverini, legislative director for California Consumer Attorneys.

“There’s an understanding that we need to find a balance, but it’s really important that survivors’ voices don’t get lost,” Peverini said.

Hard choices in Montecito

Montecito — a scenic enclave near Santa Barbara — is home to Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities. With sweeping views of the Pacific and Santa Ynez mountains, it’s one of the most affluent and exclusive towns in the country. Its school district, however, is facing financial calamity and a possible state takeover.

Montecito Union Elementary District serves about 350 students, mostly children from affluent families but also the children of Montecito’s landscapers and housekeepers. Earlier this year, it took in 42 students from Pacific Palisades, which was largely destroyed in a wildfire.

In 2023, three former students sued the district over sexual abuse they said they experienced from 1972-76. The district denied the claim, and is negotiating a settlement. The payout and legal costs could swell to $20 million — more than the district’s annual budget. Even a state loan wouldn’t solve the problem, because the payments would be more than the district can afford, according to Fine’s organization.

The district’s insurance company at the time of the alleged abuse no longer exists, and its current insurer doesn’t cover events from that long ago. That means that like Carpinteria Unified, Montecito will have to pay the entire cost — cutting programs, borrowing money and using reserves.

“First of all, there’s a whole lot of empathy. We were heartbroken to hear these allegations,” Superintendent Anthony Ranii said. “But none of us were here then. Many of us weren’t even born. The alleged perpetrator and witnesses are dead. We’re putting the responsibility for something that might or might not have happened in 1972 100% on the heads of students in 2025. That’s not fair.”

‘We need awareness’

For Muñoz, the abuse she suffered during the 2004-05 school year took more than a decade to come to terms with. Even after the abuse stopped, Muñoz found school difficult, socially and academically. She lost trust in adults and emotionally withdrew. She never talked about what happened, not even to her family.

Neng Yang, the teacher whom Muñoz said abused her, was arrested and tried in 2014 on 45 counts of sexual abuse on a child under age 10, based on testimony from numerous victims who were students at Fancher Creek Elementary. He was and is serving a 38-year sentence.

Muñoz only started talking about the abuse a few years ago, when she started reading about the impacts of childhood abuse. Earlier this year, she got a call from Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala, a Washington-based law firm, that was investigating claims from another of Yang’s victims for a potential suit against Clovis Unified.

She decided to share her story with the attorneys and join the lawsuit.

“I just want other victims to know that they’re not the only ones,” Muñoz said. “It’s OK to talk about it. We need awareness if there’s going to be change.”

This article was and was republished under the license.

“Erin became anxious; she was always worried about getting to the phone on time,” said Rena Castro, her mother. “Her demeanor changed. She had been such a strong-minded, smart, fearless person who had a smile on her face all the time — the kind of person that you just knew was going to go out and take the world on when she got older.”

But the San Antonio teen shifted from confident and outgoing to isolated and withdrawn, afraid of angering Joshua Garcia, the classmate she started seeing in the 10th grade, her mother said. Erin stopped spending as much time with friends, posting pictures of herself on social media and wearing as much makeup, a passion of hers, due to his objections. She tried to end the relationship, her mother said, but always returned to Garcia because he threatened to kill himself during their breakups. Instead, he killed Erin.

On September 2, 2018, he stabbed her and ran her over with his car twice after arguing with her. Erin had just celebrated her 19th birthday hours earlier.

Today, Rena Castro is among the people working to draw attention to teen dating violence, especially during this past February, National Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month. In Texas, this marks the first such month observed after the passage of , a law that took effect in December requiring school districts to provide instruction about dating violence and related issues such as child abuse, sex trafficking and family violence. Advocates against domestic violence hope the legislation will enable schools statewide to help youth distinguish healthy relationships from abusive ones, but some have raised concern that parents can opt their children out of these lessons, the result of a last-minute change to the legislation initiated by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Although Heather Bellino, CEO of the Texas Advocacy Project, which fights against dating and domestic violence, does not support the legislation’s opt-out provision, she is hopeful that SB9 will lead more Texas youths to learn about abusive relationships.

“They had already been doing this where the resources and the time was available and also when the need and the requests were coming from the community,” she said. “But there are a lot of underserved and marginalized communities where they do not have the funding or the resources to do this, and without mandating it, it was not happening at schools. So I’m glad this legislation is there.”

Since the 2020-21 school year, San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) has taught the to provide students in grades 5-12 with age-appropriate lessons on healthy friendships and relationships. Victoria Bustos, SAISD’s executive director of student support services, said the district decided to offer this instruction based on feedback it received from school counselors about student needs. They especially wanted to reach young students, she said, to give them the foundation to establish healthy relationships in the future.

“The lessons we’re implementing really center around communication and decision-making, cultural influences and what a healthy relationship looks like,” Bustos said. “So, it’s really focusing on the importance of respect around the essentials of friendship, for example, to begin with. The curriculum is broken into different lessons, usually 15-, 20-minute lessons delivered by the school counselor, and this happens for about 10 different lessons. That is one of the foremost curricula that we use to help promote dating violence prevention.”

Teen dating violence includes physical or sexual assault, stalking, coercive and controlling behavior, emotional abuse, harassment and exploitation. “It can occur in person, online or through various forms of technology,”  . “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research shows that more than 8 percent of high school students in the United States reported experiencing physical or sexual dating violence over the course of a one-year period.”  Young women and LGBTQ+ youth experience the highest rates of abuse while dating, he noted.

Rather than solely focus on intimate partner violence, the SAISD curriculum also addresses goal-setting related to college and career plans and the influence of social media.

“The curriculum focuses on a healthy decision-making model that asks students to stop, think and make decisions with intent,” Bustos said. “It asks kids to think about what their life goals are. We try to tie it all together early on developmentally, so that students will be able to know what a good friendship, a good relationship looks like.”

Different districts are responding to the law in their own ways. In Austin, public school officials are currently updating the district’s human sexuality and responsibility curriculum, a process expected to be finalized before the next school year starts in the fall. The subject matter includes healthy relationships, personal safety, identity and puberty as well as lessons on the prevention of child abuse, family violence, dating violence and sex trafficking required by SB9. Parents and other stakeholders will have the opportunity to review the changes made to the human sexuality and responsibility curriculum and provide feedback during public meetings. As the new legislation mandates, parents will also have the ability to opt their children out of any lessons related to dating, domestic or other forms of abuse.

The opt-out provision was added to SB9 after Abbott vetoed an earlier version of the bill that didn’t include this loophole. His spokesperson Nan Tolson said in a statement to The 19th that Abbott “cares deeply for the health and safety of Texas children” but also about “the rights of parents to protect their children.”  That’s why he wanted the legislation to include an opt-out provision for families.

Bellino worries about the ramifications of allowing parents to prevent their children from receiving lessons about dating and domestic violence and human trafficking.

“I do think that having to have consent from a parent will mean that some children that are experiencing abuse in their home, either themselves or watching their parents go through it, will not learn the language or see the red flags that will help them to self identify and make an outcry to the people in the community that we have set up well to be a support system,” she said. “And, therefore, there will be abuses that will continue to occur.”

Bellino said she understands parents want to have input in their children’s education but characterized domestic abuse as a public health issue that young people need to recognize for their safety and well-being. She said that there’s no shortage of age-appropriate learning materials about dating, domestic or child abuse and that educators should be able to use those resources to provide instruction to all students “so that no child falls through the cracks and ends up being abused when we could have helped them.”

San Antonio Councilmember Manny Pelaez also objects to SB9’s opt-out provision. A spokesperson for Pelaez said he believes youth have the best chance of mitigating dating and domestic violence if they are educated about these issues. He’s proposing that the city of San Antonio require schools and universities that receive city funding to teach all students about domestic violence, child abuse and human trafficking. The council is expected to vote on the proposal before the end of the year, a Pelaez spokesperson told The 19th.

“Victims of abuse and domestic violence don’t necessarily have the ability to opt out of that abuse,” Pelaez said in a statement to The 19th. “And there has been a concern both with [myself] and and other stakeholders in Texas that if there is abuse within a household, those households may be less inclined to provide permission for their kid to learn about those things and how they can potentially report that.”

Rena Castro wishes that schools offered lessons on dating violence when she was a teen, so she could’ve passed down the information to her late daughter. Since her three older children never got involved in abusive relationships and she married too young to have much dating experience herself, Castro said she lacked the knowhow to identify the telltale signs of intimate partner violence. She would’ve appreciated “if something like this program would have been around about what healthy relationships should look like and what unhealthy relationships can start like, because it doesn’t always start out ugly,” she said. “It starts out really pretty also, but those red flags are always there.”

For her daughter, “a slow progression” of abuse was followed by intermittent episodes of violence before Garcia’s rage finally turned deadly. When she was murdered, Erin was planning to attend school to become a veterinary technician. “She had all other aspects of her life under control except this [abusive relationship],” Castro said.

To honor her daughter’s memory, she established the , through which she visits schools to speak to students about the warning signs of abusive relationships. The grieving mother steps up her efforts in February with a 5K in Erin’s honor and visits to school districts throughout Texas in recognition of National Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month.

Last year, for murdering Erin and 20 years in prison, to be served concurrently, for violating probation stemming from charges related to hitting her with a car in 2016. She did not sustain serious injuries from that incident and did not suspect that it was a foreshadowing of her murder just two years later.

Castro said that her family will never recover from losing Erin, as the teenager’s death completely changed their dynamic.

“Erin was our glue,” Castro said. “She was the peacemaker. I just saw all these qualities of a young woman that was really going to do something with her life. I was so proud of the woman she was becoming.”

The updated total represents a 16 percent jump over the original figure, which a state agency provided to ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ via a public records request in late December. 

Based on those records, ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ reported in January that school staff had made over 2,400 calls to the state’s child abuse hotline in the first three months of the 2021-22 school year and over 9,600 since the start of the pandemic — many of which, advocates say, were harmful to families and possibly the result of racial bias.

But according to the corrected counts, city school personnel made even more reports than previously known: 2,822 between September and November 2021, and 11,560 between August 2020 and November 2021. 

In late February, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services sent ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ its amended tabulation, noting that reports made by teachers were “inadvertently excluded” from the initial record it had provided in response to a November 2020 freedom of information request.

“When the report was initially run for ‘school personnel,’ teachers were accidentally not included as a source,” OCFS Records Access Officer Tracy Swanson wrote in an email. “Once our data people realized the error, they reran the report and included the accurate data.”

Having left out teachers was a “huge oversight,” said parent advocate Paullette Healy, who herself was subject to an investigation that ultimately found no evidence of neglect.

Gabriel Freiman, head of education practices at the legal nonprofit said the sheer number of reports of abuse and neglect made by school staff — over 11,500 from August 2020 to November 2021 — “demonstrates to me that our school system is really intertwined with the family regulation system.”

Roughly 16 percent of all reports made by school personnel during that time period were from teachers, a comparison of the original and updated records reveals. The vast majority of calls came from other staff in the nation’s largest school district. School personnel are mandated by New York state law to report suspected cases of child abuse and neglect to a central hotline.

“The way that this gets recorded, it’s the person who actually is 
 making the call to the [],” said Freiman, who works with families navigating child welfare investigations. “If a child discloses something to a teacher about what’s happening in the home and the teacher immediately goes and talks to the principal, it could be the principal that calls in the report or the counselor that calls in the report.”

Healy doesn’t believe it was her child’s teacher who reported her and thinks it may have been a school psychologist with whom she had previous conflicts. Her child’s Brooklyn school did not respond to ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s request for comment. 

Reporting done by The Hechinger Report and HuffPost in 2018 showed that school officials in select cases as a retaliation tactic against parents they find to be bothersome.

The new numbers matter because child welfare investigations disproportionately impact poor families of color and can cause devastating impacts for children and parents. Charges can stay on parents’ records for years, erasing job prospects in fields like child care. Most dire, children can be separated from their parents — a trauma that studies show is later associated with elevated risks of .

In New York City, some of children named in investigations are Black or Hispanic, while, together, those racial groups make up 60 percent of the city’s youth. Even among neighborhoods with similar poverty rates, those with greater shares of Black and Hispanic residents face , research shows.

Such disparities are “deeply concerning,” a spokesperson for the Administration for Children’s Services, the New York City agency tasked with looking into suspected cases of child abuse and neglect, said in mid-January. 

ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ previously reported that many families investigated this school year by ACS say they were not neglecting their children, but rather keeping them home from school as a COVID precaution. Under the city’s own guidance instructing schools to have leniency in such cases, they say, they should never have been reported to the agency.

Mayor Eric Adams’s Sunday announcement that he plans to lift the city’s school mask mandate March 7 may add yet another reason for COVID-wary parents to fear returning their children to in-person learning — signaling the issue may be far from over.

“Ending the mask mandate in @NYCSchools is a [middle finger] to Black, Latino, underrepresented Asian, disabled & immunocompromised kids & staff,” parent organizer Tajh Sutton on Twitter.

But while the total reports from school staff was higher in the fall of 2021 [when NYC schools were in-person] than the fall of 2020 [when classes were online], the share of calls that included an allegation of educational neglect dropped significantly over that span, the state’s data show. Some 63 percent of the 1,996 reports made by school staff between September and November 2020 included an educational neglect charge, while just 31 percent of the 2,800 reports filed over the same span a year later raised the same claim.

ACS data provided to ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ also showed a decline in reports of educational neglect from NYC school staff. From Sept. 1, 2020 to Jan. 31, 2021, school personnel made 2,708 reports alleging educational neglect compared to 1,926 over that same time window in 2021-22, according to the agency’s numbers. 

“A large reason for the difference would be the guidance ACS and DOE worked on together with regard to when to call in a report, and the significant training and messaging that was done with teachers,” an ACS spokesperson told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.

The City reported in 2020 that during remote learning, some children who missed Zoom classes because their family lacked devices or home internet were , which could have also driven those numbers in the first year of the pandemic.

Healy’s ACS report came in early November 2021, after schools reopened without a remote option. The Brooklyn mother remained unconvinced it was safe to send her two children back into classrooms, having lost several relatives to COVID. So she filed home instruction applications for both kids and stayed in communication with school staff, she said. The whole time, her children accessed and submitted classwork via Google Classroom.

“I was in constant contact [with the schools],” Healy told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. “​​All of the things that needed to happen were still happening.”

Yet in early November, an ACS caseworker knocked on the door of her apartment. The agency had received a report of suspected educational neglect from a staff member at her younger child’s school.

Healy is an organizer with the advocacy group PRESS, , and was familiar with her rights as a parent. But still, the visit was jarring to the whole family. After the caseworker left, her 14 year-old son, who has autism, paced back and forth for an hour, worried that the unfamiliar woman would return with law enforcement, Healy said. Her 13 year-old child, who identifies as non-binary, had continued nightmares, fearing they would be taken away from the only home they knew. Even Healy couldn’t avoid creeping thoughts of the worst-case scenario.

“You automatically think someone’s here to take my kids away,” she said. 

Since November, the most recent month for which data are available, Freiman said that several clients have continued to navigate new child welfare reports — especially during the Omicron surge when the sheer volume of COVID cases often complicated school attendance.

“We were working with people where the parents had COVID so [were] required to quarantine, but their children didn’t and so the school was expecting them to come to school. But the parents didn’t have a way to get them there,” explained the attorney. “We have had situations where those kinds of problems have resulted in a call to the state central register.” 

ACS has said it is trying to avoid such scenarios. “We are 
 working together (with the Department of Education) to make sure that families are not reported to the state’s child abuse hotline solely because of [a] child’s absences from school,” a spokesperson wrote in a Jan. 13 message to ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. The agency is providing training to professionals working with children on ways to support families without calling the hotline, they said.

But Healy says there’s still a long way to go. Her own case was closed in December after uncovering no evidence of neglect, but she’s still going through a time-intensive and costly legal process to clear her record of the investigation. She hopes that the Adams administration, including schools Chancellor David Banks, works to ensure that other families don’t have to endure the same hardship.

“The whole punitive measures that ACS has been delivering up until now still needs to be addressed,” she said. “We definitely want to make sure that this gets nipped in the bud under this particular chancellor before more parents are unfortunately held to this repercussion.”