Los Angeles Workplace Sexual Abuse Attorney

December 31, 2026 is the closing date of the AB 2777 revival window under California Code of Civil Procedure §340.16(e), the Sexual Abuse and Cover Up Accountability Act signed into law in September 2022. AB 2777 reopened the statute of limitations for adult survivors of sexual assault that occurred on or after January 1, 2009, allowing time-barred claims against clergy and institutional defendants — including the Archdiocese of Los Angeles — to be filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Any Long Beach clergy abuse survivor whose claim falls under this provision must file before midnight on December 31, 2026, or permanently lose the right to seek civil damages.

Under AB 218 (CCP §340.1), any person who suffered childhood sexual abuse — meaning abuse that occurred before their 18th birthday — by a member of the clergy, church employee, or volunteer at a Long Beach parish may file a civil lawsuit regardless of when the abuse occurred. AB 218, effective January 1, 2020, extended the statute of limitations to the survivor’s 40th birthday or within five years of discovering a psychological injury caused by the abuse, whichever is later, and eliminated the prior $250,000 cap on non-economic damages. Los Angeles County Superior Court has accepted CCP §340.1 cases involving abuse dating to the 1950s and 1960s, meaning no Long Beach survivor should assume their claim is too old to pursue.

AB 2777 added California Code of Civil Procedure §340.16(e), which imposes expanded civil liability on any organization — including Long Beach Catholic parishes and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles — that ‘covered up’ a sexual assault committed by a person in a position of authority. Under §340.16(e), a cover-up is defined as a knowing concealment, suppression, or failure to disclose information about the assault that prevented the survivor from learning of the abuse or their legal rights. If your attorney can demonstrate that diocesan officials transferred an accused priest rather than reporting him or destroyed complaint records, the Archdiocese faces direct institutional liability separate from any claim against the individual perpetrator.

Yes — the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which exercises ecclesiastical authority over all Roman Catholic parishes in Long Beach and throughout Los Angeles County, can be held liable for clergy sexual abuse under theories of negligent hiring, negligent supervision, and negligent retention under California Civil Code §1714 and CCP §340.1. In 2007, the Archdiocese paid $660 million to settle claims from 508 abuse survivors, the largest clergy abuse settlement in U.S. history at that time, and the institution’s pattern of transferring accused priests rather than removing them has been extensively documented in public court records. Survivors who file before applicable deadlines can name the Archdiocese as a direct defendant in Los Angeles County Superior Court even if the individual abuser is deceased.

Civil clergy abuse claims originating in Long Beach are filed in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, which operates a Long Beach Courthouse serving the South Bay and Harbor areas. Complex multi-plaintiff cases or those involving the Archdiocese of Los Angeles may be coordinated at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles under a judicial coordination order pursuant to California Rules of Court, Rule 3.501. Your attorney will evaluate the most strategic venue based on the facts of your case, the identity of the institutional defendants, and any existing coordination orders affecting Archdiocesan litigation.

California law permits clergy abuse survivors to recover both economic and non-economic damages — AB 218 expressly eliminated the prior $250,000 statutory cap on non-economic damages for institutional sexual abuse cases, meaning there is no ceiling on pain and suffering awards in qualifying CCP §340.1 cases. Economic damages include past and future psychiatric and psychological treatment costs, lost wages, and diminished earning capacity; research published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry found that childhood sexual abuse survivors earn an average of 10 to 20 percent less over their lifetimes than non-abused peers. Punitive damages are also available under California Civil Code §3294 when the plaintiff can show the institutional defendant acted with malice, oppression, or fraud — a standard frequently met in cases involving documented cover-ups by diocesan leadership.

Yes — AB 218 (CCP §340.1) specifically revived childhood clergy abuse claims that were previously extinguished by California’s former statutes of limitations, allowing survivors to file regardless of when the abuse occurred so long as they have not yet reached age 40 or discovered their abuse-related injury within the past five years. The California Legislature enacted AB 218 based on findings that childhood sexual trauma routinely causes dissociation, suppressed memory, and delayed psychological recognition that prevents survivors from identifying the cause of their injuries for decades. Long Beach survivors abused at parishes such as those administered by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles should consult an attorney immediately, as individual facts — including the survivor’s age and discovery date — determine which filing window remains open.

Yes — AB 2777 specifically created a revival window for adult survivors (those who were 18 or older when abused) by amending CCP §340.16(e) to allow previously time-barred claims to be filed between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2026, provided the assault occurred on or after January 1, 2009. Adult survivors must show either that their claim was previously time-barred under the standard three-year sexual assault statute (CCP §335.1) or that the defendant institution engaged in the cover-up conduct defined by AB 2777. Long Beach survivors abused as adults by deacons, youth ministers, or other church officials — not just ordained priests — qualify under AB 2777’s broad definition of ‘a person in a position of authority.’

California Code of Civil Procedure §367.3, enacted in 2021, expressly permits sexual assault survivors to proceed anonymously — as ‘Jane Doe’ or ‘John Doe’ — in any civil action filed in California state court, including Los Angeles County Superior Court. Your attorney files a motion to proceed under a pseudonym at the outset of the case, and Long Beach court practice has consistently granted these motions in clergy abuse litigation, ensuring your legal name does not appear in any publicly accessible court record or filing. The court may issue a protective order restricting disclosure of identifying information to opposing counsel only under strict confidentiality conditions throughout discovery and trial.

CCP §340.1, as amended by AB 218, includes a delayed discovery provision allowing survivors who are older than 40 to file a civil claim within five years of the date they discovered — or reasonably should have discovered — that a psychological injury or illness was caused by the childhood sexual abuse. This rule is critical for Long Beach survivors who suppressed memories for decades or who only recently connected diagnosed conditions such as PTSD, major depressive disorder, or complex trauma — often through treatment at facilities like Harbor-UCLA Medical Center or with private therapists — to clergy abuse they experienced as children. Courts apply an objective standard: the clock begins when a reasonable person in the survivor’s position would have connected their injury to the abuse, not necessarily when the survivor subjectively made that connection.

Yes — California law allows survivors to sue the institutional defendants directly, including the Long Beach parish, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, or the applicable religious order, even when the individual abuser is deceased. Under respondeat superior liability and the direct negligence theories codified in CCP §340.1, institutional liability attaches to the organization’s own conduct — its hiring, supervision, and retention decisions — independent of whether the individual perpetrator is alive or capable of being served. CCP §377.20 further permits a deceased defendant’s estate to be substituted into an existing civil action, giving your attorney additional options when the perpetrator’s estate holds assets.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles paid $660 million in 2007 to settle claims from 508 survivors, yielding an average of approximately $1.3 million per claimant; subsequent California diocesan settlements have ranged from the Diocese of San Diego’s $198 million for 144 claimants to individual verdicts exceeding $5 million in cases involving egregious institutional cover-up conduct. The value of a Long Beach clergy abuse case depends on the severity and duration of the abuse, the strength of evidence establishing the Archdiocese’s knowledge of the perpetrator’s history, the survivor’s documented economic and psychological damages, and whether the case resolves through settlement or jury verdict. AB 218 and AB 2777 both eliminate statutory damage caps for qualifying institutional cases, meaning a Los Angeles County jury may award any amount it finds appropriate based on the evidence presented.

An attorney will typically begin by cross-referencing your abuser’s name against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ publicly released list of ‘credibly accused’ clergy, which was produced pursuant to court orders arising from prior litigation and names priests against whom the institution substantiated allegations — and which has identified over 300 priests in the Archdiocese. Through civil discovery in Los Angeles County Superior Court, counsel can compel production of diocesan personnel files, transfer records, victim complaint logs, and internal communications that establish what Archdiocesan officials knew about the perpetrator and when they knew it. Medical and psychiatric records documenting conditions such as PTSD, chronic depression, or substance use disorders — linked through expert testimony to the abuse — form the damages foundation of the case, while testimony from other survivors victimized by the same perpetrator establishes the pattern of conduct courts have consistently permitted under California Evidence Code §1108.

Yes — AB 2777 (CCP §340.16(e)) applies to sexual assault committed by any person in a ‘position of authority’ within any organization, meaning the revival window and cover-up liability provisions extend to abuse by clergy, ministers, youth leaders, and volunteers at Protestant churches, evangelical congregations, and other religious institutions in Long Beach, not only Roman Catholic parishes. The statute defines ‘organization’ broadly to include any entity, association, or institution, and ‘position of authority’ encompasses any role that granted the perpetrator access to or power over the survivor — such as a youth pastor, choir director, or Sunday school teacher. Survivors who experienced institutional concealment at any Long Beach religious organization between January 1, 2009 and the present should consult an attorney to evaluate their claim before December 31, 2026.

The vast majority of California clergy sexual abuse cases — including those filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court — resolve through private confidential settlement before trial, meaning most survivors never appear in open court at all. If a case does proceed toward trial, California law and local court rules provide substantial protections for sexual abuse survivors, including the right to testify via closed-circuit video under California Evidence Code §1347 in appropriate circumstances, the use of victim advocates, and the pseudonymity protections of CCP §367.3. Your attorney handles all court appearances, discovery hearings, and procedural filings on your behalf, and any deposition testimony you give can be conducted in a private setting with strict confidentiality agreements governing who may review the transcript.