Sexual abuse survivors ask legislative leaders to rebuff LA County and CSAC efforts to roll back survivor rights 

In response to continuing efforts by Los Angeles County Supervisors to roll back the rights of sexual abuse survivors, the following letter from Stand With Survivors CEO Caroline Heldman was delivered today to California legislative leadership offices.

For context, survivor advocates believe LA County leaders and California State Association of Counties (Lassen County is a member) are continuing closed door efforts to lobby the legislature to rollback survivor rights despite evidence that the amount of abuse to children in LA County institutions dwarfs the numbers of other well know abuse scandals.

Here’s a copy of the letter
Honorable Senator Monique Limón
1021 O Street, Suite 8518,
Sacramento, CA 95814

Assembly Member Robert Rivas
1021 O Street, Suite 8330,
Sacramento, CA 95814

March 11th, 2026

RE: Attack on Survivor Rights

Dear Pro Tem and Speaker:
The participating survivor-focused organizations write to share our deep concern that, in the era of Epstein, Diddy, Cosby, Weinstein and others, the California legislature is considering rolling back many well-established survivor rights in California that would severely limit survivors’ ability to hold sexual predators of minors accountable for their actions.

Our organizations, Stand with Survivors, the Female Composer Safety League, Survivors.org, Global Hope 365, Sexual Predator Accountability Institute, and Prosopon Healing, are organizations advocating for survivor rights, most with a primary mission to evolve the law across the country to make our justice system fairer and more equitable when it comes to holding sexual predators accountable for their actions.

The language being put forward largely by LA County and the California State Association of Counties, and the discussion in the Capitol to date, are a direct counter to our mission. And we would note that we have not been invited to participate in any of these discussions.

We are well aware that an Assembly work group has been meeting to develop “liability reform” proposals for public agencies in California.

This largely arises out of the thousands of child sex abuse lawsuits filed against LA County’s juvenile detention facilities during the California three-year window for filing older CSA cases enacted in 2019 under AB 218, authored by then Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez and signed by Governor Newsom.

We are also aware of efforts by LA County Supervisors and CSAC to convince the legislature to act quickly to reduce liability for public entities. We see this as a direct assault on hard-fought survivor rights.

But let’s put the level of sexual abuse of minors in the three LA County juvenile detention centers into proper perspective.

Thousands of CSA cases were filed against those three facilities during the three-year CSA window, possibly totaling nearly 10,000 such claims. That number exceeds by far the number of cases filed against all of the California Catholic dioceses in that same three-year window period. And likely exceeds the combined total of Catholic CSA cases filed in both the ‘02 and ‘19 CSA windows in CA.

This further exceeds the number of claims filed in the Larry Nassar litigation in Michigan. And even exceeds the number of known survivors in the internationally corrupt world of Jeffrey Epstein and his associates.

Simply put, the known level of sexual abuse of minors over the past several decades in those three juvenile detention centers appears to be the largest example of rampant sexual abuse of minors within one institution in the history of the United States. This is what LA County and CSAC are asking you to turn a blind eye to via their plea for “liability reform.”

In essence, LA County has adopted a “blame the victim” strategy as a cover-up of the fact that they employed so many sexual predators of children over so many years, which gave rise to the level of claims filed today. But we believe it should be obvious to everyone that the real problem to be solved is how and why a public entity, such as LA County, allowed all these predators to run rampant in those detention centers for so long. Until we know that, any other “legislative solution” merely sweeps the real problem under the rug.

As you may know, we formally asked via letter dated Oct. 16 that the California Attorney General’s Office launch an independent investigation into the causes and possible solutions of the rampant sexual abuse of minors in those detention centers.

This was based on the now long list of state AG investigations into the sexual abuse of minors and their cover-up in a variety of institutions in those states. These include numerous such investigations into Catholic Dioceses, all the way to the most recently announced investigation by the NY AG’s Office into sexual abuse of minors at the Columbia University medical system over many years.

None of the above investigations involved the number of victims that have surfaced against the LA juvenile detention centers, which is why we believe a California State AG investigation into the LA detention centers is critical before the legislature considers any “solutions” as LA County and CSAC are currently pushing. To this day, we have received no word on whether such an investigation will be launched.

Tragically, during the almost six years of the CSA litigation against the three juvenile detention centers in LA County, little to no discovery was ever done to get to the bottom of why so many child sex predators were allowed to roam free in those detention centers for so long.

If there’s a problem to be legislatively solved here, it’s the ongoing employment of known child sexual predators in the public sector. If the legislature stops that, it stops the use of taxpayer dollars to settle the inevitable legal claims for sexual abuse that occur in the public sector, including in juvenile detention centers.

California now holds the dubious distinction of being home to the largest institutional child sexual abuse scandal ever uncovered in the United States. Yet, the response seems to be solely focused, like last year, on proposals to roll back survivor rights.

Finally, throughout the efforts in the legislature last year and this year to roll back survivor rights, no one has asked for input from the California survivor community directly. This simply adds to the growing frustration of the survivor community that the California legislature isn’t interested in hearing from the most impacted community from the employment of sexual predators in the public sector. We are open to holistic reform discussions, but do not support a one-sided approach that only rolls back survivor rights.

Until we have a clear understanding of how and why LA County allowed so many child sex predators to be employed in those detention centers, leading to the largest number of child sex abuse claims proportionally, there should be no legislative solution to be considered. Especially, no proposals attempting to roll back survivor rights and thus provide legal protection for the sexual predators of children rather than the children themselves.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely
Caroline Heldman
CEO, Stand With Survivors