Went to El Monte Union, Birmingham, Anaheim Union or OCSA? What happened to you there was not okay.

Four schools, four different lawsuits, the same thing underneath. El Monte Union, where the state's investigators read 113 complaints and 88,000 documents and said in March that the district had not done its job. Birmingham Charter in Lake Balboa, where a jury convicted the girls' lacrosse coach over eighteen students. Anaheim Union, which has paid twice and had twenty-five more former students file against it in one complaint. And OCSA on Main Street in Santa Ana, where a former student took the founder to court. Different campuses, different years, different men. What's the same: if a teacher or a coach at any of the four did something to you when you were a kid, this is about you, whichever one it was.

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6 questions. Your answers are private and go to one person.

This applies to you no matter what

• You told somebody at the school and nothing happened. At El Monte Union, that is what the state's investigators found the district did with reports, over and over. At Anaheim Union it is what the complaints allege about Kennedy, Sycamore and Savanna. It isn't a reason to stay quiet. It's the heart of the case.
• It was a coach, not a teacher. Two of the three men in El Monte's first complaint were coaches. Birmingham's was the lacrosse coach. Nobody has treated the gym any differently from the classroom.
• It was the 1990s, or before. A lot of the women in the El Monte case were at Rosemead then, and the 25 Sycamore plaintiffs were there between 1997 and 2010. Your birth year counts for more than the year it happened; the deadline section further down says why.
• You were never one of the ones who sued, or who got counted. Nine Birmingham families sued; the jury heard eighteen. Twenty-five counts is what a prosecutor could prove, which is a floor, not a count of everyone he reached.
• You're a man and you figure a page like this isn't for you. The man who sued OCSA was born in 1987 and filed at 35. Every one of the Sycamore plaintiffs was a boy.
• You live out of state now. The case sits in California and you don't need to.
• You're a parent, a teammate, a friend asking for someone who can't. Reach out anyway.

The four schools' lawsuits, the settlements and the state's findings: what the public record says, and when

None of what follows is ours. The complaints were filed by former students and their lawyers, the findings were made by a jury in one case and by the California Attorney General in another, and reporters wrote the rest up. Every line links to where it came from. Where a complaint is the source it's an allegation and we say so. And because this page covers four schools, every entry below is a record of one of the four or of the district behind it, nothing borrowed from one and pinned on another.

We checked this on October 5, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from March 2026. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a California school sexual abuse lawsuit

The school, and the district behind it. That is who the people ahead of you sued, at all four. El Monte Union High School District is the defendant in every El Monte suit and the party that signed the Attorney General's settlement. Birmingham is an independent charter authorized by L.A. Unified, and the nine families sued both. Anaheim Union High School District is the defendant for every one of its campuses, Sycamore, Kennedy, Savanna, Katella alike. OCSA is a public charter that Santa Ana Unified chartered until 2020, and the one suit on file names the school, the district and the founder. The theory doesn't change from one courthouse to the next, and it isn't complicated. A teacher or a coach who abuses a student answers for himself. A school that hired him, put him alone with kids, was told, and kept him on? That school answers for what it let happen. The complaints say so, in the law's own words: negligent hiring, negligent supervision, retention, a failure to investigate what it was told.

Because every one of the four is a public body, three things change, and a lawyer walks you through them. No punitive damages against a school or a district; California law bars them. No cap on what a jury can award. And for a childhood claim there is no government-claim form to file first, no six-month window to have missed, whatever year it was. One more, for anyone filing at 40 or older: the law asks for a showing that the school knew or should have known. A hurdle, not a wall.

Now the money, because people ask. Anaheim Union paid $7.95 million to five Kennedy players in 2019 and $198,700 to one Savanna student in 2025. The Birmingham families' lawyers reported a large settlement in 2022 and never said the number. A jury gave one El Monte student $5 million. None of that is a fund to apply to, and none of it says a word about what any other case is worth. A settlement with the families who sued settles nothing for the ones who didn't. Each case is filed on its own, in court, and stands on its own facts.

Your deadline: the California statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse at a public school

Your situation still qualifies even if

• You never told a soul. Not a parent, not a spouse, nobody. The Sycamore plaintiffs waited thirteen to twenty-seven years.
• You liked him. He was the teacher everybody liked, the coach, the one who saw something in you. That is in the complaints at all four schools.
• You told a counselor, a coach, the office, and nothing came of it, or it got worse.
• It never went as far as what was in the trial, or the lawsuit, and you figure that means it doesn't count. That's for a lawyer to weigh, not you.
• He was never convicted, or he's dead, or he was acquitted. The civil case is against the school and runs on what it knew, not on a verdict.
• You live in Nevada, Arizona, anywhere else now. The case sits in California and you don't need to.

The four schools

You know which one it was; the questions just need it said. El Monte Union, the district with Rosemead, El Monte, Arroyo, Mountain View and South El Monte High, has a page of its own with the state investigation laid out, /el-monte-union-survivors. Birmingham Community Charter High School in Lake Balboa, the lacrosse case: /birmingham-charter-survivors. Anaheim Union, which is Sycamore Junior High and Katella and Savanna and Kennedy and the rest of the district's campuses: /anaheim-union-survivors, and Savanna has its own at /savanna-high-school-survivors. The Orange County School of the Arts, 1010 North Main Street in Santa Ana: /ocsa-survivors. A different California school? Last option in the first question, and say where.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

1. You answer 6 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
2. A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
3. You decide. You find out your options. If you want to stop there, you stop there.

How this works

ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed California attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

You never pay a dollar

Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.