What happened to you at Miramonte Elementary wasn't okay. Not then, not now.

Florence-Firestone. The big elementary school on East 68th Street, and a third-grade teacher who'd been in that building since 1979, 32 years of it, until sheriff's deputies came for him in January 2012. No contest, he pleaded. Twenty-five years, state prison. Los Angeles Unified has paid former Miramonte students more than $200 million since, the last 19 of them in April 2026, some describing years as far back as 1988. So if you were in that classroom, or anywhere in that building, in any of the 32 years he was, we think this is about you, and we'd like you to keep reading.

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

This applies to you no matter what

You were in his class and your family never sued. More than 160 Miramonte families have, in 2013, 2014, 2024 and 2026. Their settlements settle nothing for you.
You weren't one of the 23. The charges named 23 children from 2005 to 2011. The sheriff's own report, a judge wrote in 2014, described far more than that, and the nineteen who settled this April go back to 1988. Neither list was ever meant to be everyone.
Maybe it was in the classroom, other kids right there. A field trip. After school, once everybody else had gone. Every one of those is in the record on this page.
What happened to you was less than what got read out in court, or you honestly can't say what it was. You were seven, eight. Nobody expects you to have the words for it now.
You are 31 and it feels like a different life. California gives someone hurt as a child until their 40th birthday, and for a Miramonte third-grader from the early 2000s that is still most of a decade off. And if you're reading this for somebody else, a kid, a brother, a friend, that counts too.

The Miramonte record: the early complaints, the arrest, the plea, the settlements, and when

We didn't write what's below. Sheriff's investigators did, and the District Attorney, and a Superior Court judge, and the district's own spokesmen, and the reporters who sat through the hearings, and we link to every line. Where it says a complaint alleges something, that is all it is. The plea and the sentence are the court's.

September 1993 and 1994

A nine-year-old told her mother that Mark Berndt had reached toward her under a classroom table. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's special victims unit investigated in 1994 and took it to the District Attorney, who did not file charges, citing insufficient evidence. The sheriff's department confirmed all of this in February 2012, after the arrest; the district, asked about it, said it had no record of the 1994 investigation. He taught at Miramonte for another 17 years. ABC7.

December 2010 to January 2012

The photographs came first. A drugstore photo processor, December 2010, saw what was in a batch of pictures from his classroom, children, and called the authorities. LAUSD suspended him that February and went to fire him. He fought it. So in June 2011 the district cut a deal instead: he'd resign, and it would pay him $40,000. Then January 31, 2012, and sheriff's deputies at the door of his apartment in Torrance. Twenty-three counts of lewd acts on a child, the children 6 to 10. A judge set bail the next day at $23 million. A million a count. NBC Los Angeles.

May 4 and July 10, 2012

The first negligence suit against the district was filed May 4, 2012. By July, fourteen Miramonte mothers had filed a third. What their complaint alleges is that the district had complaints about him going back to the early 1990s, one from a student in the 1990-91 school year and another from a girl in 1993 who said he'd touched her, and failed to protect their children anyway. The conduct those families described ran from 2002 through 2011, nine school years of it. ABC7.

November 15, 2013

He was 62 by the time it ended. In Los Angeles County Superior Court, with parents giving impact statements, Berndt pleaded no contest to every one of the 23 counts of committing lewd acts on a child, children of 7 to 10, conduct from 2005 to 2011, and got his sentence the same day, 25 years in state prison. No trial. The district, by then, had already settled 61 of more than 120 civil suits. NBC Los Angeles.

April 30, 2014

In the civil case, Judge John Wiley Jr. summarized the sheriff's investigative file, 260 pages and some 600 photographs, and what it described about Berndt's conduct with students. The same month, LAUSD acknowledged that in 2008 it had destroyed its records of suspected-abuse reports at district schools dating back to 1988, saying it believed it had no right to keep them. Plaintiffs' lawyers called that a cover-up. The district said it had acted within state law. LAist.

November 21, 2014

With jury selection under way, L.A. Unified agreed to pay $139.75 million to 81 Miramonte students. It came on top of roughly $30 million the district had already paid about 60 other Miramonte families in 2013. The superintendent said there was nothing more important to the district than the safety of the students it serves. The district admitted nothing. ABC7.

January 24, 2024

Two more former Miramonte students settled with the district for $3.55 million between them. Their complaints say Berndt's conduct with them ran from about 2004 to 2008, and allege that Miramonte administrators and district officials had ignored complaints from parents, students and teachers going back to the early 1980s. ABC7.

April 30, 2026

Nineteen more former Miramonte students, third-, fourth- and fifth-graders in Berndt's classroom between 1988 and 2011, settled with L.A. Unified for $30.5 million. That put the district's payments over Berndt past $200 million. Their suits allege the same pattern of ignored complaints, and add one from 1983, when a parent reported that he had dropped his pants on a museum field trip. Fourteen years after the arrest, their lawyer said, people are still coming forward. Los Angeles Times (via AOL).

We checked this on September 13, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from April 30, 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 Miramonte Elementary lawsuit

The district. Not the teacher, or not mainly. Berndt answered for himself in a criminal courtroom in 2013, and he is not who the families sued. They sued Los Angeles Unified, because a teacher who does this answers for what he did, and a school district that had a sheriff's investigation in 1994, and complaints before that according to the record above, and kept him in front of eight-year-olds until 2011, answers for the children he reached after that. That is the theory. It is the one LAUSD has paid more than $200 million on without ever going to a verdict.

LAUSD is a public body, and that changes two things a lawyer will walk you through. Nobody has to file a government claim form with the district first, for any year he was there; straight to court. And there is no cap in California on what a jury can award for what was actually done to a child at a public school. What the district can argue about is what it knew and when, which is exactly why the destroyed records from 1988 to 2008 keep coming up.

He'd been there since 1979, remember. So if your years at Miramonte came long before the arrest that made the news, we won't pretend the road is the same for everyone. Born in 1987 or later, it is: the door is open on age. Born earlier, your fortieth birthday has come or is close, and the road runs through the discovery rule and what the district knew. Say so on the call and a lawyer will tell you straight. Nineteen people whose years went back to 1988 just did exactly that.

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

Until you turn 40, or five years from the day you understood what it did to you, whichever is later. That is California's rule for anyone abused as a minor before 2024, Code of Civil Procedure section 340.11, and it is the reason we ask whether you were born in 1987 or later. If you were, the door is open on age alone. Do the arithmetic on a third-grader in his room in 1995: born around 1987, give or take. Everyone in his room after that is inside on age, all the way to his last class in 2011.

Because LAUSD is a public entity there is one more rule, and here it helps. You do not file a government claim first (Government Code 905(m); Code of Civil Procedure 340.11(s)). The six-month claim deadline that trips up other cases against a school district does not apply to childhood sexual abuse, and it no longer matters which year it was. What matters is your age. Born before 1987 and the fortieth birthday has come or is close, so what's left is the discovery rule plus a showing that the district knew or should have known, and a lawyer has to look at those facts before anyone promises anything. We won't. One more, for completeness: conduct on or after January 1, 2024 has no deadline at all, under section 340.1.

Put plainly, then. Mid-1990s to 2011, anywhere in that building: you almost certainly still have time, and you'll have it for years yet. Decades, for a kid born in 2002. What doesn't keep is the rest of it. Who else was in the room. Which parent went to the office. Who the counselor was. That is the part worth one call now.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told a soul. More than 160 families did; you saw it on the news in 2012, and you kept quiet, which for an eight-year-old was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
You liked him. A lot of kids did, a teacher who'd been there since 1979, and one mother said in court in 2013 that he had been one of her daughter's favorites. That is in the record too, and it is part of how it worked.
It never went as far as what was in court, and you figure that means it doesn't count.
Deputies interviewed your family in 2012, and then, nothing. A detective's interview isn't a claim. Nobody filed anything for you.
You think the families who settled got everyone's share. They got theirs. LAUSD paid a round in 2013, then another in 2014, another in 2024, another this April, and each time it was because more people had come forward. Four rounds so far.
You live somewhere else now. Half of Florence-Firestone's class of whatever-year does.

Schools covered

Different LAUSD school? South L.A., Huntington Park, anywhere in the district, the questions still work. Answer them, and say where. Because otherwise this page is one school, and you know which one. Miramonte. The K-through-5 at 1400 East 68th Street in Florence-Firestone, South Los Angeles, about 630 kids these days, and one of the biggest elementary schools in L.A. Unified back when he taught there. Field trips count. After-school programs count. Anything that ran under Miramonte's name counts, and if what you want is the district-wide picture, Miramonte being far from the only L.A. Unified campus with a record like this, the district has a page of its own at /lausd-survivors.

Questions people are asking

He's already in prison. What else is there?

Criminal court decided what happens to him. Civil court decides what a school district owes the children it left in his classroom, and those are different questions with different answers. Nothing in his 25 years was for you.

Can I sue LAUSD over what happened at Miramonte Elementary?

More than 160 families have, and LAUSD settled with every one of them instead of going to a verdict. Whether you can comes down mostly to when you were born, which is what the questions above sort out, and if you were born in 1987 or later the honest answer is yes, very likely. Born earlier, a lawyer has to look at the discovery rule and what the district knew, and nineteen people whose years went back to 1988 settled in April 2026.

Was Mark Berndt convicted?

He was, by plea. No contest on November 15, 2013, in Los Angeles County Superior Court, to 23 counts of lewd acts on a child, involving 23 children aged 7 to 10 between 2005 and 2011. Twenty-five years in state prison, the same day. The record above has the entry. The 23 counts were the ones prosecutors could prove with the photographs. They were never meant to be a count of everyone.

Did the district know about Mark Berndt before he was arrested?

The families say it did, and the record above lays out why they say so. A sheriff's investigation in 1994, which the district later said it had no record of. The 2012 lawsuits describe student complaints in 1990-91 and in 1993; the 2026 ones reach back further, to a parent's complaint about a field trip in 1983. And twenty years of abuse-report records, 1988 to 2008, that the district acknowledged destroying. LAUSD has paid more than $200 million across round after round of settlements without admitting anything. Whether it knew enough, soon enough, is the question a civil case asks.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Here, nothing. Every case is on contingency. The lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing. Not for the call, not for the review, not for the case.

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.

You answer 6 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
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.