What happened to you at Portola Middle School was not okay.

Tarzana. The middle school on Linnet Street, and a history teacher who'd been with the district since 2004, until three girls said something in the last days of school in June 2012. He pleaded guilty the next May. Misdemeanors, three of them, and five years' probation, no prison, and we'll be exact about that all the way down this page. One of the three families was paid $320,000 by Los Angeles Unified, and that's the only settlement on the name. If you were there in those years (sixth grade, seventh, eighth) and something happened you've never said out loud, we wrote this for you. You, specifically. It's short. The questions aren't hard.

WatchingSeptember 2026: the criminal case on this name closed with a plea in May 2013, the one settlement was paid in 2015, and nothing new naming Portola or the teacher has been filed that we have read. What we watch is the district. L.A. Unified settled with 19 more former students from another of its schools on April 30, 2026, has borrowed up to $750 million to keep paying, and a Portola claim would go into that same queue. The questions work now.

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

Looking for the page about the whole district? Los Angeles Unified School District survivors: Miramonte, Telfair, De La Torre, Portola and Birmingham on one page, with the district's full record.

This applies to you no matter what

You were one of the three girls, or you weren't. The City Attorney charged what three students reported, two of them in June 2012 and one from 2010. A misdemeanor complaint was never a list of everyone who sat in that classroom over nine years.
It was a hand where it shouldn't have been, a comment, a hug that went on too long. The counts he pleaded to were battery, child abuse causing mental suffering, and luring a minor under 14. Small words in a courtroom. Not small at 13.
Your family talked to the school, or to the LAPD detectives, in 2012 or 2013, and then nothing. A police interview isn't a claim. One family sued; the other two, as far as the public record shows, never did.
You're 27 now and it feels like somebody else's life. In California a person hurt as a minor has until their 40th birthday. A Portola seventh-grader from 2011 hits 40 around 2038. Years.
It wasn't him, it was a different teacher, or a coach, an aide, someone in the office, another year entirely. The questions ask where and roughly when, not who, and the district on the other side is the same district.
You're reading this for somebody else. A daughter, a sister, a friend from Portola. That counts. Say so on the first question and the rest are asked about them.

The Portola record: the report, the arrest, the plea, the settlement, and when

None of this is ours. The LAPD wrote it, and the City Attorney, and a judge in Van Nuys, and the district's own spokespeople, and the reporters who sat through the hearings, and we link every line. Where a sentence says someone alleged something, that is all it is. The plea is the court's, and it was to misdemeanors; we say so every time. And this record is Portola's only. The district's wider record, five schools and hundreds of settlements, is one linking sentence at the bottom and a page of its own.

June 15 to 18, 2012

Three girls, in the end. The first, 13, went to the school on June 15, 2012, the last day of class, and said her history teacher, Jason Leon, had touched her; a second, also 13, said the same, about a few days before that. A third, 14, about 2010, two years back. The district's version came out later, with the charges, and it goes like this: Leon was off the Portola campus in June 2012, as soon as the first allegation surfaced. Parents heard within 72 hours. By August 2012 he'd been parked at a non-school location where he had no contact with students. He'd been with the district since August 2004, a probationary hire at first, permanent from 2007. LA Weekly.

February 4, 2013

Seven months on, and the detectives who'd had the case since the day after the June 18, 2012 crime report (LAPD Juvenile Division, the Sexually Exploited Child Unit) arrested Leon, 32, and booked him: four misdemeanor counts of child annoyance under Penal Code 647.6, two of battery, $35,000 bail. Three victims, aged 13 and 14, is how the department's release puts it. LAPD news release NR13031bb.

February 4, 2013, the same day

City Attorney Carmen Trutanich filed the charges: four counts of child molestation and three of battery, over three students, two of them 13 and one 14, in June 2012 and in 2010. Misdemeanors, every count, because the City Attorney's office files only misdemeanors; felonies are the District Attorney's, and none was ever filed here. Convicted on all of it, he'd have faced at most five and a half years, and in county jail, not prison. CBS Los Angeles.

May 15, 2013

Five years' probation. That was the sentence, from Judge Christine Ewell in Van Nuys Superior Court, after he pleaded guilty to three counts: misdemeanor battery; misdemeanor child abuse causing mental suffering; luring a minor under 14. No jail unless he broke the terms, and then 18 months. He gave up his teaching credential and was ordered to stay away from every school, to have no unsupervised contact with minor girls, to do 60 days on a Caltrans crew, a year of alcohol treatment, 52 therapy sessions, and to write apology letters to the three girls' parents. That is the whole criminal record on this name. CBS Los Angeles.

December 15, 2015

The family of one of the three girls had sued the district. CBS Los Angeles reported that L.A. Unified would pay them $320,000, a settlement the district had agreed to earlier that year. One family, one payment, and as far as the public record shows the other two never filed. Nothing naming Portola or Leon has been filed in the eleven years since that we have found; if that changes, this page changes. CBS Los Angeles.

February 17, 2026

The wider record is the district's, not Portola's, so one sentence and a link. At its February 17, 2026 meeting the L.A. Unified board authorized up to $250 million more in bonds to pay sexual-abuse settlements, on top of $500 million in June 2025; by the board's own count it had received about 370 claims since January 1, 2020, and settled or dismissed 81 of them. A Portola claim, if one is filed, goes into that queue, and the full district record, Miramonte, Telfair, De La Torre, Birmingham, is at /lausd-survivors. EdSource.

We checked this on September 15, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from February 17, 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 Portola Middle School lawsuit

The district. Not the school, which isn't a thing you can sue on its own, and not only the teacher. Leon answered for himself in a Van Nuys courtroom in 2013, on misdemeanors, and he isn't who paid the $320,000. The Los Angeles Unified School District paid it: the public body that hired him in August 2004, made him permanent in 2007 and put him in front of 12- and 13-year-olds in Tarzana. That's the theory of every case against the district, hundreds of them now. A teacher answers for what he did. A district answers for the children it put in his room, and for what it knew. On Portola, we'll be straight: whether L.A. Unified knew anything about Leon before June 2012 is not in any record we've read. Its account is that it moved him the moment the allegation surfaced. We won't dress that up, and we won't hide it.

L.A. Unified is a public entity, and that changes two things a lawyer will walk you through. You don't file a government claim with the district first, whatever year it was; a childhood claim goes straight to court. And there's 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, and on this name that argument has never been had in front of a judge, because the one case settled.

So this page is short on purpose. The record on Portola is one teacher, three girls, a misdemeanor plea and one settlement, and we won't inflate it into something it isn't. The district's page is where the rest lives: five schools, the April 30, 2026 settlement, the $750 million in bonds, at /lausd-survivors. If your years at an L.A. Unified school were somewhere other than Linnet Street, that's your page. If they were at Portola, start here. Same questions, same survivors on the phone.

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

Until your 40th birthday, or five years from the day you understood what it did to you, whichever comes later. That's California's rule for anyone abused as a minor before 2024, Code of Civil Procedure section 340.11, and it's why the questions ask whether you were born in 1987 or later. Now do the arithmetic for Portola. Leon got there in August 2004. A sixth-grader that fall would've been born around 1993. The girls in the 2013 charges, around 1996 and 1999. Every student who was at Portola in his years is inside on age alone, and will be until somewhere between 2031 and 2042. Nobody who was at that school in his time has a birthday problem.

Because L.A. Unified is a public body there's one more rule, and it helps. You do not file a government claim with the district first (Government Code 905(m); Code of Civil Procedure 340.11(s)). The six-month claim deadline that catches other suits against a school district doesn't apply to childhood sexual abuse, and since 2020 it hasn't mattered what year it was. Where the road does get harder is past 40: after that birthday a claim against a district needs a showing that it knew or should have known, plus certificates of merit, and that's a lawyer's call on your facts, not ours. For Portola that would mean someone there long before 2004. And anything on or after January 1, 2024 has no deadline at all, under section 340.1.

One more thing, about the charge itself, because people read 'misdemeanor' and stop. The section Leon was booked under, Penal Code 647.6, is one the civil deadline law names when it defines childhood sexual assault; he then pleaded to three other misdemeanors. What that means for a civil claim is exactly what a lawyer decides and a web page doesn't. We mention it so you know the label isn't, by itself, the end of it. What doesn't keep is the ordinary stuff. Which counselor. Which friend was standing there. Whether your mom called the office in June 2012. One call now keeps that.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told anyone. Three other girls did, and you watched it on the news in February 2013 and kept quiet. You were 13. That was a reasonable thing to do.
You liked his class. Kids did; he taught history and communications and had been there for years. That is part of how it works, and it changes nothing.
It was less than what got read out in court, or you can't put words to what it was. Nobody expects you to have the words at 13, or at 27.
The detectives interviewed you, or your mom, in 2012 or 2013. An interview isn't a claim. Only one family filed anything, and that was their claim, not yours.
You think the one family who settled got everyone's share. They got theirs, $320,000, and it settled nothing for anyone else.
You live in Nevada or Arizona now, or Riverside, or somewhere else entirely. Half of Tarzana's class of 2011 does. It doesn't change which court.

Schools covered

One school, and it's Gaspar de Portola Middle School at 18720 Linnet Street in Tarzana, California 91356. Grades six through eight, about 1,460 students these days, and 'Portola Charter Middle' on the sign now: a locally funded charter inside L.A. Unified, listed in the district's own directory, the district's school then and the district's school now. The classrooms, the yard, the after-school programs, a field trip, anything that ran under Portola's name. 2004 to 2013 for the teacher in the record; any year for anyone else. A different L.A. Unified school, Taft, Reseda, Miramonte, anywhere from the Harbor to the north Valley? The district has its own page, /lausd-survivors, with the record from five schools; it's the same defendant and the same questions. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue LAUSD for what happened at Portola Middle School?

One family already has, and the district paid $320,000 rather than try it. Whether you can turns mostly on when you were born, which is what the questions sort out, and anyone who was at Portola from 2004 on was born after 1987, so on age alone the honest answer is very likely yes. Whether the case is worth bringing on your facts is what the lawyer's review is for. Nobody here promises an outcome.

Is there a statute of limitations for child sexual abuse at a California public school?

There is, and for anything before 2024 it runs to your 40th birthday, or five years from the day you understood the harm if that's later. The section is Code of Civil Procedure 340.11. No government claim first (Government Code 905(m)). Past 40, a claim against a district needs a showing that it knew or should have known, and a lawyer decides whether your facts make it. Anything on or after January 1, 2024 is different again: no deadline, none.

Was the Portola Middle School teacher convicted?

By plea, yes, and to misdemeanors. Jason Leon stood in Van Nuys Superior Court on May 15, 2013 and pleaded guilty to battery, to child abuse causing mental suffering, and to luring a minor under 14; five years' probation, credential forfeited, no prison. The City Attorney's office, which prosecuted him, files misdemeanors only; the charges were never felonies and we won't call them that.

What 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.

Did LAUSD know about Jason Leon before he was arrested?

Nothing in the public record says it did. The district's account is that a girl reported him on June 15, 2012, and he was off the Portola campus as soon as the allegation surfaced. The one lawsuit settled without a trial, so no court ever looked at what the district knew. If you know otherwise, say a complaint before 2012, or a parent who went to the office and got waved off, then that's the one thing worth saying first on the call.

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.