What happened to you at Summit Academy was not okay.

Summit Academy sits on 125 acres outside Herman, in Butler County, and a judge put you there. Allegheny County, Philadelphia, a county you'd never heard of, another state. You didn't pick it. Right now seven men who were boys there between about 2005 and 2021 are suing The Summit School, Inc. in federal court in Pittsburgh, and 23 more filed in Allegheny County in the summer of 2024. If you were a resident at Summit, any year, this is about you.

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This applies to you no matter what

You were sent there by a judge or a probation officer, not by your parents. All seven men in the federal case were placed by Philadelphia's juvenile probation department under a court order. That's the normal story at Summit. It changes nothing about your right to ask.
You told somebody and nothing happened. One federal plaintiff says he told his golf coach, who was staff, and was told to "man up." Another says his mother called the school at least three times. The complaint treats that as part of the case, not a reason there isn't one.
It was recent, 2020 or 2021 or after that even. The lead federal plaintiff was 16 and 17 there in those two years, and Summit is still taking boys.
You were told your home passes or your phone calls depended on keeping quiet. Three of the seven federal plaintiffs describe that trade, in the complaint's words. So do the Allegheny County suits.
You have a juvenile record, or an adult one now, and figure nobody would take your word over the school's. The people in these cases were adjudicated delinquent. The courts took the cases anyway.
Maybe it isn't you. A parent whose son is there now, a brother, a partner, asking for someone who can't. Reach out anyway.

The Summit Academy lawsuits and the one conviction: what the public record says, and when

None of what's below is ours. It comes from a Butler County courtroom, from the federal docket in Pittsburgh, from the Allegheny County filings as the Butler Eagle, WPXI and the Tribune-Review reported them, and we link every line. One man was convicted, and we say convicted. Everything else is a lawsuit, which means an allegation. The Summit School, Inc. has answered the federal complaint and is defending the case; it has not admitted liability anywhere.

April 22, 2013

Dr. David Evanko, 59, Summit Academy's consulting physician, pleaded guilty in Butler County to molesting two Summit students in 2009 and got 5½ to 14½ years in state prison. He was already serving six to 15 years for abusing a boy in his Boy Scout troop in the 1990s; the sentences run together. The Summit case surfaced only because detectives on the Scout case kept going. CBS Pittsburgh / AP.

March 2, 2023

Seven former residents, Ronnie Quann, Devon Batista, William May, Sharief Clayton, Robert Borders, Kyle Mikell-Givens and Saheed Bailey, filed a class-action civil-rights complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against The Summit School, Inc., doing business as The Summit Academy, and John/Jane Does 1–100. No. 2:23-cv-00808, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, jury demanded. Docket, E.D. Pa..

January 2024

Two more men sued in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, both of them placed at Summit under an Allegheny County court order. The first was there in 2017 to 2019, at 15 or 16, and his complaint describes a staffer it calls only "Mark" who abused him again and again and kept him quiet with privileges, with bribes. The second man's stay was earlier, 2006 and 2007, age 16. Three staff members held him down, he says; one of them the complaint knows as "Brian," first name and nothing else. Four counts in each suit. Negligence is one, intentional infliction of emotional distress another, loss of educational opportunity a third. Summit "could not be reached for comment." Butler Eagle.

July 22, 2024

One day in July, 92 people sued three western Pennsylvania juvenile facilities at once, all in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court. Twenty-three had been at Summit Academy. The rest, George Junior Republic and Abraxas. "When they tried to report it to supervisors, they were ignored," Jason Luckasevic said; he filed the cases with Levy Konigsberg, and the Summit claims among them run from about 2014 through 2023, against teachers, counselors, coaches, supervisors. One boy says a refusal cost him a broken jaw. Another says a shift leader put him on a bus between facilities with no clothes on. And Summit? A written statement: "Our students' health, safety and welfare are our primary focus." Tribune-Review.

August 8, 2024

The federal case moved, in two steps. Step one, March 27, 2024: Chief Judge Mitchell Goldberg refused to throw out the Title IX claim against the Philadelphia County Juvenile Probation Department, a defendant since 2023. Step two, August 8. Nobody objected, and he sent the whole thing west to the Western District of Pennsylvania, where it picked up a new number, 2:24-cv-01143. The Second Amended Complaint, filed there August 30, 2024, is where the seven boys' accounts sit, ages 14 to 17, at Summit somewhere between about 2005 and 2021, and where it's said, more than once, that staff used home passes, phone calls, even food, as leverage. Docket, W.D. Pa..

April 15, 2026

Judge W. Scott Hardy ruled. The Probation Department's motion to dismiss: denied, in full. Summit's motion: denied as to the Title IX claim, the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment claims, state-created danger and negligence; granted, without prejudice, as to the Fourth Amendment theory and the state-law counts numbered 8 through 16, with leave to replead. And he severed the case. Quann keeps 2:24-cv-01143. The other six each got a docket of their own that same day (2:26-cv-00645 through 00650) and every one stays before him. Summit's spokeswoman, asked by the Butler Eagle, said she "could not comment on the pending litigation." Order of Court, ECF 80.

July 7, 2026

Quann's Third Amended Complaint was filed, 32 pages, nine counts, against The Summit School, Inc., the Philadelphia County Juvenile Probation Department and John/Jane Does 1–100. It says a unit manager with authority over him threatened a longer stay if he talked, that phone calls out were restricted, and that "prior incidents of sexual misconduct" at Summit, "including incidents resulting in criminal investigation and prosecution," put the school on notice. Both defendants answered on July 21, 2026. On July 28 Summit filed its corporate disclosure statement: no parent, no affiliate. Nothing on the docket points to a settlement or a bankruptcy. Docket, W.D. Pa..

We checked this on September 13, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from July 7, 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 Summit Academy lawsuit

Not the man alone. Evanko went to prison in 2013; nobody else who worked at Summit has been convicted of anything on this record. The lawsuits are about the corporation: The Summit School, Inc., a Pennsylvania nonprofit doing business as The Summit Academy, which takes court-ordered placements from Pennsylvania counties and, the federal complaint says, from Ohio, Florida, Texas, Colorado and Illinois, and is paid by the public to keep those boys safe. The theory is plain. It hired these adults, gave them control over phone calls and home passes, and, the complaints say, didn't listen when a kid spoke up. Whether that was negligence is a jury's question. Summit is contesting it in court.

The knowledge part is pleaded, not guessed. The federal complaint says one boy's mother called supervisors at least three times about injuries she could see; that another told a unit manager and the next day was offered a home pass to never mention it again; that a golf coach on staff heard a disclosure and said "man up." It says the school knew of earlier misconduct "resulting in criminal investigation and prosecution," which on this record can only mean its own doctor. The Allegheny County complaints, the Tribune-Review reported, are "replete with examples" of boys telling family and staff and being dismissed. Allegations, all of it. But ones a court has let go forward.

There is a second name in the federal case: the Philadelphia County Juvenile Probation Department, the public body that placed the boys. Its Title IX claim survived two motions to dismiss. For a Pennsylvania local agency, sexual-abuse claims of this kind are an exception to governmental immunity under Act 87; what that means in your case is for a lawyer, not this page. And Summit is open, still admitting boys 13 to 17 to the Herman campus this month. That is who the claim is against. Not you.

Your deadline: the Pennsylvania statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse

If you were under 18 and were born in December 1989 or later, Pennsylvania gives you until your 55th birthday. That is Act 87 of 2019, now 42 Pa.C.S. § 5533(b)(2): 37 years after you turn 18. Born in December 1989 or after and the door is open on age alone, and for most Summit boys placed from about 2003 onward, that is you. The seven federal plaintiffs were 14 to 17 between roughly 2005 and 2021. All inside.

Now the hard part, said plainly. Act 87 took effect on November 26, 2019, and it reached only the claims still alive that day. Under the rule before it you had until 30. So if you had already turned 30 by then, roughly anyone born before December 1989, your Pennsylvania claim had closed and the new law did not reopen it. The lawyers who filed the Allegheny County cases told WPXI that more than 100 additional people who came forward, born before November 1989, could not file. No revival window has passed in Harrisburg. Bills exist; none is law. We won't tell you one is coming, because nobody knows.

Even so, two things. Born before December 1989, let a lawyer look at your dates anyway; the arithmetic runs to the day, and the federal civil-rights claims in these cases run on their own, shorter clocks that a lawyer has to work out. And if you were 18 or older when it happened, the rules are different. Answer the questions and we'll get you to someone who does this math every week.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told anyone. Not the staff, not your PO, not your mother. Most of the men in these cases waited more than a decade.
You told someone at Summit and were told to man up, or that you'd lose your passes, or do your time over. That's in the complaints. It's evidence, not a disqualifier.
You went AWOL, got restrained, picked up new charges there or after. So what. The federal plaintiffs were adjudicated delinquent. The court heard them.
The staffer was never charged and you don't know his last name. Neither do most of the plaintiffs; the complaints say "Mark," "Brian," "Mr. Chad." The lawsuits name the school.
You live in Ohio, West Virginia or somewhere else now. Summit took boys from all over. Where you live today doesn't change where it happened.
It was another resident, not an adult. Say so. The federal complaint pleads failure to protect from staff and from other students both.

Facilities covered

The Summit Academy at 839 Herman Road, Herman, Butler County, Pennsylvania. That means the residential school for boys 13 to 17 and its shelter program, and every place inside the complaints: dorm floors, the gym, a locker room, the football field, the chapel. The corporation behind it, The Summit School, Inc., has an office at 900 Agnew Road in Pittsburgh; it also runs New Outlook Academy for girls, plus community programs, under the name The Academy Schools. What's on this page is about Herman, though. Placed there from Philadelphia, Allegheny County, another county or another state? The questions still work. Answer them and say where you were sent from.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue Summit Academy?

Thirty-two people already have, that we can count: seven in federal court in Pittsburgh, two in Allegheny County in January 2024, and 23 more there in July 2024. Whether you can turns mostly on when you were born, which is what the questions above sort out. A lawyer reads your dates before anyone promises anything.

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.

Is Summit Academy still open?

Yes. It is still licensed, still fielding a football team, still admitting boys 13 to 17 to the campus in Herman as of September 2026. It is a nonprofit corporation, The Summit School, Inc., with no parent company, and it filed its answer to the newest federal complaint in July 2026. It's fighting the cases, in other words. Not folding.

The staff member who hurt me was never arrested. Does that matter?

Not for a civil case. Look at who these lawsuits name: The Summit School, Inc., for how it hired, how it supervised, whether it listened. Only one Summit adult, the doctor, has ever been convicted on this record, and the 32 plaintiffs are mostly describing men who were never charged.

Pennsylvania's statute of limitations for child sexual abuse: how long do I have?

Until you turn 55, if Act 87 of 2019 reaches you. The catch: it took effect November 26, 2019 and reached only claims still alive that day, and the old rule closed a claim at 30. So it comes down to birthdays. Born about December 1989 or later, you're inside. Earlier, and Pennsylvania has no window for you today. The House has voted for one; the Senate has not. Watch it, but don't plan around it.

How much is a Summit Academy settlement?

Nobody knows. Anyone who gives you a number is guessing, or selling. Not one of these cases has settled; the federal docket, as of August 2026, shows answers filed and seven related actions grinding along, nothing more. What a case is worth depends on what happened, what Summit knew, and when. A lawyer will tell you plainly after looking at your facts.

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 Pennsylvania 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.