sex

Walking out of a Skid Row market, Harold Cook, 42, decides to play a game.

How long after opening YouTube will it take for him to see an ad asking him to join the latest wave of sex abuse litigation against Los Angeles County?

“I can literally turn my phone on right now, something’s going to pop up,” said Cook, opening the app.

Within a few seconds, a message blares: “They thought you’d never speak up. They figured you was too young, too scared, too Black, too brown, too alone. … L.A. County already had to cough up $4 billion to settle these cases. So why not you?”

Since the historic April payout to resolve thousands of claims of sex abuse in county-run facilities, law firms have saturated L.A.’s airwaves and social media with campaigns seeking new clients. For months, government officials have quietly questioned who is financing the wall-to-wall marketing blitz.

The ad Cook heard was from Sheldon Law Group, one of several law firms active in sex abuse litigation in California that receive backing from private investors, according to loan notices and SEC filings. The investors, which often operate through Delaware companies, expect to profit from the payouts to resolve the cases.

Sheldon, based in Washington, D.C., has been one of the most prolific L.A. advertisers. The firm has already gathered roughly 2,500 potential clients, according to a list submitted to the county. The lawsuits started being filed this summer, raising the prospect of another costly settlement squeezed out of a government on the brink of a fiscal crisis.

“We act in the best interests of our clients, who are victims in every sense of the word and have suffered real and quite dreadful injuries,” a spokesperson for Sheldon Law Group said in a statement. “Without financial and legal support, these victims would be unable to hold the responsible parties, powerful corporate or governmental defendants, accountable.”

The financing deals have raised alarms among lawmakers, who say they want to know what portion of the billions poised to be diverted from government services to victims of horrific sex abuse will go to opaque private investors.

Kathryn Barger, a member of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, said she was contacted by a litigation investor who sought to gauge whether sex abuse litigation could be a smart venture. “This is so predatory,” Barger told The Times.

(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)

“I’m getting calls from the East Coast asking me if people should invest in bankrupting L.A. County,” Supervisor Kathryn Barger said. “I understand people want to make money, but I feel like this is so predatory.”

Barger said an old college friend who invests in lawsuits reached out this spring attempting to gauge whether L.A. County sex abuse litigation could be a smart venture. Barger said the caller referred to the lawsuits as an “evergreen” investment.

“That means it keeps on giving,” she said. “There’s no end to it.”

The county has spent nearly $5 billion this year on sex abuse litigation, with the bulk of that total coming from the $4-billion deal this spring — the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history.

The April settlement is under investigation by the L.A. County district attorney office following Times reporting that found plaintiffs who said they were paid by recruiters to join the litigation, including some who said they filed fraudulent claims. All were represented by Downtown LA Law Group, which handled roughly 2,700 plaintiffs.

Downtown LA Law Group has denied all wrongdoing and said it “only wants justice for real victims.” The firm took out a bank loan in summer 2024, according to a financing statement, but a spokesperson said they had no investor financing.

Lawyers who take the private financing say it’s a win-win. Investors make money on high-interest rate loans while smaller law firms have the capital they need to take on deep-pocketed corporations and governments. If people were victimized by predators on the county’s payroll, they deserve to have a law firm that can afford to work for free until the case settles. Money for investors, they emphasize, comes out of their cut — not the clients’.

But critics say the flow of outside money incentivizes law firms to amass as many plaintiffs as possible for the wrong reasons — not to spread access to justice, but rather ensure hefty profit for themselves and their financial backers.

“The amount of money being generated by private equity in these situations — that’s absurd,” said former state lawmaker Lorena Gonzalez, who wrote the 2019 bill that opened the floodgate for older sex abuse claims to be filed. “Nobody should be getting wealthy off taxpayer dollars.”

For residents of L.A.’s poorest neighborhood, ads touting life-changing payouts have started to feel inescapable.

Waiting in line at a Skid Row food shelter, William Alexander, 27, said his YouTube streaming is punctuated by commercials featuring a robotic man he suspects is AI calling on him to sue the county over sex abuse.

Across the street, Shane Honey, 56, said nearly every commercial break on the news seems to feature someone asking if he was neglected at a juvenile hall.

In many of the ads, the same name pops up: Sheldon Law Group.

Austin Trapp, a case worker in Skid Row, was among several people in the neighborhood who said ads seeking people to join sex abuse litigation against L.A. County have become increasingly common.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Sheldon’s website lists no attorneys, but claims the firm is the “architect” behind “some of the largest litigations on Earth.” They list their headquarters online at a D.C. virtual office space, though the owners on their most recent business filing list their own addresses in New York. The firm’s name appears on websites hunting for people suffering from video game addiction, exposure to toxins from 9/11, and toe implant failure.

Sheldon Law Group was started by the founder of Legal Recovery Associates, a New York litigation funding company that uses money from investors including hedge funds to recruit large numbers of plaintiffs for “mass torts,” cases where many people are suing over the same problem, according to interviews with former advisers, court records and business filings.

Those clients are gathered for one of their affiliated law firms, including Sheldon Law Group, according to two people involved in past transactions.

Ron Lasorsa, a former Wall Street investment banker who said he advised Legal Recovery Associates on setting up the affiliate law firms, told The Times it was built to make investors “obscenely rich.”

“It’s extremely profitable for people who know what the hell they’re doing,” Lasorsa said.

The idea, he says, emerged from a pool cabana at a Las Vegas legal conference called Mass Torts Made Perfect in fall 2015.

A man visiting friends on Skid Row holds up his phone showing an ad recruiting clients for sex abuse case in Los Angeles County on December 11, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Lasorsa had just amassed 14,000 clients for personal injury lawsuits in one year using methods that, he now says, were legally dubious. A favorite at the time: using call centers in India that had access to Americans’ hospital records and phoning the patients to see if they were feeling litigious.

Near the pool at a Vegas hotel, Lasorsa said Howard Berger, a former hedge fund manager barred by the SEC from working as a broker, asked if he could turbocharge the caseload of Legal Recovery Associates, where he worked as a consultant.

Lasorsa said he soon teamed up with the founders of LRA — Gary Podell, a real estate developer, and Greg Goldberg, a former investment manager — to create “shell” law firms based in Washington. The nation’s capital is one of the few places where non-lawyers can own a law firm, profiting directly from case proceeds.

Goldberg, who is not licensed to practice law in D.C., would become a partner in at least six D.C. law firms including Sheldon Law Group by 2017, according to a contract between Legal Recovery Associates and a hedge fund that financed the firms’ cases.

Sheldon, which said it was responding on behalf of Podell, said in a statement that all their partners are lawyers, though declined to name them. Goldberg did not respond to a repeated request for comment.

The Sheldon spokesperson said Legal Recovery Associates is a separate entity that engages in its “own business and legal activities.”

Investors typically make money on litigation by providing law firms with loans, which experts say carry interest rates as high as 30%, representing the risk involved. If the case goes south, investors get nothing. If it settles, they make it all back — and then some.

Lasorsa said he helped the company gather 20,000 claims using the same Indian call centers before a bitter 2019 split. He later accused the owners of unethical behavior, which led to a half-million dollar settlement and a non-disparagement agreement that he said he decided to breach, leading to a roughly $600,000 penalty he has yet to pay, according to a court judgment.

Lasorsa was also ordered to delete any disparaging statements he’d made, according to the judgment.

D.C. law firms with non-lawyers as partners must have the “sole purpose” of providing “legal services,” according to the district’s bar. Some attorneys have argued no such service was provided by the firms associated with Legal Recovery Associates.

Troy Brenes, an Orange County attorney who co-counseled with one of the firms over flawed medical devices, accused the company of operating a “sham law firm” as part of a 2022 court battle over fees.

“The sole purpose … appears to have been to allow non-lawyers to market for product liability cases and then refer those cases to legitimate law firms in exchange for a portion of the attorney fees without making any effort to comply with the D.C. ethics rules,” Brenes wrote.

A spokesperson for Sheldon and LRA noted in a statement that “no court or arbitration panel has ever concluded” that its business structure violates the law.

In the medical device cases, the affiliate firm, which was responsible for funding the marketing campaign, took 55% of recoverable attorney fees, according to an agreement between the two firms. The profit divide mirrors the 55/45 breakdown between Sheldon Law Group and James Harris Law, a two-person Seattle firm they have partnered with on the L.A. County sex abuse cases, according to a retainer agreement reviewed by The Times.

A person on Skid Row in downtown L.A. shows an ad on their phone seeking plaintiffs to joint a lawsuit over sexual abuse in juvenile halls.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

This summer, ads linking to a webpage with the name of James Harris appeared online, telling potential clients they could qualify in 30 seconds for up to $1 million. When a Times reporter entered a cell-phone number on one of the ads, a representative who said they worked for the firm’s intake department called dozens of times.

After The Times described these marketing efforts in a story, Harris emphasized in an email that he did not know about the ads or the persistent calls and said they were done by his “referring firm.” The landing page the ads led to was replaced with the name of Sheldon Law Group.

Harris said his firm and Sheldon, which he described as “functioning as a genuine and independent co counsel law firm,” have “been highly selective and have only prosecuted cases that we believe are legally and factually meritorious.”

“I continue to believe that lawyer advertising, when conducted ethically and without misleading claims, serves as a vital tool for raising public awareness about legal rights and available recourse, particularly for survivors of abuse seeking justice,” he said.

Over the last five years, experts say, the practice of funding big mass tort cases has boomed in the U.S.

Of the five main firms in L.A. County’s initial $4-billion sex abuse settlement, two took money from outside investors shortly before they began suing the county, according to public loan filings.

The loans to both Herman Law, a Florida-based firm that specializes in sex abuse cases, and Slater Slater Schuman, a New York-based personal injury firm, came from Delaware-registered companies. Deer Finance, a New York City litigation funding firm that connects investors with lawyers, is listed on business records for both companies.

The loan documents do not specify which of the firms’ cases were funded, but show each deal was finalized within months of the firms starting to sue L.A. County for sex abuse. Neither firm responded to questions about how the outside funding was used.

Slater, which received the loan in spring 2022, represents more L.A. County plaintiffs than any other firm, by far.

Slater’s caseload surged after the county signaled its plan to settle for $4 billion in October 2024. Several of the main attorneys on the case told The Times they stopped advertising at that point, reasoning that any new plaintiffs would now mean less money for the existing ones.

The next month, Slater Slater Schulman ran more than 700 radio ads in Los Angeles seeking juvenile detention abuse claims, according to X Ante, a company that tracks mass tort advertisements.

By this summer, the number of claims jumped from roughly 2,100 to 3,700, according to court records, catapulting Slater far beyond the caseload of any other firm.

This fall, another Delaware-registered company took out a lien on all of Slater’s attorney fees from the county cases, according to an Oct. 6 loan record. The law firm assisting with the transaction declined to comment.

“These are extraordinarily complex cases and litigating these cases effectively requires resources,” said an outside attorney representing Slater in a statement, responding to questions from The Times.

The firm, which also represents roughly 14,000 victims in the Boy Scouts sex abuse cases, was singled out by the judge overseeing the litigation this fall for “procedural and factual problems” among its plaintiffs. The firm was one of several called out by insurers in the litigation for using hedge fund money to “run up the claim number.”

The firm has said they’re working “tirelessly” to address the issues and justice for survivors is its top priority.

April Mannani, who says she was assaulted in the 1990s by an officer while she was housed at MacLaren Children’s Center, said she feels lawyers on the sex abuse cases are putting profits ahead of the best interests of clients.

(Jimena Peck/For The Times)

Many plaintiffs told The Times they were discouraged to see how much money stood to be made for others off their trauma.

April Mannani, 51, sued L.A. County after she said she was raped repeatedly as a teenager at MacLaren Children’s Center, a shelter now notorious for abuse. Mannani accepts that her lawyers are entitled to a cut for their work on the case, but said she was disheartened watching the numbers of cases suddenly skyrocket this year. With the district attorney investigating, a pall has been cast over the entire settlement.

“We’ve been made fools of and we were used for financial gain,” she said. “They all just see it as a money grab.”

That firm that represents her, Herman Law, has filed roughly 800 cases against L.A. County. Herman Law took out a loan in 2021 from a Delaware-registered company affiliated with Deer Finance, according to a loan notice. The firm said they use traditional bank loans for “overall operations.”

Herman Law is the most prolific filer of county sex abuse cases outside of L.A. County since the state changed the statute of limitations.

Herman Law has filed about half of these roughly 800 sex abuse lawsuits that have been brought outside of L.A. County, according to data reviewed by The Times.

Herman Law has sued several tiny counties, where public officials say they’ve been inundated with advertisements on social media and TV looking for plaintiffs. Some counties say they threw out relevant records long ago and have no way to tell if the alleged victim was ever in local custody.

A judge fined Herman Law about $9,500 last month for failing to dismiss Kings County from a lawsuit despite presenting no evidence the county ever had custody of the victim, calling the claim “factually frivolous” and “objectively unreasonable.” An attorney for Herman Law said in a court filing the client believed she’d been in a foster home there, and the lack of records didn’t conclusively establish anything.

“There are not records. There’s nothing that exists,” said Jason Britt, the county administrative officer for Tulare County, which has been sued at least eight times by Herman Law. “Counties at some point are not gonna be able to operate because you’re essentially going to bankrupt them.”

The firm said its clients are always its top priority.

“No lender or financial relationship has ever influenced, directed or played any role in legal strategy, client decisions or case outcomes, including any matters involving the Los Angeles County,” the firm said. “Herman Law’s work is driven solely by our mission to advocate for survivors in their pursuit of justice and healing.”

Joseph Nicchitta, L.A. County’s acting chief executive officer, said he believed the region’s social safety net was now “an investment opportunity.” In an October letter to the State Bar, he called out the “explosive growth” of claims, arguing a handful of firms were “competing to bring as many cases as possible” to the detriment of their existing clients.

He estimated that attorney fees in the lawsuit would amount to more than $1 billion. “It begs reform,” he wrote.

The Visalia Unified School District’s public board meeting in March was a festive and upbeat affair with a performance by a student chamber music group and a commendation for a high school cheer squad.

When the seven-member board went into closed session, the agenda was decidedly grimmer: Six former students were suing the district over sexual abuse they said they suffered decades earlier at the hands of a kindergarten teacher.

Out of public view, the board unanimously approved a $3-million settlement with provisions intended to keep the community in the dark forever.

Under the terms of the agreement, the women, their lawyers and families were prohibited from disclosing any aspect of the deal, including the amount they were paid.

“The Parties agree that they will respond to any inquiries they may receive from any third parties regarding the lawsuit by stating only that ‘the matter has been resolved’ without any further elaboration, discussion or disclosure,” the settlement instructed.

It was Visalia’s fifth secret settlement in the last three years, one of a flurry that districts are quietly approving statewide.

A Times investigation found that California’s public schools, faced with a historic surge of sex abuse lawsuits, are increasingly using nondisclosure agreements and other tactics that celebrities and big corporations rely upon to protect their reputation.

At least 25 districts have resolved suits or other claims in ways that hinder taxpayers from learning about the allegations, the cost of settling them or both, The Times found. These hidden settlements total more than $53 million. Legal experts say that these settlements may be in violation of state law, and that some should be investigated by the state attorney general.

While shielding the names and identifying details of sex abuse victims is widely accepted, courts have repeatedly said the public has a right to know allegations leveled against government employees and the money spent to compensate accusers.

Lawmakers in California have also largely banned the use of confidentiality provisions for settlements involving sexual assault and harassment, on the belief that transparency helps victims heal and leads to public accountability.

“There’s very significant problems with government agencies acting like private companies and requesting or insisting on these kinds of nondisclosure or non-disparagement clauses in settlement agreements,” said David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, based in San Rafael. “Because at the end of the day, the government works for the people and the people have a very compelling interest in knowing about claims and allegations of misconduct.”

California’s school districts are now grappling with a deluge of sex abuse cases resulting from a 2019 law that changed the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse and created a new window — from 2020 to 2022 — in which anyone could file a lawsuit for past alleged abuse.

The Times identified more than 1,000 lawsuits against school districts filed since 2020, with more than 750 filed due to the new law. Some lawsuits allege abuse as far back as the 1950s. Most cases are still making their way through the courts, but more than 330 have settled for roughly $700 million, with $435 million paid out for claims related to the new law. The state projects that local education agencies will ultimately pay out between $2 billion and $3 billion once cases work through the court system. Much of this is taking place outside the public eye.

In Visalia, confidentiality clauses negotiated by district lawyers acknowledged the public’s right to obtain the information — and then attempted to make sure they never would. Four agreements specifically barred former students receiving secret payouts from “directly or indirectly” encouraging others to file a request under the state Public Records Act — the method The Times used to review copies of agreements referenced in this story.

A spokesperson for Visalia Unified declined an interview request, and the school district did not answer written questions.

Anaheim Union High School District paid three men, who said they had been abused by a junior high teacher, $3.3 million in 2023.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Several districts attempted to prevent allegations from becoming public by paying off accusers before they filed lawsuits that would have detailed the claims of sex abuse for anyone to see.

Anaheim Union High School District paid a trio of men who said they had been abused by a junior high teacher $3.3 million in 2023 after their attorney sent the district a draft of a lawsuit he said he was prepared to file in Superior Court.

The terms of the payout two years ago required that the men and their lawyers “not seek publicity relating to the facts and circumstances giving rise” to their claims, and indeed, the settlements have not been previously reported.

John Bautista, a spokesperson for Anaheim Union, said in a statement that the district and its insurer settled the draft lawsuits after going through discovery in a related case and “did not want to incur additional expenses of filing a lawsuit.”

“Nothing in the agreement would prevent the claimant/plaintiff from speaking with the press concerning the facts of the case if the press contacted [them],” Bautista said.

At least one district paid an accuser before anything was put in writing, records show. Victor Elementary School District in the High Desert negotiated a $350,000 settlement with one former student after his lawyer relayed abuse allegations in a phone call. Asked by The Times for a document describing the claimed misconduct, a district official said no such records existed.

Some districts suggest the confidentiality restrictions are needed to avoid a “snowball effect” of further litigation.

San Diego Unified, hit by more than a dozen lawsuits over alleged sex abuse since 2020, has settled four for a total of $2.44 million, each with a confidentiality clause that, at a minimum, prevents the accuser or her lawyer from disclosing the settlement amount. One of the settlements blocks the accuser from discussing the matter with anyone except her lawyer or financial advisor or in response to a subpoena.

San Diego officials acknowledged that confidentiality is ultimately limited — the documents can be disclosed via public records requests — but the district proceeded with pursuing restrictions on the accusers and their representatives.

“The purpose is to keep plaintiffs’ lawyers from using these settlements as marketing tools,” said James Canning, a spokesman for San Diego Unified.

Former state Sen. Connie Leyva, seen here while in the Legislature in 2019, said she was taken aback by school districts using confidentiality provisions. “That sounds illegal,” Leyva said.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Efforts to curb the use of secret settlements gained momentum in the 1980s, with growing public awareness of how confidentiality agreements had kept the public in the dark about environmental or health hazards, such as asbestos.

In 2016, California prohibited settlement agreements that block the disclosure of factual information about sexual abuse or any sex offense that could be prosecuted as a felony.

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, lawmakers in 2018 passed the STAND Act, which prohibits nondisclosure agreements in sexual harassment, discrimination and other sexual assault cases that don’t rise to felony prosecution. Three years later, the Silenced No More Act widened the prohibition on nondisclosure agreements to include any harassment case. The law still gives victims the option to protect their identity.

The lead sponsor of both bills, former state Sen. Connie Leyva, said she was taken aback by school districts using confidentiality provisions.

“That sounds illegal,” said Leyva, now the executive director of public radio and TV station KVCR. “We did not speak specifically about children or about schools, but it shouldn’t be happening.” She added, “Our bill was meant to apply to everyone everywhere.”

Several settlement agreements obtained by The Times included caveats by stating they were “confidential to the extent allowed by law,” or contained similar carve-outs. Experts said such provisos still have the effect of muzzling a victim’s speech and hindering public accountability.

“While it’s possible that these work-arounds don’t violate the letter of the STAND Act, they certainly violate its spirit,” said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a professor at Stanford Law School, who co-authored a study on the effect of the STAND Act in L.A. courts.

Southern Kern Unified School District agreed to pay $600,000 to a former student who alleged sex abuse and included an acknowledgment of the STAND Act in the agreement. Still, the settlement bars the former student, Corey Neufer, from “actively” publicizing the deal.

Reached by phone, Neufer said that although he deliberately chose to sue under his own name, rather than as John Doe, he was told that the confidentiality provision was standard and necessary for the final settlement.

“That was one of the stipulations — that I don’t speak about it or give any details,” said Neufer, who indicated the confidentiality was far broader than the text of his settlement suggests. “My lawyer instructed me to not talk about the case.”

The STAND Act allows for plaintiffs or claimants to put language in a settlement agreement that shields their identity and disclosure of any facts that could lead to their identity. However, if a public official or government agency — such as a school district — is part of the settlement, that language cannot be included.

Of the dozens of settlements reviewed by The Times, two specifically noted that the accuser wanted confidentiality to shield their identity.

Several had restrictions that appeared to exceed the STAND Act, such as a 2024 settlement for $787,500 paid by Ceres Unified to a custodian who said she was sexually harassed by a colleague. The signed agreement states that the settlement, its terms and any belief that the district or its employees engaged in unlawful behavior were all confidential. If asked, the custodian could only say, “The matter has been resolved.”

David Viss, an assistant superintendent at Ceres Unified, said in an email that the agreement complied with the law: “We believe the settlement agreement is consistent with the STAND Act.”

The overwhelming majority of sex abuse cases filed against school districts reach a settlement. For districts, a settlement can be more cost-effective than mounting a legal defense through a jury trial, and unlike a panel of jurors, a settlement provides a level of fiscal certainty. At times, the decision to settle is driven less by school board members than an insurance company or liability coverage provider.

John Manly, whose law firm specializes in childhood sex abuse, said school districts and their insurance providers frequently ask for confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses when negotiating a payout.

Lawyer John Manly, seen at his law offices in Irvine in 2023, has represented sex abuse survivors for more than 20 years. He says that confidentiality agreements “benefit one person, which is the perpetrator, and those who enable them.”

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“We get these requests all the time, and we decline,” Manly said. “Confidentiality agreements benefit one person, which is the perpetrator, and those who enable them.”

At Los Angeles Unified School District, scores of people accused former San Fernando High School wrestling coach Terry Gillard of abuse. In 2022, LAUSD agreed to pay 23 accusers a total of $52 million to settle molestation and abuse claims — a settlement negotiated by Manly’s law firm.

A year later, LAUSD agreed to pay three other women who alleged abuse by Gillard a total of $7.5 million.

Although those represented by Manly’s team did not have a confidentiality or non-disparagement agreement in their settlement, LAUSD sought an extensive confidentiality agreement for the payout to the three other women, curtailing discussion of the settlement and underlying abuse claims.

That settlement barred their lawyer from making any sort of statement — or encouraging others to make a statement — about the compensation deal, and barred comments that could “defame, disparage or in any way criticize” LAUSD, its employees and leaders.

Only the women, their lawyer, “immediate family” and “tax professional” could know about the settlement, according to the agreement.

“If asked about the status of this dispute, plaintiffs counsel may only state, ‘they have voluntarily and fully resolved their claims against the Los Angeles Unified School District,’ or words to that effect,” declares the settlement agreement.

The lawyer for the women, Anthony DeMarco, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Manly said the State Bar of California should investigate lawyers on both sides who agree to language that they know conflicts with state law. And he called on Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to investigate school districts that continue to lock victims into such restrictive agreements.

“It’s wrong. It’s bad for the community and it’s bad for the victim. The lawyers that do it — defense and plaintiff — should be ashamed of themselves.”

L.A. Unified, which has added confidentiality provisions in at least seven settlements since 2020, defended its practices as a way to amicably resolve litigation, according to a statement from a spokesperson.

“These settlement agreements keep the settlement details, such as the amount, confidential. They do not prohibit the disclosure of the facts behind the claims,” the LAUSD spokesperson said.

Some legal experts want Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to investigate school districts that continue to lock victims into restrictive nondisclosure agreements.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

While several districts use secrecy provisions in settlement agreements to hide the details of sex abuse cases, others, like Visalia Unified, also are able to keep payouts quiet by approving them in closed session at regular school board meetings.

In 2021, the president of the board of Wasco Union High School District received a letter from a lawyer based in Iowa who represented a former Wasco student. The lawyer said his client had been sexually abused nearly a decade earlier by her former coach and teacher, and accused her then-principal, Kevin Tallon, among others, of not taking appropriate steps when confronted with evidence of abuse.

Tallon, now Wasco’s superintendent, was named as a defendant in the draft lawsuit, and the lawyer included a copy. He gave the district 14 business days to respond.

“If I do not hear back from you, I will proceed with the lawsuit,” wrote the lawyer, Thomas Burke.

The letter touched off a negotiation that culminated at the Wasco school board’s final meeting of 2021. The meeting’s agenda for the closed session was circumspect: “Conference with Legal Counsel — Settlement Agreement.” But behind closed doors, the board voted 5 to 0 to approve a settlement, according to meeting minutes, ensuring that there would probably never be a public airing of the allegations against the teacher or superintendent. The meeting minutes reflect only that a settlement was approved — not the amount or nature of the abuse accusations. The district paid $475,000 in the settlement, a sum that The Times obtained via records request.

Tallon, the superintendent who was named in the draft lawsuit, declined an interview but provided written responses to questions. He said the district and its staff “fulfilled its duties diligently and with integrity,” and said the settlement was approved in a way that adhered to the Brown Act, the state’s open meeting law.

“The settlement was not intended to conceal allegations; it was meant to responsibly limit risk and bring closure to a sensitive situation,” Tallon said in the statement.

Legal experts agreed that Wasco’s school board complied with the Brown Act — thereby exposing that law’s limits and potential loopholes. Since the threat of litigation did not result in a filed case or formal claim, the board could treat it as “anticipated litigation” and discuss it in closed session, away from the public. And since settlement offers — like any contract negotiation — are not final until agreed upon, they too can be approved in closed session, away from the public.

Loy, the legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said the Brown Act could be amended to proactively require public agencies to ultimately disclose the details and amounts of settlements. School districts, he added, could also opt to be more open, without being compelled to by state lawmakers.

“Agencies owe a duty to the public to be more proactive and more transparent, even than the bare minimum letter of the law might allow them to get away with,” Loy said.

The lack of transparency also coincides with a crisis in local news, which has resulted in far less coverage of city halls, courthouses and school boards from the Imperial Valley to the shores of Eureka.

At one time, newspapers big and small had reporters at school board meetings who probably would have noticed settlements on the agenda and submitted records requests to reveal them.

With local media absent, agencies have quietly approved settlements in closed session, with no watchdog to suss out the underlying facts.

“Diligent people or reporters know to do that: Please give me copies of every settlement approved this week or this month,” said Loy, the First Amendment Coalition’s legal director. “But that requires an extra step.”

NEW YORK — Secret grand jury transcripts from Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case can be made public, a judge ruled on Wednesday, joining two other judges in granting the Justice Department’s requests to unseal material from investigations into the late financier’s sexual abuse.

U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman reversed his earlier decision to keep the material under wraps, citing a new law that requires the government to open its files on Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell. The judge previously cautioned that the 70 or so pages of grand jury materials slated for release are hardly revelatory and “merely a hearsay snippet” of Epstein’s conduct.

On Tuesday, another Manhattan federal judge ordered the release of records from Maxwell’s 2021 sex trafficking case. Last week, a judge in Florida approved the unsealing of transcripts from an abandoned Epstein federal grand jury investigation in the 2000s.

The Justice Department asked the judges to lift secrecy orders in the cases after the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump last month, created a narrow exception to rules that normally keep grand jury proceedings confidential. The law requires that the Justice Department disclose Epstein-related material to the public by Dec. 19.

The court records cleared for release are just a sliver of the government’s trove — a collection of potentially tens of thousands of pages of documents including FBI notes and reports; transcripts of witness interviews, photographs, videos and other evidence; Epstein’s autopsy report; flight logs and travel records.

While lawyers for Epstein’s estate told Berman in a letter last week that the estate took no position on the Justice Department’s unsealing request, some Epstein victims backed it.

“Release to the public of Epstein-related materials is good, so long as the victims are protected in the process,” said Brad Edwards, a lawyer for some victims. “With that said, the grand jury receives only the most basic information, so, relatively speaking, these particular materials are insignificant.”

Questions about the government’s Epstein files have dominated the first year of Trump’s second term, with pressure on the Republican intensifying after he reneged on a campaign promise to release the files. His administration released some material, most of it already public, disappointing critics and some allies.

Berman was matter of fact in his ruling on Wednesday, writing that the transparency law “unequivocally intends to make public Epstein grand jury materials and discovery materials” that had previously been covered by secrecy orders. The law “supersedes the otherwise secret grand jury materials,” he wrote.

The judge, who was appointed by President Clinton, a Democrat, implored the Justice Department to carefully follow the law’s privacy provisions to ensure that victims’ names and other identifying information are blacked out. Victim safety and privacy “are paramount,” he wrote.

In court filings, the Justice Department informed Berman that the only witness to testify before the Epstein grand jury was an FBI agent who, the judge noted, “had no direct knowledge of the facts of the case and whose testimony was mostly hearsay.”

The agent testified over two days, on June 18, 2019, and July 2, 2019. The rest of the grand jury presentation consisted of a PowerPoint slideshow and four pages of call logs. The July 2 session ended with grand jurors voting to indict Epstein.

Epstein, a millionaire money manager known for socializing with celebrities, politicians, billionaires and the academic elite, killed himself in jail a month after his 2019 arrest. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 by a federal jury of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of Epstein’s underage victims and participating in some of the abuse. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

Maxwell’s lawyer told a judge last week that unsealing records from her case “would create undue prejudice” and could spoil her plans to file a habeas petition, a legal filing seeking to overturn her conviction. The Supreme Court in October declined to hear Maxwell’s appeal.

Maxwell’s grand jury records include testimony from the FBI agent and a New York Police Department detective.

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer sought to temper expectations as he approved their release on Tuesday, writing that the materials “do not identify any person other than Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor.”

“They do not discuss or identify any client of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s,” wrote Engelmayer, an appointee of President Obama, a Democrat. “They do not reveal any heretofore unknown means or methods of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s crimes.”

Sisak writes for the Associated Press.