The abuse cases that are
actually moving, and what they mean for you.
Los Angeles County agreed to pay roughly $4.8 billion to survivors of its juvenile halls and foster homes. Nearly 4,000 federal cases sit in the Uber MDL. Roblox and Discord are facing state attorneys general in six states. We track every one of these dockets and translate them into the only question that matters: is a claim still possible for you?
When the institution knew, and kept the doors open
The largest abuse settlements in American history did not come from individual predators. They came from organizations that received complaints, moved staff, sealed records, and let it continue. These are the four largest fronts right now.
LA County juvenile facilities
The largest sexual abuse settlement of its kind. $4 billion approved in April 2025 covering nearly 7,000 claims from juvenile halls and probation camps dating to 1959, with $828 million added that October. It is now mostly a payout fight: money is spread across five fiscal years starting FY 2025–26, very little has reached claimants, and new claims keep arriving.
Paying out · still accepting claims
LA County foster care
Foster placements are folded into the same County settlements as the juvenile halls, but the facts are different: private foster homes, group homes, and MacLaren Children’s Center, with placement records that are often the only surviving proof a child was ever there. Different evidence, same claims process.
Covered by the County settlements
Boy Scouts of America
The $2.4 billion bankruptcy settlement is now final. In January 2026 the Supreme Court declined to review it, rejecting an appeal from roughly 75 survivors who argued the plan wrongly blocks them from suing councils, churches, and other chartered organizations. Scouting Settlement Trust distributions continue.
Final · distributions ongoing
Catholic dioceses
Still the most active pipeline in the country. State legislatures keep opening revival windows that briefly reopen expired claims; dioceses respond by filing Chapter 11, which freezes lawsuits and channels everything into a bankruptcy trust. Whether you file, and when, changes what you can recover.
New filings & bankruptcies
Juvenile detention nationwide
Los Angeles is the largest, not the only. Survivors have brought claims against state and county youth facilities in Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and beyond. Each one turns on that state’s sovereign-immunity rules and its own filing deadline.
Active in multiple states
Is your deadline still open?
Most survivors assume too much time has passed. Often that is wrong. Delayed-discovery rules, minority tolling, and legislative revival windows have reopened claims from the 1960s and 1970s. Our state-by-state table shows where the door is open, where it is closing, and where it has shut.
50-state referenceThe litigation map
Abuse litigation is not evenly spread across the country. It clusters where legislatures reopened expired claims, where a bankruptcy court sits, and where an attorney general decided to act. Select a state to see what is live there as of August 2026.
Tile map: each square is a state, arranged geographically. Tap or use arrow keys.
The newest front: companies that built the room
The argument in these cases is not that the company committed the assault. It is that the company designed a system that put a stranger and a vulnerable person alone together, marketed it as safe, and then declined to fix known failures.
MDL No. 3084 · N.D. Cal.
Uber sexual assault litigation
Probably the most consequential ongoing case in this space. Uber won the first state trial in 2025, then lost two federal bellwethers in 2026, including an $8.5 million verdict in Arizona. Uber has appealed the second, contesting a ruling that it is a common carrier owing passengers a non-delegable duty of safety. That question has national implications far beyond rideshare.
MDL + state AG actions
Roblox & Discord
The fastest-growing front. Arkansas sued both platforms in June 2026 alleging a “two-stage predatory pipeline”; Texas sued Discord in May 2026; Indiana sued both that same month under its deceptive sales statute. Nevada announced a $12.5 million Roblox settlement in April 2026 with safety reforms attached, and West Virginia reached an $11 million deal. Both companies deny the allegations.
Case tracker
We follow these because they set the terms everyone else litigates under: anonymity, revival windows, and what a jury will do with a decades-old claim. Every allegation described below is an allegation unless a court has found otherwise.
Sean Combs
Dozens of civil suits proceed while he serves a 50-month federal sentence. A Los Angeles judge refused in March 2026 to dismiss a suit by producer Jonathan Hay, and a new suit arrived in June 2026 from an anonymous former child actor over an alleged 2007 incident. His $100M defamation suit against NBCUniversal was dismissed in April 2026.
Active · dozens of civil suits
Epstein estate & enablers
In February 2026 the estate’s representatives agreed to a $35 million class settlement in a case accusing his lawyer and accountant of building the financial infrastructure of the trafficking operation. It sits before Judge Arun Subramanian in the Southern District of New York.
$35M class settlement pending approval
Kevin Spacey
Set to face civil trials at the High Court in London in October 2026 over claims brought by three men. The English civil process differs sharply from a U.S. jury trial: no jury, a different standard, and different rules on who pays costs.
Civil trial set: October 2026
Garth Brooks
Still in civil pretrial, with an ongoing fight over whether the plaintiff can proceed anonymously. That question, whether a survivor must publish their name to sue, decides whether many cases are ever filed at all.
Pretrial · anonymity contested
E. Jean Carroll v. Trump
Closed. The Supreme Court declined in June 2026 to hear the appeal, leaving the 2023 verdict and $5 million judgment intact. It remains the clearest modern proof that a decades-old claim, filed under a revival window, can be tried and won.
Closed · verdict stands
Can I sue without using my name?
Often, yes, but it is not automatic. Courts weigh the survivor’s privacy against the defendant’s right to face the accuser publicly, and the standard varies by circuit and by state. Here is how John Doe and Jane Doe filings actually work.
Legal guideA small number of adults, total control, and no one outside the building to tell.
It describes a juvenile hall in 1974 and a private message channel in 2026 equally well. That is why the same negligence law reaches both, and why the institution, not only the individual, is the defendant.
Two things survivors most often get wrong
The first is assuming the deadline has passed. The second is assuming a civil claim requires a criminal conviction, a police report, or physical evidence. Neither is true in most states.
Statute of limitations
Deadlines by state for childhood and adult sexual abuse claims, plus which revival windows are open, closing, or already gone.
How a claim actually works
From first call to resolution: what you have to prove, what you will be asked, what a deposition involves, and how long each stage takes.
Settlements & compensation
How bulk settlements, bankruptcy trusts, and individual verdicts differ, and why the headline number is rarely what a claimant receives.
Support that isn’t legal
Hotlines, therapy that is trauma-informed, and what to do tonight if you are not ready to talk to anyone about a lawsuit.
Reporting abuse
Reporting to police, to a licensing board, or to nobody at all, and what each choice does and does not do to a civil claim.
For families
If someone you love has disclosed abuse: what helps, what quietly hurts, and how to act without taking the decision away from them.
The same attorney reviews every one of these resources
Sexual Abuse Center is published alongside three sister resources. Legal content across all of them is reviewed by Chris Schroeder, Esq., admitted in Florida (#520381) and the District of Columbia, so the standards for sourcing, deadlines, and how we describe unproven allegations are identical site to site.
Litigation updates
Uber MDL crosses 3,900 federal cases
Roughly 3,940 cases were pending as of July 2026, up from about 3,571 at the start of June, roughly a dozen new filings a day, alongside the parallel California state coordinated proceeding.
Read the case page →Supreme Court declines to review the Boy Scouts plan
The Court rejected an appeal from roughly 75 survivors who argued the $2.4 billion settlement wrongly extinguishes their right to sue councils and chartering organizations. The plan is final; distributions continue.
Read the case page →Carroll v. Trump ends with the judgment intact
The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal, leaving the 2023 verdict and $5 million judgment standing, and leaving New York’s Adult Survivors Act revival window validated in practice.
Read the case page →You do not have to be sure before you ask.
Most people who contact us start with a question, not a case: does what happened to me count, and is it too late? Both have answers. The review is free, private, and creates no obligation of any kind.
Reviewed by Chris Schroeder, Esq. · Florida Bar #520381 · D.C. Bar · No fee unless you recover
