Los Angeles County’s $4 billion sex abuse settlement was supposed to deliver long-overdue justice. Instead, it has become another source of harm for the very people it was meant to help.
Fraud must be rooted out. No one disputes that. But when investigations into improper solicitation and a limited number of bad actors result in prolonged, broad delays that freeze or slow payments to thousands of legitimate survivors, the system has failed again.
Real victims are dying while they wait.
Some have taken their own lives.
Others have died from illnesses they might have managed if the money they were promised had arrived.
These are not abstract statistics. These are people who were abused as children in county facilities and are now being told, months and years later, that their compensation is still on hold because of problems involving recruiters and a handful of questionable claims.
The principle is simple and should be non-negotiable: Do not punish the many for the actions of the few. Targeted, efficient vetting of suspicious claims is necessary. Indefinite collective delay is not. Holding up payments across large groups of claimants because of issues tied to improper solicitation or one problematic actor is collective punishment dressed up as due diligence.
County officials, claims administrators, and allocators know the difference between protecting the integrity of a settlement and creating secondary trauma. Every additional month of delay compounds the original injury — financial ruin, untreated trauma, housing instability, and, in the worst cases, death.
The $4 billion settlement was historic for a reason. It acknowledged systemic failure. That acknowledgment means nothing if the process designed to deliver relief becomes another mechanism of prolonged suffering for survivors who have already waited decades.
Fraud investigations should continue. Bad actors should face consequences. But legitimate victims should not be forced to wait indefinitely, grow sicker, or die while the system sorts through problems that do not involve them.
Move the verified claims. Isolate the problematic ones. Stop treating every survivor as collateral damage in the effort to catch the few who tried to game the system.
Justice delayed is not justice. For many of these survivors, it is a death sentence by bureaucracy.
