LA Unified payments reach $200 million in Mark Berndt student abuse claims after latest settlement
The Los Angeles Unified School District has agreed to pay $30.5 million to 19 more students who say they were victims of convicted child molester Mark Berndt, bringing the district’s total settlement of his charges to more than $200 million, attorneys said Thursday.
The alleged victims were third, fourth and fifth graders in Berndt’s class at Miramonte Elementary School between 1988 and 2011. The charges allege that they were sexually assaulted, tortured and molested many times, and in one heinous incident, some were fed cakes containing his semen. Berndt was arrested in 2012 and is serving a 25-year sentence for sex crimes involving students.
“Fourteen years later, victims are still coming forward, and that’s amazing,” said attorney Morgan Stewart. “The red flags were obvious here, and we’re seeing a lot of cases where reports are being ignored.”
The case, he said, would give the victims the level of accountability they are looking for.
He said the LAUSD is among the agencies now trying to convince state lawmakers to impose residency restrictions by changing laws regarding victim compensation.
Berndt, a third-grade teacher, pleaded no contest in 2013 to 23 counts of disorderly conduct. Allegations he faced included feeding children his body fluids in what he called a “taste game.”
Berndt taught at Miramonte from 1979 to 2011, when investigators began looking into his behavior based on photos provided to police, some of which showed students blindfolded, with tape over their mouths.
The settled lawsuits allege Miramonte administrators and LAUSD officials ignored numerous complaints from parents, students and teachers about Berndt’s affair in the early 1980s.
In 1983, a parent complained that Berndt, then 32 years old, had pulled down his pants during a student trip to the museum.
In 2014, LAUSD agreed to pay nearly $139 million — believed to be the largest settlement ever made by a school system in a child abuse case at the time — to settle legal claims from 69 Miramonte parents and 81 students who accused Berndt of lewd acts. The district also paid approximately $30 million in restitution to the families of 65 Miramonte students.
LA Unified replaced all employees at Miramonte in the second half of the school year, and all employees were required to review abuse reporting policies.
Last year, the district sold $500 million in bonds to pay off allegations of past sexual misconduct — loans that must be repaid over time by the school system — part of a litany of lawsuits dating back to the 1970s that have plagued state, church and private organizations up and down the state. Earlier this year, LAUSD approved an additional $250 million in funding.
LAUSD isn’t the only public entity that can authorize large payouts, however. California lawmakers passed legislation in 2020 that led to unprecedented hearings in nearly 1,000 public school districts. A number of former students have come forward with allegations of rape and molestation that began in the 1950s.
There are more than 1,100 alleged victims, with an estimated $700 million paid out to date.
Behind the scenes at the state Capitol, the battle now continues with efforts to stop the lawsuits and payments being made by teachers unions, cash-strapped school districts and other civil society organizations, including Los Angeles County, which are fiercely opposed by trial lawyers and victim advocates.
Prohibitors have proposed a statute of limitations and a higher standard of proof for sexual assault cases and a limited amount of non-economic damages under certain circumstances.
