Teachers, coaches and school staff hold enormous power over students, and California law holds schools to a real duty of care. When a district ignores complaints, skips background checks, or quietly passes a known abuser to the next campus with a clean reference, the district itself becomes liable. California juries have returned some of the largest school abuse verdicts in the country.
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A lawsuit is never the urgent step. You are. The RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline is free, confidential and staffed 24 hours a day at 1–800–656–4673 , with online chat at hotline.rainn.org . If you are in crisis, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by calling or texting 988.
If a child is being abused now, report to the NCMEC CyberTipline at 1–800–843–5678 or your local child protective services. If anyone is in immediate danger, call 911. Where you safely can, keep letters, records, names and dates — but your safety and your health come first, always.
General AB 218 filing deadline
for childhood abuse claims
From discovering the harm
— whichever is later
Public, private, charter,
religious and boarding
Upfront cost — no fee
unless you recover
AB 218 is generous, but it is not unlimited — and these are the beliefs that run the clock out.
Survivors often only reconnect the abuse to their adult life in their thirties, in therapy.
AB 218 allows filing within five years of discovering that adult psychological injury was caused by the abuse — which for many survivors starts the clock at a therapy session, not at the abuse.
People assume the claim is limited to an individual who may be long gone.
California schools owe a duty of reasonable care in hiring, supervising, retaining and responding to complaints. A district that had earlier reports and did nothing is legally responsible for what followed.
Survivors abused outside the classroom assume school abuse law does not reach them.
Coaches, assistant coaches, trainers, tutors, band directors, aides and volunteers all fall inside these claims, along with the district or organization that supervised them.
Without a contemporaneous complaint, survivors assume there is nothing to build on.
Personnel files and complaint records obtained in discovery frequently reveal earlier warnings the district ignored — and other survivors of the same staff member routinely come forward once a case is filed.
— Liability
California law does not treat teacher abuse as merely the act of one bad employee. Schools owe students a duty of reasonable care in hiring, supervising, retaining and responding to complaints.
A district that received earlier reports about the same employee and did nothing, that skipped meaningful background checks, or that arranged a quiet resignation with a clean reference — the practice known as passing the trash — is legally responsible for the abuse that follows.
Private mentoring sessions. Gifts. Rides home. Special access, extra help, isolation from peers. When staff witnessed these patterns and did nothing, that inaction is the negligence at the heart of the case — and colleagues who noticed at the time frequently become witnesses.
Negligent hiring, supervision and retention claims, together with federal Title IX claims for deliberate indifference where the district knew and failed to respond.
Including boarding and prep schools. These defendants owe the same duty of care and, unlike public entities, often face no damages caps.
Coaches, assistant coaches and trainers in gymnastics, swimming, travel teams and school athletics, along with the organizations that supervised them.
Band and arts programs, tutoring centres, after-school providers and the individual teacher, coach or employee personally.
Personnel files and complaint records obtained in discovery frequently reveal earlier warnings the district ignored. Other survivors of the same teacher or coach often come forward once a case is filed, and that corroboration multiplies settlement value. Expert testimony ties the abuse to your documented harm and your future treatment needs. Anonymous filing as John or Jane Doe is routinely permitted.
If any of these describe you, a free review is worth the two minutes it takes — and under AB 218, every birthday matters.
In a public, private, charter, religious, boarding or prep school anywhere in California.
AB 218 generally allows filing until age 40 for childhood sexual assault claims.
The discovery rule allows filing within five years of realizing that adult psychological injury was caused by the abuse, whichever is later.
Coaches, trainers, band directors, tutors, aides and volunteers all count, along with the organization that supervised them.
Passing the trash is one of the strongest liability facts in this litigation, not a detail.
Courts understand children rarely report. Your testimony is evidence, and district records usually supply the rest.
Compensation covers therapy and future mental-health care, lost earnings and diminished career trajectory, and pain and suffering — with punitive exposure where a district’s cover-up was egregious.
No verdict gives back the years. What a claim can do is fund the care you need now, and put the district’s own files on the record.
Under AB 218, codified at Code of Civil Procedure § 340.1, survivors of childhood sexual assault in California can generally file until age 40 — or within five years of discovering that psychological injury or illness in adulthood was caused by the abuse, whichever is later.
That second route matters enormously. Many survivors only connect adult depression, anxiety, PTSD or relationship harm to childhood abuse when a therapist helps them see it. In those cases the five-year clock starts at that discovery, not at the abuse — which is why survivors well past 40 sometimes still have a live claim.
That is also why grievances you filed at the time — even ones that went nowhere — are often the most important documents in the file.
Public districts often benefit from damages caps and from claim-presentation requirements with very short deadlines. Private, charter and religious schools frequently face no cap at all, which can change the value of an otherwise identical case.
Which category your school falls into is one of the first things a firm will establish, and it can determine both where the case is filed and what it is worth.
— What happens next
Nothing happens that you do not agree to, and you decide what to share and when.
Which school or program, roughly when, and your age at the time. Not what happened. Two minutes, free, no obligation.
Usually within a day. You decide what to share and when, and you can stop at any point without explaining why.
District personnel files, complaint records, transfer histories and prior reports — obtained through discovery rather than from your memory.
Filed as John or Jane Doe where the court allows, against the district, the school or the organization as well as the individual.
AB 218 turns on dates, and the answer is rarely obvious. A free, confidential conversation pins down your deadline and commits you to nothing.
— The no-fee promise
Participating firms take these cases on contingency. The fee is a percentage of any recovery. If there is no recovery, no attorney fee is owed.
No retainer. No hourly billing. No invoice arriving while you are already paying for therapy. Cost should never be the reason a survivor never finds out what their options were.
Fee arrangements are set by the law firm you sign with, not by Direct2Attorney, and vary between firms and states. Settlements on behalf of a minor generally require court approval and may be placed in a protected account until the child reaches adulthood. Read the agreement and ask questions before signing anything.
Our intake team is trauma-informed. You share only what you choose to share, and nobody pushes you past that.
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We connect you with firms actively litigating California school and youth-program abuse cases against districts and private schools.
Anonymous John or Jane Doe filing is routinely permitted. Your information is encrypted and handled under our Privacy Policy.
Your age, the discovery date and any claim-presentation requirement are checked first, not last.
What Direct2Attorney is
A legal marketing and referral service. We check whether your situation matches what participating law firms are looking for, and connect you with one of them if it does.
What Direct2Attorney is not
We are not a law firm, a counseling service or a reporting agency. For support, the RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline is free and confidential 24/7 at 1-800-656-4673. In an emergency, call 911.
You do not need a police report. You do not need a conviction. You do not need documents, and you will not be asked to describe anything on this page. If you want to know whether AB 218 still covers you, that conversation is free, confidential, and yours to end whenever you choose.
— Filing deadlines
California’s deadline for childhood sexual assault claims is set by AB 218, codified at Code of Civil Procedure § 340.1. It generally allows filing until age 40, or within five years of discovering that adult psychological harm was caused by the abuse — whichever is later. A separate AB 2777 window for certain adult institutional assault claims closes December 31, 2026.
Select your state
The age-40 rule makes timing a central issue. A survivor at 39 and a survivor at 41 can be in completely different positions on identical facts.
Where a therapist helps you connect adult harm to childhood abuse, the five-year clock may start at that realization rather than at the abuse.
Claims against public entities frequently require a written claim presented within months, well before the lawsuit deadline.
The deadline generally follows the state where the abuse occurred, which matters if you were schooled in California and have since moved.
Because these rules have moved so much in recent years, the answer people assume is almost always wrong — and it is wrong in both directions. It costs nothing to have someone check the state where it happened.
This is general information, not legal advice, and it is not a calculation of your deadline. Filing deadlines are set by state law, differ by claim type and defendant, change when legislatures amend them, and can be shortened or extended by facts specific to your situation. Nothing on this page tells you whether your claim is timely. Only an attorney licensed in your state can determine the deadline that applies to you. If a deadline passes, a claim is usually barred permanently regardless of its merits, so the safer course is always to ask early.
Either way the answer is worth checking, because the discovery rule reaches further than most people expect. It takes about two minutes and costs nothing.
Yes — and act now. AB 218 generally allows filing until age 40, or within five years of discovering the connection between the abuse and your adult psychological harm, whichever is later. Every birthday matters, and a free review pins down your exact deadline.
Yes. Coaches, assistant coaches, trainers, tutors, band directors, aides and volunteers all count — and the school, district or sports organization that supervised them can be liable for failing to supervise or for retaining them after warnings.
Yes. Private, charter and religious schools owe the same duty of care, and unlike public entities they often face no damages caps — which can increase the value of the case.
No. Courts understand that children rarely report. Your testimony is evidence, and discovery of school records — plus other survivors of the same abuser — frequently supplies the corroboration.
Not necessarily. The discovery rule allows filing within five years of realizing that adult psychological injury was caused by the abuse, whichever is later. Survivors past 40 do sometimes still have live claims, which is exactly why it is worth asking rather than assuming.
No. Civil claims are independent of criminal prosecution and use a lower standard of proof. Many successful school abuse claims involve staff who were never charged with anything.
Nothing. The review is free and confidential with no obligation. If a participating law firm takes the case, it will normally work on contingency, meaning the fee comes out of any recovery and no attorney fee is owed if there is no recovery.
Ask it on the call. The review is free, and there is no obligation to move forward.
