The Los Angeles Unified School District has agreed to pay $30.5 million to 19 more students who said they were victims of Mark Berndt, a convicted serial child molester, bringing the amount the district has paid in connection with his crimes to more than $200 million, attorneys said Thursday.
The alleged victims were third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students in Berndt's classroom at Miramonte Elementary School between 1988 and 2011. The lawsuits allege they were harassed, molested, and sexually assaulted on multiple occasions, and in one infamous incident, some were fed cookies containing their semen. Berndt was arrested in 2012 and is serving a 25-year prison sentence for sex crimes involving students.
“Fourteen years later, victims are still coming forward, and that's remarkable,” attorney Morgan Stewart said. “The red flags were obvious here and we are seeing more cases where reports are ignored.”
Litigation, he said, will give victims some degree of accountability they seek.
He said LAUSD is among entities now trying to get state lawmakers to limit settlements by changing laws on victim compensation.
Berndt, a third-grade teacher, pleaded no contest in 2013 to 23 counts of lewd conduct. The allegations against him included that he fed his bodily fluids to children in what he called a “tasting game.”
Berndt taught at Miramonte from 1979 to 2011, when investigators began probing his conduct based on photographs given to police, some of which showed students blindfolded with duct tape over their mouths.
The lawsuits that were settled allege that Miramonte administrators and LAUSD officials ignored multiple complaints from parents, students and teachers about Berndt dating back to the early 1980s.
In 1983, a parent complained that Berndt, then 32, had dropped his pants during a student field trip to a museum.
In 2014, LAUSD agreed to pay about $139 million (believed to be the largest payment ever made by a school system in a child abuse case at the time) to resolve legal claims from 69 Miramonte parents and 81 students who accused Berndt of lewd acts. The district also paid out about $30 million in claims to the families of 65 Miramonte students.
The Los Angeles Unified School District replaced all Miramonte staff in the second half of the school year and all employees were required to review rules for reporting abuse.
Last year, the district sold $500 million in bonds to pay for alleged past sexual misconduct — loans that the school system must repay over time — as part of an avalanche of claims dating back to the 1970s that are affecting government entities, churches and private organizations across the state. Earlier this year, LAUSD approved an additional $250 million.
However, LAUSD is not the only public entity approving massive settlement payments. California lawmakers enacted a law in 2020 that sparked an unprecedented wave of litigation in nearly 1,000 public school districts. Dozens of former students have come forward with allegations of rape and abuse dating back to the 1950s.
More than 1,100 alleged victims have filed lawsuits and about $700 million has been paid out in sexual misconduct settlements so far.
Behind the scenes at the state Capitol, a battle is now being waged over efforts to reduce litigation and limit payments pushed by the teachers union, cash-strapped school districts and other public entities, including Los Angeles County, that are strongly opposed by trial attorneys and victims' advocates.
Those seeking to close the lawsuits have proposed a statute of limitations and high evidentiary standards for sexual abuse litigation and a limit on noneconomic damages in certain circumstances.
