Child Sexual Abuse Lawyers

California Child Molestation Lawyers

Your child's behavior may have changed. A coach or teacher may have started meeting privately your daughter. You may have noticed that a child in foster care or daycare is acting out sexually with smaller children, or that a child has become sullen in a new foster home. The signs of child sexual abuse may go unnoticed for some time or be misdiagnosed as a discipline problem. It is important that families and adult victims of child sexual abuse know that claims can still be filed years after the abuse ends.

At Michels & Lew, our Los Angeles personal injury firm, we call ourselves "attorneys for the children." If you suspect or know of a case of child molestation, please contact our LA office. Our team and lawyers will work together to uncover the truth. We may send the child to a specialist for a comprehensive evaluation and will see that testing is done for sexually transmitted diseases, including gonorrhea and HIV/AIDS. Whatever we find, whether you hire us to represent the child or not, we will share everything we know with you and explain exactly what your options are. Our primary concern is seeing that the child is protected and gets the best treatment available.

Justice for a child: the sexual abuse civil lawsuit

No jury award or settlement will compensate for a childhood marred by sexual abuse. Emotionally, these are complex psychological cases, where the child often has an affectionate relationship with the abuser. However, by pursuing a civil claim against your child's abuser, you make it clear that the child is not at fault, that the molester is the bad guy, and that you are doing everything you can to hold the abuser responsible for his or her actions.

In some child injury cases, we have structured settlements to include purchases of homes in the children's names and college accounts.

Child sexual assault cases we have handled

• Verdicts and settlements: Our attorneys won $1.5 million dollars for a boy who was repeatedly sexually assaulted in a school lavatory. During our investigation we found that records of the older student's previous offenses had been lying, unread, on the school psychologist's desk for months. In addition to the verdict, the highest against a school district in California at the time, the case resulted in changes in school policy that protected other
• children from similar assaults
• Our lawyers represented a boy who was followed into a restaurant bathroom and assaulted by a busboy, an employee of the restaurant.
• We represented children in a case where a whole baseball team was assaulted by the coach, assaults that could have been prevented if the league performed a criminal background check.
• Our attorneys have represented children assaulted by clergymen.

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Who will hold the parties responsible for your child's sexual abuse accountable? Contact our LA office and arrange a consultation. At Michels & Lew our staff, led by Bradford S. Davis, M.D., works with our lawyers to get victims of molestation the help they need and hold those responsible accountable. Our Los Angeles firm serves clients throughout California and surrounding states. Our staff and the lawyers provide far more than legal services, giving our clients the support they need to survive and move forward.