You remember the moment you first told someone what happened. Maybe it was decades after the abuse stopped. Maybe you were in therapy, finally feeling safe enough to say the words out loud. Or maybe you were watching the news, seeing other survivors come forward, and something broke open inside you—the realization that it was not just you, that you were not alone, that what happened was not your fault. For years, perhaps, you blamed yourself. You wondered why you did not fight harder, scream louder, tell someone sooner. You carried shame that felt like it was sewn into your bones. You struggled with relationships, with trust, with sleep, with the simple act of feeling safe in your own body.
When you finally sought help, a therapist may have given you words for what you were experiencing: post-traumatic stress disorder, complex trauma, depression, anxiety. They may have explained that your brain was doing exactly what brains do after sustained threat and violation—that your hypervigilance, your nightmares, your difficulty forming attachments were not character flaws but injury responses. You may have felt relief at finally understanding why you could not just move on, why decades later a certain smell or phrase or time of year could send you spiraling. But alongside that relief likely came a question that burned: How did this happen? How did the adults who were supposed to protect you allow a predator such access, such opportunity, such cover?
The answer, documented in thousands of pages of internal records, legal depositions, and institutional archives, is that they knew. The organizations entrusted with children—churches, youth programs, sports federations, universities—had evidence of predatory behavior within their ranks and made deliberate choices to protect their reputations and assets rather than the children in their care. What happened to you was not a failure of supervision or an isolated incident that no one could have predicted. It was the foreseeable result of policies designed to conceal abuse, move predators to new locations with new victims, and silence those who tried to speak.
What Happened
Sexual abuse by an authority figure—a priest, a scout leader, a coach, a teacher—is a specific kind of violation. It typically does not happen once. Predators in institutional settings groom their victims over time, building trust, creating situations of isolated access, normalizing boundary violations, and leveraging their position of power. The abuse itself can range from inappropriate touching to rape. But the injury extends far beyond the physical acts.
Survivors describe a shattering of their ability to trust their own perceptions. When the person who abused you is the same person everyone else reveres—the beloved coach, the respected priest, the admired teacher—you learn that your reality does not matter. When you tried to tell and were not believed, or were told you were special, or were warned that speaking would hurt your family or the institution, you learned that your safety was less important than keeping secrets. Many survivors describe feeling like they were living in two worlds: the public world where the abuser was celebrated, and the private world of abuse where they felt trapped and powerless.
The psychological impact is profound and often lifelong. Post-traumatic stress disorder is common, with intrusive memories, flashbacks, nightmares, and severe anxiety when exposed to reminders of the abuse. Depression, sometimes severe enough to include suicidal thoughts, affects many survivors. Relationship difficulties are nearly universal—problems with intimacy, with trust, with allowing oneself to be vulnerable. Many survivors describe feeling fundamentally broken, as though the abuse damaged something essential about who they are. Substance abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, and other attempts to manage unbearable feelings are common. The injury is not just what happened during the abuse. It is what the abuse took from you: your childhood, your sense of safety, your ability to trust, sometimes your faith, often your belief that the world is a place where adults protect children.
The Connection
What creates the injury is not only the abuse itself but the institutional response—or lack of response. When an institution knows that one of its members is abusing children and takes no action, or takes action designed only to protect the institution, it creates the conditions for ongoing harm. Every day that a known predator remains in a position of access to children is a day that institution is facilitating abuse.
Research into institutional abuse has documented consistent patterns. A 2004 study commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, conducted by John Jay College of Criminal Justice, found that abusive priests typically had multiple victims—a median of four victims per priest, but some had dozens. The same priest would be moved from parish to parish, abusing children in each location. This pattern—abuse, complaint, transfer, new abuse—was not random. It was the direct result of institutional policies that prioritized secrecy over safety.
The psychological literature explains why institutional betrayal compounds trauma. Research by psychologist Jennifer Freyd, published throughout the 2000s and 2010s, demonstrates that when an institution that a person depends on for safety fails to prevent harm or responds inadequately when harm occurs, it creates a specific type of trauma called institutional betrayal. This betrayal trauma is associated with more severe post-traumatic stress symptoms, greater dissociation, and worse physical health outcomes than trauma without institutional betrayal. In plain terms: being abused by a trusted adult is devastating. Being abused by a trusted adult while the institution that employed them knew or should have known and did nothing is even more damaging because it teaches you that there is no safe authority, no place to turn, no one who will choose your safety over their convenience.
A 2019 study in the journal Psychology of Violence examined the long-term health impact on survivors of clergy sexual abuse and found significantly elevated rates of PTSD, depression, anxiety disorders, and suicidal ideation compared to the general population. These outcomes were directly correlated with institutional response: survivors whose disclosures were met with disbelief, blame, or institutional protection of the abuser had worse mental health outcomes than those whose disclosures were believed and acted upon. The injury, in other words, is substantially created by the cover-up.
What They Knew And When They Knew It
The Catholic Church has the longest documented history of institutional knowledge about sexual abuse within its ranks. Internal Church documents, revealed through litigation and investigative journalism over the past four decades, show a clear pattern of awareness and concealment stretching back to at least the 1950s.
In 1985, a report titled "The Problem of Sexual Molestation by Roman Catholic Clergy: Meeting the Problem in a Comprehensive and Responsible Manner" was delivered to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Written by Father Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer, along with Ray Mouton, an attorney, and Father Michael Peterson, a psychiatrist, the report warned Church leadership that sexual abuse by priests was widespread, that it caused severe harm to victims, and that the Church faced substantial legal and financial liability. The report recommended immediate action: reporting allegations to civil authorities, removing accused priests from ministry, and providing support to victims. Church leadership did not adopt these recommendations. Instead, dioceses continued the practice of handling allegations internally, often moving accused priests to new parishes where they had access to new victims.
Documents from the Archdiocese of Boston, made public in 2002 through litigation, revealed that Cardinal Bernard Law and other Church officials had detailed knowledge of abuse allegations against specific priests and systematically reassigned those priests to new parishes without warning parishioners. In the case of Father John Geoghan, who abused at least 130 children over three decades, Church personnel files showed that Church officials received complaints about Geoghan as early as 1979 and continued to assign him to parishes with active youth programs until 1998. The documents included letters from parents, reports from therapists, and internal memos discussing Geoghan, making it clear that Church leadership knew he was a danger to children and prioritized keeping the matter quiet over protecting children.
Similar patterns emerged in diocese after diocese. Grand jury reports from Pennsylvania in 2018 detailed abuse by more than 300 priests over 70 years and identified over 1,000 child victims, though investigators believed the true number was much higher. The report found that Church officials followed a consistent playbook: use euphemisms like inappropriate conduct rather than naming the abuse, send accused priests for short-term psychological evaluation and then return them to ministry, pressure victims and families to remain silent often invoking their faith and loyalty to the Church, and threaten legal action against those who spoke publicly.
The Boy Scouts of America maintained what came to be known as the Ineligible Volunteer Files, sometimes called the perversion files—internal records of scout leaders and volunteers who were removed due to allegations of child sexual abuse. These files, dating back to the 1940s and disclosed through litigation in 2012, contained thousands of names. Court documents revealed that the Boy Scouts knew they had a problem with sexual predators infiltrating the organization and created these files to track individuals who should not be allowed to work with scouts. However, the organization did not report most of these individuals to law enforcement. A 2019 court filing revealed that the Boy Scouts Ineligible Volunteer Files contained more than 7,800 names of individuals removed for suspected abuse between 1944 and 2016. The files showed that the national organization knew that local councils were not always following even their own inadequate policies for screening volunteers, and that known abusers sometimes moved from one council to another and regained access to children.
Internal Boy Scouts memoranda from the 1980s and 1990s, disclosed in litigation, showed organizational leaders discussing the risk of public disclosure and the need to protect the organization from negative publicity. Youth protection was framed primarily as a legal liability issue rather than a child safety imperative. When the organization did implement screening policies, they were inconsistently enforced, and local councils often had discretion to ignore red flags if a volunteer was well-liked or well-connected in the community.
USA Gymnastics was warned repeatedly about Larry Nassar, the national team doctor who sexually abused hundreds of young athletes under the guise of medical treatment. Internal organizational emails revealed through litigation and congressional investigation showed that USA Gymnastics received reports about Nassar as early as 2015 from coaches and athletes expressing concern about his treatments. Rather than immediately reporting to law enforcement or removing Nassar from contact with athletes, USA Gymnastics hired a private investigator and did not alert law enforcement for five weeks. During that five-week period, Nassar continued treating athletes and continued abusing them. When USA Gymnastics finally did report to the FBI, the Indianapolis FBI field office failed to take immediate action, and Nassar continued abusing athletes for more than a year. A 2021 report by the Department of Justice Inspector General found that the FBI knew Nassar was a danger and failed to act, allowing him to abuse at least 70 additional young athletes.
Internal USA Gymnastics documents revealed that the organization was more concerned with managing public relations and legal liability than with protecting athletes. The organization required athletes and their families to sign non-disclosure agreements as part of settlement negotiations, ensuring that the scope of Nassar abuse and organizational failure remained hidden. Organizational leadership knew that reporting the abuse widely would damage USA Gymnastics reputation heading into the 2016 Olympics, and that calculation influenced their slow and inadequate response.
Universities have faced similar reckonings. At Michigan State University, where Nassar also worked, an investigation revealed that university officials received complaints about Nassar as early as 1990s and failed to take adequate action. At Pennsylvania State University, internal emails revealed that top university officials, including President Graham Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley, and Vice President Gary Schultz, discussed allegations against assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky in 2001 and decided not to report them to law enforcement. Spanier, Curley, and Schultz were later convicted of child endangerment for their failure to act. University officials were aware that Sandusky was seen showering with a young boy in the football facilities, understood that this was at minimum inappropriate and potentially criminal, and chose to handle it quietly in a manner designed to avoid bad publicity for the football program. During the years Penn State officials stayed silent, Sandusky continued to abuse boys through his youth charity.
At Ohio State University, an independent investigation released in 2019 found that university officials received numerous complaints about team doctor Richard Strauss sexually abusing student athletes between 1979 and 1997. University personnel, including athletic directors, coaches, and administrators, were aware that Strauss engaged in inappropriate genital exams and other sexual misconduct. The university took no meaningful action to stop him or to report him to medical licensing authorities. Strauss abused at least 177 students and athletes during his tenure, according to the investigation.
The through-line in all these cases is institutional knowledge followed by institutional inaction or actions designed to protect the institution rather than the children in its care.
How They Kept It Hidden
Institutions used overlapping strategies to conceal abuse and avoid accountability. The first and most common tactic was to handle allegations internally rather than reporting to law enforcement. By treating child sexual abuse as a personnel matter or a moral failing rather than a crime, institutions maintained control over the information and the process. Victims and their families were often told that the matter was being handled, that the accused would receive counseling, that there was no need to involve police. This kept allegations out of the public record and prevented the pattern from becoming visible.
When victims or their families did threaten to go public or to file lawsuits, institutions used confidential settlements with non-disclosure agreements to buy silence. These settlements prevented survivors from speaking about their abuse or about the institutional response. More importantly, they prevented the public and potential future victims from learning that an institution had a problem with sexual abuse. Each NDA ensured that the next victim would walk into the same situation with no warning.
Institutions also moved predators to new locations rather than removing them entirely. In the Catholic Church, this was the infamous practice of transferring problem priests to new parishes. In the Boy Scouts, abusers sometimes moved between councils. In university athletics, coaches with whispered reputations moved between schools. Each move gave the predator a fresh start with a new pool of potential victims who had no knowledge of the history.
Another key strategy was controlling the narrative through public relations. When allegations did become public, institutions issued carefully worded statements expressing concern, noting that they took such matters seriously, and emphasizing isolated incidents. They rarely acknowledged systemic problems or institutional failures. Documents revealed through litigation show that institutions often hired crisis management firms and lawyers immediately upon learning of allegations, not to protect victims but to protect institutional reputation and assets.
Institutions also exploited their moral authority and the trust placed in them. The Catholic Church invoked religious obedience and the sanctity of the priesthood, encouraging victims and families to handle matters internally to avoid scandal to the Church. The Boy Scouts emphasized scout law and loyalty to the organization. Universities emphasized institutional reputation and school spirit. Coaches and athletic departments leveraged the dream of athletic success and scholarships. This moral authority made victims less likely to be believed when they did come forward—who would believe a child over a priest, a scout master, a beloved coach, a respected doctor?
Legal strategies also played a role. Institutions used statutes of limitations to bar claims from survivors who did not come forward until adulthood, which is the majority of survivors. They argued that they could not be held liable for the actions of individual employees. They claimed that they had no duty to investigate or report suspicions. They used bankruptcy to limit payouts, as the Boy Scouts of America did in 2020 when facing tens of thousands of abuse claims. Bankruptcy allowed the organization to consolidate claims and impose a settlement structure that would pay survivors far less than they might have received through individual litigation.
Why Your Doctor Did Not Tell You
This question applies differently in the context of institutional abuse than in pharmaceutical or product liability cases, but it remains relevant in a specific way: Why did the adults around you not see what was happening and intervene? Why did coaches, teachers, other priests, other parents not stop the abuse?
The answer is that many of them did see signs, and some of them did report concerns, but the institutional systems were designed to suppress that information. Teachers who raised concerns about a colleague were told it was being handled or were discouraged from making trouble. Coaches who noticed inappropriate behavior were told they were overreacting or that the person in question was a valued member of the organization. Parents who expressed concern were reassured that there was nothing to worry about, that the priest or coach or doctor was a professional who would never harm a child.
Institutions also fostered cultures where loyalty to the institution was paramount. To raise concerns about a colleague was framed as disloyalty, as damaging the team or the parish or the organization. People who did raise concerns sometimes faced retaliation—being pushed out of their positions, being labeled as troublemakers, losing opportunities within the organization. This created a chilling effect where even well-meaning adults stayed silent rather than risk their own standing.
Additionally, predators are skilled at impression management. They cultivate reputations as dedicated, caring professionals. They are often the person who volunteers for extra duties, who is beloved by children and parents alike, who seems beyond reproach. This makes it cognitively difficult for others to believe that the same person could be abusing children. When concerns are raised, the predator reputation serves as a shield, and the person raising concerns is viewed with skepticism.
The people around you—teachers, other parents, even friends—were operating within a system designed to protect predators and silence concerns. Most of them did not have full information. Most of them were not trained to recognize grooming behavior. And most of them trusted the institution to handle problems appropriately. That trust was misplaced, but it was deliberately cultivated by institutions that needed people to trust in order to maintain their reputations and their operations.
Who Is Affected
If you were sexually abused by a priest, clergy member, scout leader, coach, teacher, doctor, or other authority figure within an institutional setting, and if that institution knew or should have known that the person posed a risk to children, you may have a basis for holding that institution accountable.
Specifically, you may be affected if you were abused within the Catholic Church by a priest, deacon, or other church employee or volunteer, and the abuse was reported to church officials who took no action or inadequate action, or the abuser was transferred to your location after abuse allegations at a previous location. Thousands of survivors have come forward, and investigations have confirmed abuse in nearly every diocese in the United States.
If you were involved in Boy Scouts of America and were abused by a scout leader, volunteer, or other scout, particularly if that person had prior allegations or was listed in the Ineligible Volunteer Files but was allowed continued access to scouts, you are part of a group of more than 82,000 survivors who filed claims in the Boy Scouts bankruptcy proceedings.
If you were a gymnast or athlete treated by Larry Nassar or abused by another coach or medical professional within USA Gymnastics, and the organization failed to act on complaints or warnings, you are among hundreds of survivors who have sought accountability. Similar situations exist in other youth sports organizations where coaches or staff abused athletes and the organization failed to intervene.
If you were a student or athlete at a university and were abused by a doctor, coach, professor, or other university employee, and the university received complaints or had reason to know about the abuse and failed to take appropriate action, you may have a claim. This includes situations like those at Michigan State, Penn State, Ohio State, University of Southern California, and numerous other schools where investigations have revealed institutional knowledge and failure to protect students.
The key factor is not just that abuse occurred, but that the institution had knowledge or should have had knowledge and failed to act in a manner that prioritized your safety. If you were abused, if you or someone else reported or complained to the institution, and if the institution response was inadequate or non-existent, the institution bears responsibility for enabling the abuse to continue.
Many survivors do not come forward until years or decades after the abuse. This is normal. The shame, the power dynamics, the fear of not being believed, the psychological impact of trauma—all of these make immediate disclosure difficult or impossible. Many states have recognized this by reforming statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse claims, opening windows for survivors to come forward even if the abuse occurred decades ago. If you are unsure whether you still have the legal right to pursue a claim, the answer may be yes, particularly if you are in a state that has reformed its laws in recent years.
Where Things Stand
The legal landscape for institutional sexual abuse is active and evolving. Thousands of survivors have come forward, and institutions are facing accountability in ways that would have been unimaginable twenty years ago.
The Catholic Church has paid more than four billion dollars in settlements to survivors in the United States since 1950, with the vast majority of that coming after 2002 when the Boston Globe Spotlight investigation brought the scope of the crisis into public view. Dozens of dioceses have filed for bankruptcy in the face of abuse claims. As of 2024, claims continue to be filed as states open new windows for survivors to come forward. Grand jury investigations in multiple states have led to criminal charges against some clergy members and ongoing civil litigation against dioceses.
The Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy in February 2020 in the face of tens of thousands of abuse claims. More than 82,000 survivors filed claims in the bankruptcy proceedings, one of the largest mass tort cases in United States history. In September 2021, the Boy Scouts reached a bankruptcy settlement plan that created an 850 million dollar fund for survivors, though many advocates argued this was inadequate given the scale of abuse. The bankruptcy plan was approved in 2022, and survivors are now in the process of receiving settlement payments, though the amounts are far less than what many would have received through individual litigation.
USA Gymnastics also filed for bankruptcy in 2018 in the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal. More than 500 survivors filed claims. After years of negotiation, a settlement plan was approved in 2021 that created a 425 million dollar fund for survivors. This included contributions from USA Gymnastics, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, and insurers. Michigan State University, Nassar former employer, separately agreed to a 500 million dollar settlement with survivors in 2018.
Universities continue to face litigation from survivors of abuse by athletic doctors, coaches, and other staff. At Ohio State, thousands of survivors of Richard Strauss abuse have filed claims. The university has reached settlements with some survivors while litigation continues with others. Similar cases are proceeding at other universities where investigations have revealed institutional knowledge and failure to protect students.
Many states have passed or are considering laws that reform statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse. These laws typically either eliminate the statute of limitations going forward, extend the time period in which survivors can file claims, or open temporary windows during which survivors can file claims for abuse that would otherwise be time-barred. California, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, and numerous other states have opened such windows in recent years, leading to waves of new claims against institutions. These legislative changes reflect growing recognition that survivors often cannot come forward immediately and should not be barred from seeking accountability because of arbitrary time limits.
The legal process for survivors typically involves filing a claim against the institution, engaging in discovery where internal documents are reviewed, and either reaching a settlement or proceeding to trial. Many cases settle, often with confidentiality provisions, though there is growing pressure for transparency. Some survivors choose to speak publicly about their experiences and their legal cases, helping to break the silence that enabled the abuse to continue for so long.
What This Means
What happened to you was not your fault. It was not bad luck or a random tragedy or something that could not have been prevented. It was the result of decisions made by adults in positions of authority who had information about danger and chose not to act on that information in a manner that would have protected you.
When a diocese received a complaint about a priest abusing children and transferred that priest to a new parish, that was a decision that prioritized institutional reputation over child safety. When the Boy Scouts maintained files of thousands of suspected abusers but did not report most of them to law enforcement, that was a decision that left predators free to abuse again. When USA Gymnastics delayed reporting Larry Nassar to protect their image heading into the Olympics, that was a decision that condemned dozens more young athletes to abuse. When universities received credible allegations about doctors and coaches and failed to investigate or report, those were decisions that enabled ongoing harm.
These were not failures of oversight or lapses in judgment. They were systematic practices, documented in internal records, carried out over decades. The institutions knew. They knew that abuse was happening. They knew that their response was inadequate. They knew that their practices were enabling predators to continue. And they chose to continue those practices because they prioritized their own interests over the safety of the children in their care. Your injury, the trauma you carry, the years of your life that were shaped by abuse and its aftermath—these are the documented consequences of those decisions. What was done to you was wrong. What was not done to protect you was wrong. And the institutions that failed you can and should be held accountable.