You were a child when it happened. Maybe you were an altar boy who stayed late after Mass, or a scout on a camping trip far from home, or a gymnast who believed the team doctor when he said this was part of your training, or a freshman student who thought the professor mentoring you actually cared about your education. You trusted the institution. Your parents trusted it. The uniform, the collar, the credentials, the championship banners on the wall—all of it said this place was safe. This person was vetted. This organization protected children.
Years later, maybe decades later, you began to understand what happened to you. The nightmares that never stopped. The relationships you could not maintain. The depression that arrived like weather you could not predict. The anxiety that made your chest tight in crowded rooms. The shame that lived in your body like a second skeleton. You might have blamed yourself. You might have thought you were the only one. You might have stayed silent because who would believe that a priest, a scoutmaster, an Olympic doctor, a tenured professor could do what was done to you.
But you were not the only one. And the institution knew. They knew before it happened to you, and they made decisions—documented, deliberate decisions—that allowed it to continue. What happened to you was not an isolated incident or a failure of supervision. It was the predictable result of policies designed to protect the institution at the expense of children and young people in their care.
What Happened
Sexual abuse by trusted authority figures creates injuries that do not heal like broken bones. The trauma lives in your nervous system. It changes how your brain processes safety and threat. Survivors describe feeling like they are watching their own lives from outside their bodies. They describe intrusive memories that arrive without warning—a smell, a sound, the way light falls in a hallway—and suddenly they are back in that room, that car, that basement.
The clinical terms are post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, complex trauma. But what people actually experience is waking at 3am with your heart pounding. It is avoiding entire parts of your hometown because you might see someone who reminds you of him. It is the inability to let anyone touch you, or the opposite—engaging in sexual behavior that puts you at risk because your sense of boundaries was destroyed before you understood you were supposed to have boundaries.
It is addiction used as anesthesia. It is jobs lost because you cannot focus. It is marriages that end because you cannot explain why you flinch or why you disappear into silence for days. It is your own children asking why you never take them to church, or scouts, or gymnastics, and you cannot find words to answer. It is the thought, sometimes daily, that you would rather not be alive—not because you want to die, but because carrying this feels unbearable.
This is what institutional sexual abuse does. It does not only harm you in the moment of the assault. It alters the trajectory of your entire life.
The Connection
The institutions named in thousands of lawsuits—the Catholic Church, Boy Scouts of America, USA Gymnastics, and universities across the country—did not merely employ individuals who committed abuse. They created and maintained environments where abuse was predictable and where predators were protected.
Research on institutional child sexual abuse, published over decades in journals like Child Abuse & Neglect and the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, has documented how these environments function. Predators seek positions of authority in organizations that provide access to children. They rely on the institutional reputation to gain trust. They groom not only victims but entire communities, making themselves indispensable, beloved, above suspicion.
A 2004 study commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, found that approximately 4,392 priests were credibly accused of abuse between 1950 and 2002, involving more than 10,600 victims. The majority of victims were boys between ages 11 and 14. The abuse was not the action of a few troubled individuals. It was systemic.
In the Boy Scouts of America, internal documents called the "perversion files" tracked more than 7,800 suspected abusers between 1944 and 2016. These files, kept secret within the organization, listed names, incidents, and in many cases showed that accused leaders were quietly removed from one troop only to surface in another.
At USA Gymnastics, Dr. Larry Nassar abused hundreds of young athletes over two decades. But Nassar was not a hidden predator. Athletes reported him. Parents raised concerns. The organization received formal complaints as early as 1997. Nassar continued treating athletes until 2016, when newspaper investigations finally forced action.
At universities including Michigan State, Penn State, Ohio State, and the University of Southern California, team doctors, coaches, and faculty members abused students while administrators received reports and failed to act. These were not failures of knowledge. They were failures of institutional will.
What They Knew And When They Knew It
The Catholic Church has known about abuse by clergy for centuries, but the modern documentary record is damning. In 1962, the Vatican issued a confidential document called Crimen Sollicitationis, which established procedures for handling accusations of abuse by priests. The document, circulated to bishops worldwide, mandated secrecy under threat of excommunication. It prioritized protecting the reputation of the Church.
By the 1980s, American bishops were receiving reports of abuse in parishes across the country. Insurance companies that provided liability coverage to dioceses began warning Church leadership that abuse by clergy was a systemic problem that required policy changes. According to documents revealed in the 2002 Boston Globe investigation that won the Pulitzer Prize, the Archdiocese of Boston knew that Father John Geoghan had molested children as early as 1980. Church officials moved him from parish to parish. He continued abusing children until 1998. More than 130 people eventually came forward with allegations against Geoghan.
Internal correspondence from Cardinal Bernard Law and other Church officials, submitted as evidence in civil cases, showed that the strategy was consistent: when abuse was reported, transfer the priest, avoid scandal, pay confidential settlements to victims in exchange for their silence. In 1985, a detailed report by Father Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer, warned the National Conference of Catholic Bishops that the Church faced catastrophic legal and moral liability unless it addressed abuse systemically. The report was ignored.
In Pennsylvania, a grand jury investigation released in 2018 reviewed internal documents from six dioceses covering 70 years. The report identified more than 300 priests and more than 1,000 victims. Investigators wrote that the actual number of victims was likely in the thousands, as many records had been destroyed or hidden. The pattern was identical across dioceses: bishops knew, bishops moved predators, bishops prioritized the institution.
The Boy Scouts of America began keeping files on suspected abusers in the 1920s. These "ineligible volunteer" files were meant to prevent known predators from reentering the organization. But court documents have shown that the system was inconsistent and secretive. Accused leaders were often allowed to resign quietly without any report to law enforcement. Families were not told why a leader was removed. In many cases, leaders moved to different councils and continued working with boys.
In 2012, the Los Angeles Times obtained more than 1,200 files covering suspected abusers from 1970 to 1991. Reporters found that in approximately 80 percent of cases, the Boy Scouts failed to report allegations to police. Internal memos showed that organizational leadership feared legal liability and damage to the Scouts reputation.
In October 2019, court filings revealed that the Boy Scouts had been warned repeatedly by its own insurers about the scope of abuse. Documents showed that by the 1990s, actuaries calculating liability risk had concluded that the organization faced enormous exposure because it had failed to implement adequate youth protection policies despite knowing the danger.
USA Gymnastics received its first complaint about Larry Nassar in 1997, according to documents filed in federal court. A coach raised concerns about his treatment methods. Nothing was done. In 2015, a USA Gymnastics coach reported that an athlete had made allegations against Nassar. The organization conducted an internal review but did not suspend Nassar or inform Michigan State University, where he also worked, or the dozens of other clubs and programs where he treated athletes. Nassar continued seeing patients.
USA Gymnastics waited five weeks before contacting the FBI. During those five weeks, Nassar abused additional victims. When Michigan State finally fired Nassar in 2016, it was not because of the reports USA Gymnastics had received. It was because a newspaper investigation was about to be published.
Text messages and emails obtained through litigation showed that USA Gymnastics executives, including then-president Steve Penny, discussed how to manage the public relations fallout. There is no evidence in those communications of urgency to protect athletes. In September 2018, the entire USA Gymnastics board resigned under pressure.
At Michigan State University, where Nassar held a faculty position and treated athletes for nearly two decades, at least 14 university officials were told of allegations against him starting in the 1990s. According to a report issued by the Michigan Attorney General in 2018, complaints were made to coaches, trainers, and university police. Each time, the institution found reasons to take no action. Nassar was finally fired in 2016, after the Indianapolis Star published an investigation into USA Gymnastics.
At Penn State University, assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky sexually abused boys he met through his youth charity for at least 15 years. According to grand jury testimony and internal emails, university officials including head coach Joe Paterno, athletic director Tim Curley, and university president Graham Spanier were informed of incidents as early as 1998. A campus police investigation occurred that year but no charges were filed. In 2001, a graduate assistant reported witnessing Sandusky assaulting a child in the football facility showers. University officials discussed the report in emails but decided not to contact law enforcement. Sandusky continued accessing university facilities and bringing children onto campus until his arrest in 2011.
Emails introduced as evidence during criminal trials showed administrators weighing their legal obligations against the potential damage to the football program and the university reputation. They chose silence. Sandusky was convicted in 2012 on 45 counts involving ten victims. Subsequent investigations revealed that university officials had been warned by multiple witnesses and had chosen not to act.
How They Kept It Hidden
These institutions used remarkably similar strategies to conceal abuse and avoid accountability. The most pervasive strategy was the confidential settlement. When victims came forward, institutional lawyers offered money in exchange for nondisclosure agreements that prohibited survivors from speaking publicly about what happened. This served two purposes: it prevented other victims from learning they were not alone, and it kept damaging facts out of public court records.
The Catholic Church spent billions of dollars in settlements with survivors, nearly all of them accompanied by gag orders. These agreements meant that even after receiving compensation, survivors could not warn others or speak to journalists. If they violated the agreement, they would be required to return the settlement and potentially face legal penalties.
The Boy Scouts used the same approach. Court filings in bankruptcy proceedings, which began in February 2020, showed that the organization had paid tens of millions of dollars in confidential settlements over decades. Each settlement came with silence.
Another strategy was moving the accused. When the Catholic Church received credible allegations, bishops transferred priests to new parishes, often in different states or countries, without informing the receiving community. The priest arrived with a clean reputation. The pattern repeated. This was not poor judgment. Documents show it was deliberate policy, rooted in canon law that prioritized internal Church discipline over civil legal obligations.
The Boy Scouts removed accused leaders from one troop or council but often allowed them to reenlist elsewhere. The ineligible volunteer files were not shared broadly within the organization and were never provided to parents or the public.
Universities moved accused faculty and staff to different departments, placed them on paid leave during investigations that stretched on for years, or allowed them to retire with benefits intact and no public acknowledgment of the reason for their departure. This protected institutional reputation and avoided litigation, but it also meant the accused often moved to other institutions and continued abusing.
Institutional lawyers attacked the credibility of survivors. In depositions and court filings, defense attorneys questioned why victims waited years to report, implied that victims were motivated by money, and argued that memories of abuse were unreliable. These tactics were designed to discourage other survivors from coming forward and to make litigation so painful that victims would give up.
The institutions also used their political and cultural power. The Catholic Church lobbied state legislatures to oppose changes to statutes of limitations that would allow older abuse cases to be filed. The Boy Scouts leveraged its reputation as an iconic American organization to argue that lawsuits threatened its charitable mission. Universities used their influence with donors, alumni, and local media to control narratives and minimize scandal.
Why Your Doctor Did Not Tell You
If you sought therapy or medical care for symptoms related to trauma, your healthcare provider may not have asked about institutional abuse. This is not because they did not care. It is because medical training often fails to prepare clinicians to recognize the signs of complex developmental trauma, and because the institutions responsible for abuse were so effective at hiding the scope of the problem that even professionals did not understand how common it was.
For decades, survivors who sought help were diagnosed with depression or anxiety and treated with medication or generic therapy, but the underlying trauma was not addressed. Effective treatment for trauma—modalities like trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, EMDR, and somatic therapies—was not widely taught in medical or counseling programs until the late 1990s and 2000s.
Even today, intake forms and diagnostic interviews often do not include questions about childhood sexual abuse by authority figures in institutional settings. Clinicians may ask about abuse by family members but not about abuse by clergy, coaches, or teachers. The result is that many survivors were never given the full picture of why they were suffering or what kind of treatment might actually help.
Furthermore, the cultural power of these institutions meant that many people, including healthcare providers, found it difficult to believe that abuse could happen in settings that were supposed to be safe. The cognitive dissonance was too great. A priest, a beloved coach, a respected doctor—these were people who were supposed to protect children. When survivors reported abuse, they were often met with skepticism, even from professionals who should have believed them.
Who Is Affected
If you were sexually abused by a priest, deacon, nun, or other clergy member in the Catholic Church, you may have legal options regardless of how long ago the abuse occurred. Many states have passed laws in recent years opening windows for survivors to file claims even if the abuse happened decades ago and even if the statute of limitations previously expired.
If you were abused by a scoutmaster, troop leader, or volunteer in the Boy Scouts of America, you are part of a group of more than 82,000 survivors who filed claims in the organization bankruptcy proceedings. The Boy Scouts filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 2020 specifically because of the volume of abuse claims. Additional claims may still be possible depending on your state.
If you were abused by Larry Nassar or any other coach, trainer, or medical professional affiliated with USA Gymnastics, and you have not yet come forward, there are still legal avenues available. Nassar is serving what amounts to a life sentence, but the organizations that enabled him—USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University—have faced civil litigation resulting in settlements exceeding 500 million dollars. Other survivors may still have claims.
If you were abused by a faculty member, coach, doctor, or staff member at a university, your ability to file a claim depends on the state where the abuse occurred and the specific timeline. Many universities have faced lawsuits related to abuse by team doctors and athletic staff, including Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State, and the University of Southern California. In many cases, the abuse occurred over decades and involved dozens or hundreds of victims.
You do not need physical evidence. You do not need witnesses. Your memory of what happened is evidence. Many survivors have come forward with nothing but their own testimony, and courts have found institutions liable.
Where Things Stand
As of 2024, more than 20 Catholic dioceses in the United States have filed for bankruptcy protection because of abuse claims. These bankruptcies are not an indication that the Church lacks resources. They are a legal strategy to limit payouts to survivors and manage liability. Bankruptcy allows dioceses to negotiate settlements with large groups of survivors simultaneously while protecting certain assets from claims.
In many states, legislatures have passed or extended statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse cases. New York, New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania, and others have opened revival windows allowing survivors to file claims for abuse that occurred decades ago. These windows have resulted in thousands of new lawsuits against the Catholic Church, schools, youth organizations, and other institutions.
The Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy, filed in February 2020, became the largest child sexual abuse bankruptcy in United States history. More than 82,000 survivors filed claims by the deadline in November 2020. In September 2021, the Boy Scouts proposed a settlement plan exceeding 2.7 billion dollars, funded by the national organization, local councils, insurers, and sponsoring organizations including the Catholic Church, which chartered many scout troops. As of 2024, the bankruptcy plan has been approved and distributions to survivors are underway, though legal challenges continue.
USA Gymnastics filed for bankruptcy in December 2018, citing liabilities from the Nassar scandal. In 2021, the organization reached a settlement agreement worth 380 million dollars with survivors. Michigan State University, which employed Nassar, agreed in 2018 to pay 500 million dollars to more than 300 survivors. Nassar himself is serving multiple sentences totaling more than 100 years in prison.
At Penn State, the university has paid more than 100 million dollars in settlements to survivors of abuse by Jerry Sandusky. The NCAA imposed sanctions on the football program, though many were later reduced or eliminated. University officials including the president, athletic director, and a vice president were convicted of crimes related to their failure to report abuse.
At Ohio State University, more than 350 former students have sued the university alleging they were abused by Dr. Richard Strauss, a team doctor who worked there from 1978 to 1998. An independent investigation released in 2019 found that university officials knew of complaints against Strauss as early as the 1970s but failed to stop him. Strauss died by suicide in 2005. The university reached a settlement with survivors in 2020 for more than 40 million dollars.
The University of Southern California reached a settlement in 2021 exceeding 1 billion dollars with former patients of Dr. George Tyndall, a campus gynecologist accused of abusing hundreds of students over nearly three decades. It is believed to be the largest settlement in the history of sexual abuse cases involving a university.
Legal proceedings continue across the country. Every month, new lawsuits are filed. More survivors come forward. The institutions continue to argue that they should not be held responsible for the actions of individuals, that the abuse happened too long ago, that the survivors waited too long to file. But courts have increasingly rejected these arguments. Juries have found that institutions had a duty to protect the children in their care and that they breached that duty knowingly.
What happened to you was not a personal failing. It was not bad luck. It was not something you caused or could have prevented. You were a child or a young person in the care of an institution that had power, resources, and a legal and moral duty to keep you safe. That institution knew there were predators in its ranks. It knew because it had been told, because it had received reports, because it kept files, because its lawyers and insurers warned of the risk. It made a choice. It chose to protect its reputation, its finances, its public image. It chose to move the accused rather than remove them. It chose secrecy over safety. It chose itself over you.
That choice is documented. It is in the files that were finally forced into daylight through litigation. It is in the grand jury reports and the bankruptcy filings and the internal emails that executives thought would never be read by anyone outside the institution. The documents show a pattern so consistent across institutions that it cannot be explained as coincidence or as the failure of a few individuals. It was policy. And you lived with the consequences of that policy every day since it happened. What was done to you was not inevitable. It was preventable. They knew, and they decided silence was cheaper than safety. That decision has a cost, and it should not be borne by survivors alone.