{"id":268822,"date":"2026-06-16T19:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T19:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/268822\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T19:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T19:58:09","slug":"first-nyc-child-victims-act-case-reaches-a-jury-trial-verdict-for-18m-against-the-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/268822\/","title":{"rendered":"First NYC Child Victims Act case reaches a jury trial verdict for $18M against the city"},"content":{"rendered":"

A jury found New York City liable to pay $18 million to a man who was sexually assaulted when he was 10 years old in the city\u2019s public school system in the 1970s, marking the first jury verdict against the city in a Child Victims Act<\/a> case since the lookback law was passed seven years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The landmark verdict came last on June 11 in Kings County (Brooklyn) Supreme Court, and leaves those with pending cases through the law that temporarily removed the statute of limitations on instances of sexual assault in a stronger place than before, said attorney Jeff Herman<\/a>, who specializes in high-profile sex abuse cases and tried the case in question to a verdict last Thursday.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt certainly makes a statement that these cases are real and they\u2019re serious, and defendants are going to have to treat them that way,\u201d Herman said. \u201cFor us, we know the value, and the jury is telling us the value, and so they should be treated as such.\u201d<\/p>\n

He thinks it will push defendants on Child Victim Act cases, such as cities, school districts, and the Catholic church, to settle, and to settle for higher amounts than they may have before, because they see how poorly failing to negotiate pre-trial can end for them in the courtroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor settlement purposes, I think it\u2019s a meaningful barometer,\u201d Herman said. \u201cI think it will lead to more cases being settled, because I think defendants will want to settle because they see the risk of going to trial.\u201d<\/p>\n

Herman\u2019s firm is currently\u00a0engaged in settlement talks in a few major Child Victims Act cases, including those against Catholic entities such as\u00a0the New York Archdiocese<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0the <\/a>Brooklyn Diocese<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The verdict also shows it\u2019s possible to successfully try very old cases \u2013 Herman said his firm was able to obtain decades-old evidence and had a man in his 80s on the witness stand.<\/p>\n

After hearing that evidence, the jury found New York City\u2019s public schools acted negligently and recklessly in not removing John Clark, the music teacher who molested his client before the assault took place. That\u2019s because parents had raised concerns about the teacher molesting children in the past, and the school\u2019s principal insisted Clark would continue working at the school and wouldn\u2019t be permitted to be alone with children again.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Herman said, that didn\u2019t happen, and Clark sexually assaulted multiple other children. He\u2019s glad that now, fifty years later, his client has justice that can help him heal.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s still trying to raise a little boy in him,\u201d Herman said of why the verdict was important for his client. \u201cThat\u2019s so important, I think, for all these cases where a lot of the clients are really there on behalf of their inner child, who never had a voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

The road to a verdict has been so long for various reasons, Herman said, including COVID-19-related delays and the court system being overwhelmed.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cNevertheless, we keep pushing, pushing, pushing,\u201d Herman said. \u201cWe know the best way to get a fair result for a client is to get the cases to trial, so that\u2019s what we did in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n

While this is the first jury trial verdict in a Child Victims Act case against New York City, it\u2019s not the first jury trial verdict in one of these cases that has ever been obtained: Herman\u2019s firm tried what became the first Child Victims Act jury verdict on Long Island against Bayshore School District in 2024 for $25 million.\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A jury found New York City liable to pay $18 million to a man who was sexually assaulted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5783,2710,9,24,55,54,56,613,3019],"class_list":["post-268822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-child-victims-act","tag-law","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-pm-newsletter","tag-sexual-assault"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}