Jigsaw Cafe

An investigation by The 74 identified at least 1,973 Child Victims Act complaints accusing a New York school, educator or other school personnel of childhood sexual abuse. That represents more than 18% of the 10,787 cases filed under the law’s lookback window. The alleged abuse spans nearly 70 years and involves public, private and religious schools across 54 counties.

The scale of the investigation provides visibility into more than the number of claims. Across the court records reviewed by The 74, recurring circumstances included adults using positions of authority to gain access to students, creating opportunities for isolation in offices, classrooms and other private spaces, and grooming relationships that sometimes developed over extended periods. The reporting also found cases in which school leaders had allegedly received information about previous or ongoing abuse, as well as examples of accused employees moving between schools.

Many of the complaints concern conduct from decades ago that is only now being examined through the civil courts. As of February 2026, roughly 8,000 Child Victims Act cases statewide had advanced beyond initial filing, and nearly 63% of those remained unresolved. The records provide a retrospective view of the circumstances surrounding alleged abuse in school environments over time, including where access existed, how authority was used and what institutions reportedly knew as events unfolded.

A federal lawsuit alleges that a 16-year-old athlete was sexually assaulted by another participant during the Nike Elite Program, which brought together 40 high school athletes in Beaverton, Oregon. Court documents also describe the response after Nike and National Scholastic Athletics Foundation staff found the girl crying in a hallway. NSAF disputes the complaint’s account, and Nike declined to comment on pending litigation.

According to the lawsuit, staff decisions after encountering the girl in distress included keeping her without her mother for up to 30 minutes, urging her to provide a written statement describing the encounter as consensual, and not contacting police. The girl and her mother went to a hospital and reported the incident to Beaverton police the following day.

The case puts attention on two distinct parts of the same event: the alleged conduct between participants and what happened once the situation became an organizational matter. The complaint specifically challenges decisions involving parent involvement, documentation and law enforcement. Those allegations remain disputed and have not been decided in court, but the case illustrates how quickly responsibility can shift from an interaction between participants to decisions made by the adults and organizations responsible for the program.

Gallagher’s 2026 market update for US nonprofits reports that sexual abuse and molestation liability coverage remains difficult and costly to obtain, including for organizations with no claims. It points to historic claims with multiple victims, sharply rising claim and defense costs, the continued erosion of statutes of limitations, third-party litigation funding, and new state laws restricting nondisclosure agreements in child sexual abuse settlements. Carriers are moving abuse risk out of package policies, toward claims-made forms, sublimits and tighter terms.

Nonprofits should expect closer underwriting scrutiny of prevention and response processes, including abuse between program participants. For youth-serving organizations, the report ties affordable coverage to staff training, effective supervision and management oversight, and notes that after a serious claim, underwriters want to know what changed and how oversight improved.

The report makes a key point: organizations with no claims also struggle to buy this cover, and every organization says it trains, supervises, and maintains oversight. From most submissions, an underwriter can’t tell a protection system that’s working well from a committed organization with a binder, and claims files are full of committed organizations. The questions Gallagher says underwriters now ask have answers that only a convincing record can give. But what is a convincing record? Who is responsible for each control? What was checked in the last year, and what was found to need adapting? What concerns were raised, and how many were resolved? An organization that can answer those questions quickly, in a few minutes, has a convincing record. Much more important than any insurance considerations, it can also see whether its protection is working while there’s still time to act. 

Andrew “Drew” Miller, a former teacher and competitive cheerleading coach in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, is facing 56 criminal counts, including allegations of grooming, indecent solicitation and possession of child sexual materials. His case is one of two recent cases involving cheer coaches in the area. WGLT’s reporting examines how youth sports organizations oversee coaches, including background checks, mandated reporter training, communication policies, two-adult requirements and ongoing supervision, as well as how responsibility for hiring and vetting can differ among schools, athletic associations and private gyms.

The reporting highlights how youth athletes may interact with the same adults across different settings, including schools, private gyms, open-gym sessions and competitive programs, while responsibility for hiring, vetting and supervision can rest with different organizations.

That division of responsibility is a practical part of the oversight issue examined in the article. Schools, athletic associations and private gyms may each have their own requirements, policies and responsibilities. Understanding who is responsible for a coach in each setting, what oversight applies there, and how that responsibility changes when a coach moves between organizations becomes especially relevant when young athletes interact with the same adult across multiple settings.

A federal appeals court ruled August 25 that the First Amendment protects the private, in-home possession of certain AI-generated child sexual abuse material when the images do not depict real children. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld the dismissal of one possession charge against Steven Anderegg, a Wisconsin man accused of using generative AI to create sexually explicit images depicting children. 

The decision applies specifically to the possession of wholly virtual material in the privacy of a home. Anderegg still faces charges related to producing and distributing AI-generated sexual abuse material and allegedly transferring similar material to a 15-year-old boy. The ruling also does not extend the same protection to images created by altering photographs of real children, which courts have treated differently because an identifiable child can be harmed. 

Writing for the court, Judge John Z. Lee said existing Supreme Court precedent controlled the outcome, including decisions involving private possession of obscene material and virtual child sexual abuse material. Lee also noted that generative AI can now create images that are difficult to distinguish from images involving real children and urged the Supreme Court to revisit the legal framework in light of advances in the technology. 

The case comes as the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reports growing pressure from suspected AI-generated abuse material. According to The Washington Post, NCMEC has told Congress that reports involving synthetic imagery are straining a system designed to identify and investigate abuse involving real children, and that reports from technology companies sometimes lack information law enforcement needs to investigate them. 

The case highlights a distinction now confronting courts and investigators: AI-generated sexual abuse imagery may be wholly synthetic, may incorporate the image of a real child, or may be distributed or transferred to others. Those distinctions matter under the existing legal framework. The article also reports that NCMEC is receiving a growing volume of suspected AI-generated material and has told Congress that some reports lack basic information law enforcement needs to determine whether a real child is involved. As AI-generated images become increasingly difficult to distinguish from images of real children, determining what an image depicts and how it was created has become an increasingly important part of the investigative process. 

On a personal note, we believe one of the biggest challenges facing sexual abuse risk management is that, despite everything that has changed around it, the sector itself has barely changed at all in 20 years. That was already a problem. AI now makes it impossible to ignore. We are facing a form of risk that is developing at extraordinary speed, while many of the systems, assumptions, and approaches used to manage sexual abuse risk have barely moved. The gap between the pace of the threat and the pace of the response is becoming untenable. The sector cannot continue to deal with change the way it has for the past two decades. It now has to shift gears faster, more deliberately, and more fundamentally than it ever has before. Carrying on as we have is no longer a viable option.

Michael Caruso, 67, Palm Beach County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, was arrested August 18 on five felony charges: kidnapping, lewd or lascivious molestation, lewd or lascivious exhibition, luring or enticing a child, and child abuse causing mental injury. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who appointed Caruso to the clerk position in August 2025, suspended him from office the same day. Caruso was ordered held without bond.

According to the arrest warrant and affidavit, the allegations involve a young child related to Caruso and multiple incidents beginning around November 2024. The reported settings included a fishing trip, a family gathering, and a seven-day family cruise in August 2025. Court documents allege that during the cruise, Caruso separated the child from other adults before sexually abusing him.

The child later disclosed the alleged abuse, and family members confronted Caruso in December 2025. Court documents state that Caruso made partial admissions while denying the most serious allegations and made statements discouraging family members from reporting the matter. The child has been receiving therapeutic services since April 2026, according to the affidavit. The investigation remains ongoing.

The allegations place two circumstances in clear view: repeated one-on-one access to a child during ordinary family activities and travel, and efforts to discourage reporting after concerns were raised. For organizations responsible for children, those are concrete areas to examine in their own protection systems: when and where an adult can be alone with a child, how supervision works outside routine settings, and what happens when a concern or disclosure is reported.

A new analysis by Sarah K. Lischer, a professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University, examines how denial can allow child sexual abuse to continue within communities and institutions. Using the Jeffrey Epstein case alongside other well-known abuse cases, Lischer focuses not only on denial by perpetrators, but also on how bystanders, colleagues, family members and institutions may respond to signs or reports of abuse. 

The analysis applies three forms of denial identified by sociologist Stanley Cohen: literal denial, in which an event is rejected as having happened; interpretive denial, in which the event is acknowledged but its meaning or seriousness is minimized; and implicatory denial, in which the facts are accepted but their consequences or significance are discounted. Lischer argues that similar patterns can occur at the community level when concerns or disclosures of abuse are dismissed, reinterpreted or blamed on the person reporting them. 

The article points to the Larry Nassar case as an example of interpretive denial, describing how gymnast Larissa Boyce reported Nassar’s conduct to a coach at age 16 and was told she may have misunderstood what had happened. It also notes that U.S. child protection laws require designated professionals in every state to report known or suspected child abuse, while some states extend reporting obligations more broadly. 

The analysis puts particular attention on what happens when information about possible abuse reaches the people around it. The concern may be denied outright, reinterpreted as something less serious, or acknowledged without acting on its implications. 

For organizations, that creates a practical question worth examining: What happens when someone raises something uncomfortable or difficult to explain? The examples in the article show why the response at that moment matters — particularly whether the information is dismissed, minimized or treated as something requiring further action. 

The parents of an 8-year-old girl have filed a civil lawsuit against Plano ISD, Brinker Elementary Principal Jennifer King, and former teacher Paul Campbell, alleging gross negligence in the handling of earlier concerns about Campbell’s conduct. According to the lawsuit, Campbell sexually abused the plaintiff and other second-grade girls multiple times during the 2025–26 school year.

The complaint alleges that King received at least one report from another parent about inappropriate touching by Campbell before the alleged abuse of the plaintiff and claims she did not notify police or the Texas Education Agency, investigate the concern, or increase supervision. The lawsuit also alleges that another parent requested that a child be transferred out of Campbell’s classroom and that the request was denied without examination of the underlying concerns.

Campbell had worked at Brinker Elementary for 28 years. He was arrested July 8 on a charge of continuous sexual abuse of a child. Police subsequently obtained three additional warrants charging him with indecency with a child as investigators continued identifying potential victims. Plano ISD has said it is cooperating with law enforcement, and its Board of Trustees voted to send Campbell notice of proposed termination.

This case puts the response to an early concern at the center of the lawsuit. The complaint alleges that a parent raised an inappropriate-touching concern before later allegations surfaced and specifically questions whether that concern was reported, investigated, or followed by increased supervision. For organizations, these are practical risk management functions: capturing a concern, documenting the response, escalating it appropriately, and ensuring that response can be reviewed afterward.  

A new report from Nebraska’s Office of Inspector General of Child Welfare details 44 sexual-abuse-related allegations made by 37 youth against 19 staff members at the Kearney Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Center. Within those allegations were more than 200 specific claims of improper conduct, ranging from sexual abuse and inappropriate touching to violations of professional boundaries.

Four former staff members have been charged, with one already sentenced after accepting a plea deal. The allegations showed a concerning pattern of staff behavior that was not sufficiently addressed.

The OIG recommends that Nebraska DHHS resume investigating abuse and neglect at the state’s youth treatment centers, pursue necessary statutory changes, improve the Compliance Department’s investigative and review practices, ensure the OIG is properly notified of all abuse allegations, and address the culture at the Kearney facility. Nebraska DHHS said it has made several changes intended to strengthen safety, oversight, and accountability across the state’s youth treatment centers and is reviewing the report for additional opportunities to improve operations.

The OIG recommends addressing the facility’s culture, but that recommendation becomes more actionable when it is translated into specific mechanisms. The practical questions are more concrete: Who investigates an allegation? Who must be notified? How are patterns in staff behavior identified? What happens when professional boundaries are crossed? And can leadership see whether those processes are actually happening? We’ve previously written about culture change.

The report itself points toward concrete work through its recommendations around investigation, review, and notification. Each of those can be translated into defined responsibilities and processes that can be monitored and improved.

For organizations responsible for children and vulnerable people, “address the culture” is not a plan on its own. The practical work is building mechanisms that make the expected action clear, establish who is responsible for carrying it out, and give leadership visibility into whether those mechanisms are working.

The U.S. Department of Education has launched a national K–12 initiative focused on sexual misconduct by adults in positions of authority. As part of the initiative, the Office for Civil Rights opened 20 directed investigations based on responses submitted through the 2023–24 Civil Rights Data Collection that suggest some districts may not be appropriately addressing staff-on-student sexual misconduct. The investigations will examine whether the districts have appropriate policies and procedures for collecting and reporting incident data and whether their handling of allegations involving employees complies with federal law.

The department uses the term “passing the trash” to describe practices that allow an employee believed to have engaged in sexual misconduct involving a student to obtain another position at a school without the concern being appropriately addressed. Under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, states, school districts and educational agencies must maintain policies prohibiting assistance to employees, contractors or agents seeking new employment when there is knowledge or probable cause to believe they engaged in sexual misconduct involving a student.

The department also issued guidance reiterating schools’ obligations under Title IX and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Federally funded educational institutions must respond promptly and appropriately to allegations, submit complete and accurate civil rights data, and conduct meaningful investigations. Referring an allegation to law enforcement does not, by itself, satisfy a school’s responsibilities under Title IX.

The guidance directs educational institutions to review whether their policies and practices comply with federal requirements, whether officials with authority to take corrective action are trained to recognize and respond to sexual misconduct, and whether grievance procedures result in timely, thorough and genuinely responsive investigations. For districts, this means examining how concerns are documented, investigated, reported and carried through to action.

The Palo Alto Unified School District will settle a lawsuit involving allegations that three kindergarten boys repeatedly touched a kindergarten girl inappropriately at Ohlone Elementary School between January and March 2024. The lawsuit alleged the student repeatedly reported the conduct to teachers and administrators, but the behavior continued. The settlement was approved by the school board in closed session. Additional details, including the settlement amount, were not publicly released.

This case highlights the importance of response processes following a disclosure, particularly in early childhood settings. Reports only become protective when they lead to action. For organizations, that includes recognizing concerns, escalating information appropriately, documenting actions taken, and ensuring follow-up occurs. The case is also a reminder that sexual abuse safety systems need to function across all age groups, including the youngest students.

Recent market commentary highlighted continued tightening in the sexual abuse and molestation (SAM) insurance market, with carriers continuing to reduce available capacity and limit offerings. According to the article, 71% of carriers now offer SAM limits of $5 million or less, while only 12% offer limits of $10 million or greater. The report also noted that standalone SAM coverage is increasingly becoming the primary placement option for organizations with higher-risk operations.

Insurance markets can provide another view into how risk is being evaluated over time. In this case, lower limits, reduced capacity, and increased reliance on standalone coverage point to a market that continues to approach SAM exposures cautiously. For organizations, the practical questions increasingly involve available limits, coverage structure, and long-term insurability.

A Georgia high school teacher, Paulina Walden, 35, was arrested following allegations of an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student. Walden, an English teacher at Jenkins High School in Savannah, had worked in the district since 2023. The Board of Education Police Department notified Savannah Police on April 24 after receiving the report. The educator was reassigned to a non-school location with no student contact while the investigation proceeded and was later charged with improper sexual contact involving a student and child molestation. Authorities stated the alleged conduct occurred off campus, and the investigation remains ongoing.

This case highlights the importance of the response period that follows an initial report. Actions were taken to remove student contact and notify law enforcement while the investigation proceeded. For organizations, that period is operationally significant because it reflects how reports are escalated, how interim protections are implemented, and how the situation is managed while facts are being established. Response timelines, decision-making, and documentation are important, but they are only part of the picture. Together, they help show how a sexual abuse safety system functioned during uncertainty and whether the response process operated as intended.

The Boy Scouts settlement trust continues to process sexual abuse claims tied to the organization’s bankruptcy restructuring. According to recent trust updates, more than 59,410 claims have received determinations and more than 41,665 payments have been approved, with total distributions now exceeding $593 million. In January 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review challenges to the underlying $2.46 billion bankruptcy settlement, allowing the compensation process to continue moving forward.

One of the lasting realities of the Boy Scouts litigation is how widely liability spread once the cases were fully examined. The exposure did not stop with the national organization. Local councils, churches, insurers, and other chartered organizations all became part of the legal and financial picture. Cases like this are a reminder that safeguarding risk rarely stays contained to the location where harm first occurred. In large, distributed programs, the organizations surrounding the program often become part of the exposure as well.

Connecticut lawmakers are advancing legislation that would require youth camp staff to serve as mandated reporters of suspected child abuse. The proposal follows a case involving a municipal camp worker accused of abusing children, along with findings that oversight and requirements can vary between municipal and private camp programs.

The bill would apply reporting expectations more consistently across camps and calls for better statewide visibility into how these programs are staffed, screened, and managed.

What stands out here is the variation in how similar programs are governed. When expectations differ across settings, it becomes harder to rely on the system to surface concerns consistently.

Mandated reporting is clear once a suspicion of sexual abuse itself has arisen. The challenge is earlier than that. The uncomfortable interaction. The boundary concern. The moment something feels off, but nobody can yet clearly explain why.

A lot of safeguarding work happens before anyone can clearly say they suspect abuse. It lives in how organizations notice, discuss, and respond to smaller concerns, uncertainty, or disquiet before they become something clearer and more serious.

That’s where consistency matters. Not just in having rules, but in how attention, judgment, and concerns are handled across the environments where this work actually happens.

A former substitute teacher working in Broward County Public Schools through Kelly Education has been arrested on charges related to alleged sexual misconduct involving a student. According to school officials and jail records, the individual was not a direct employee of the district but had been placed in classrooms through the third-party staffing provider.

The suspect, 27, faces charges including sexual battery involving a minor between the ages of 16 and 17, along with allegations tied to an inappropriate relationship as an authority figure. A judge found probable cause, issued a no-contact order with minors and the alleged victim, and set bond at $30,000. District officials confirmed he is no longer permitted to work in any Broward County schools. It remains unclear whether he worked at multiple campuses. The district stated it is cooperating with law enforcement in the ongoing investigation.

The student is at the center of what matters here. Around that, a structural challenge that often shows up comes into view: when responsibility is shared between a school district and a staffing vendor, visibility gets harder.

Using a third-party agency doesn’t remove accountability for who is in the classroom. But it does introduce a gap — who is actively overseeing day-to-day conduct, and how consistently that oversight is happening across placements?

In cases like this, the question isn’t just how someone was screened at the start. It’s whether there was any ongoing signal — however small — that could have been noticed, escalated, or acted on earlier.

That’s where risk management lives: not in the initial placement decision, but in what happens after — how adults are monitored, how concerns surface, and whether anyone is in a position to connect the dots before harm occurs.

Obtaining sexual abuse and molestation (SAM) liability coverage continues to get more difficult. Carriers are raising premiums, reducing limits, and expanding exclusions, while general liability policies are increasingly seen as insufficient for abuse-related claims.

The shift is being driven by rising allegations, large verdicts, and legislative changes — especially extended statutes of limitations and revival windows that are bringing older claims back into play. In response, insurers are tightening policy language and relying more heavily on standalone SAM coverage.

At the same time, underwriting is becoming more detailed. Carriers are taking a closer look at organizations’ policies, training, screening, incident response, and prevention practices as part of the placement process.

What’s showing up here is a market that is no longer comfortable relying on broad coverage and basic safeguards. The bar is moving — not just in terms of pricing and structure, but in how organizations are expected to demonstrate their approach to risk.

For many organizations, especially smaller ones, that creates a real gap. Coverage is harder to place, narrower when it is, and more dependent on how well risk management practices can be articulated and reviewed.

This is where the distinction between having controls and being able to show how they operate starts to matter. Not as a new requirement, but as a reflection of how underwriting is evolving in response to the claims environment.

Newly released Colorado data for Child Abuse Prevention Month shows reported child abuse incidents trending downward, while fatalities from abuse remain unchanged. Officials note that many of the fatal cases involve children who were already known to child welfare systems, pointing to persistent gaps between reporting, intervention, and outcomes. The pattern reflects what has been seen across multiple U.S. jurisdictions.

A decline in reported incidents alongside steady fatalities points to a gap that reporting alone doesn’t close. In many of these cases, the children were already known — meaning there was visibility, but not enough traction to change the outcome.

It’s also important to understand what this data is — and isn’t — capturing. This reporting reflects child abuse in its broadest sense, the majority of which occurs within family settings. Sexual abuse is a subset of that, and abuse in institutional settings is a smaller subset still. So, while overall child abuse reports may be declining, that trend doesn’t necessarily translate cleanly to what’s happening in organizational environments, where reporting of sexual abuse has, in some cases, increased.

That distinction helps frame how to interpret the data. The pattern highlighted here — visibility without impact on the most serious outcomes — still holds. It points to where risk management has to operate: not just in identifying concerns, but in how those concerns are monitored, revisited, and acted on over time, especially when situations are complex and uncertain.

Kentucky officials announced an updated statewide protocol for responding to child sexual abuse, revising guidance for the first time since 2021. The new framework is designed to help multidisciplinary teams coordinate more effectively, reduce delays in investigation and prosecution, and minimize the need for child victims to repeat their accounts.

The update comes as reported cases continue to rise. From July 2024 to July 2025, Kentucky’s 15 Children’s Advocacy Centers reviewed nearly 7,800 new cases — a 29% increase year over year. The revised protocol is now being implemented across all 120 counties, with training planned for law enforcement and partner agencies.

What stands out here is the focus on coordination — how different parts of the system work together when a concern surfaces. The protocol is explicit about timing, roles, and reducing repeated interviews, all aimed at moving cases more efficiently while limiting additional trauma.

That matters because response systems are where intent meets reality. Clear coordination, defined roles, and fewer repeated interviews can move cases forward faster while reducing additional harm to the child.

A new lawsuit filed against the Detroit Behavioral Institute alleges that a 12-year-old patient was sexually abused by a supervisor over a two-year period. The plaintiff, now an adult, says she reported the abuse at the time but no action was taken.

The lawsuit names Acadia Healthcare, the facility’s parent company, alleging failures in training, supervision, and protection. Attorneys involved in the case say the claims reflect broader patterns of abuse allegations tied to the facility during its operation.

This case centers on a setting where the duty of care is at its highest — a psychiatric facility responsible for vulnerable youth. The allegation isn’t only that abuse occurred, but that it was reported and went unaddressed over time.

That detail matters. When information surfaces and doesn’t produce a response, the issue is no longer isolated to an individual — it reflects how the system functions under pressure.

The lawsuit’s focus on the parent company reinforces a direction that continues to show up in these cases: accountability extending beyond the person who caused harm to the structures responsible for supervision, escalation, and response.