San Diego Sexual Assault Attorney

What you're feeling right now, whatever that is, makes sense. Some survivors feel numb. Some feel angry. Some go back to work or school the next day like nothing happened because that's what got them through it. Some don't tell anyone for years, sometimes decades. None of that changes what happened to you, and none of it changes your right to hold the person or institution responsible accountable.

If the person who hurt you was someone you trusted, a coworker, a teacher, a clergy member, a rideshare driver you let into your life for twenty minutes, that kind of betrayal often makes it harder to come forward, not easier. Reaching out today, even just to ask questions, already took something. You don't have to have it all figured out before you call.

A civil sexual assault claim lets you sue the person who assaulted you, and often the institution, company, or employer that made the assault possible, for compensation instead of relying only on the criminal justice system. California law recognizes that assault causes real, lasting harm: medical costs, therapy, lost income, and pain that doesn't show up on an X-ray. You don't need a criminal conviction, or even a police report, to bring a civil claim, and a civil case can move forward whether or not charges were ever filed.

Most of the cases we handle fall into one of three categories: institutional abuse, rideshare assault, and workplace or school assault. Each one follows a different legal path, and each is covered in detail below. If what happened to you doesn't fit neatly into one of these situations, call us anyway. Sexual assault law covers more ground than these three categories, and we can tell you where you stand either way.

Institutional sexual abuse happens when someone in a position of trust, at a church, school, youth organization, camp, foster placement, or residential care facility, uses that position to assault someone in their care. These cases are rarely about one person acting alone. Usually, they're about an institution that knew, or should have known, about the danger and failed to act.

When the person who hurt you was someone in a position of trust, a teacher, a coach, a clergy member, the harm isn't only physical. The safety of an entire relationship or place gets rewritten, and that kind of betrayal deserves to be taken just as seriously as the assault itself.

California law lets you hold the institution itself responsible, not just the person who assaulted you, when the organization was negligent in hiring, supervising, or retaining that person, or when it covered up prior complaints against them. A California law called AB 2777 opened a filing window through December 31, 2026, specifically for cases involving an institutional cover-up, even for assaults going back to 2009. If that might describe your situation, it's worth mentioning when you call. There's no pressure attached to that, it just helps us tell you where you stand.

If a rideshare driver assaulted you, you may be able to hold the company responsible, not just the driver. Uber and Lyft are required to screen and monitor the people they let drive for them, and a claim against the company often comes down to whether that screening failed, whether earlier complaints against the driver were ignored, or whether the company owed you a heightened duty of care as a common carrier.

This is one of the most active areas of sexual assault litigation in the country right now. Thousands of Uber sexual assault claims are consolidated in federal court, and the first bellwether trials wrapped up in early 2026, including an $8.5 million verdict in one case. Lyft cases are now going through a similar consolidation. What that means for you: there's an established legal path here, but outcomes have varied a lot from case to case, so the specifics of what happened to you matter.

It's common to feel unsafe getting into any car again after something like this happens. That reaction makes complete sense, you're not overreacting, and you don't have to push through that feeling to have a valid claim.

If you were hurt in a Lyft or Uber traffic accident rather than assaulted, that's a different kind of claim, our Lyft and Uber accident injury page covers that separately.

Sexual assault at work or school often gets treated first as an internal matter, sometimes through a Title IX complaint if it happened on a school campus. A civil lawsuit is a separate path that runs alongside that process, not instead of it, and it's the one that can hold your employer or school financially accountable for what happened and for what they failed to prevent.

An employer or school can be liable when they knew about a risk and did nothing, when they hired or kept someone in a position despite warning signs, or when their own reporting systems failed you at the moment you needed them. You don't have to have finished, or even started, an internal complaint process before talking with us about a civil claim.

We also understand what's at stake when the person who hurt you is someone you still have to see, a coworker, a boss, a classmate, or someone with authority over your career or education. Fear of retaliation, of not being believed, or of losing something you worked hard for is real. That fear is part of the conversation we have with you, not something you have to manage alone first.