The Glamorous Grind
Where grit meets glamour, and the law is always in style.
Hosted by attorneys Ilona Antonyan and Mila Arutunian of Antonyan Miranda LLP, The Glamorous Grind delivers bold conversations at the intersection of law, lifestyle, and mindset.
Each episode features riveting stories from inside the courtroom, celebrity interviews, and real-life legal battles that shape lives and headlines. From empowerment and entrepreneurship to manifestation and vision boards, we explore the hustle behind the glam with fearless insight.
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The Glamorous Grind
Billion-Dollar Justice for Foster Kids
The journey to justice often takes unexpected paths. Attorney Blake Woodhall returns to share the remarkable conclusion of his fight against Los Angeles County, resulting in a historic $4 billion settlement for 11,000 survivors of sexual abuse in the foster care system over a staggering 65-year period.
Behind the headlines and enormous settlement figure lies a profound human story. Woodhall reveals how victims—many now in their 60s, 70s, and 80s—have carried the weight of childhood trauma throughout their entire lives. These survivors commonly struggle with educational disruptions, employment instability, relationship difficulties, and profound trust issues. As one survivor now in prison wrote to Woodhull: "I've had a really hard life and I've been told it's because of the emotional, mental damage done to me as a kid. You people are like guardian angels to me."
The settlement represents more than financial compensation. For thousands who suffered in silence for decades, it provides validation, acknowledgment, and the powerful realization they weren't alone. "Even though it's money, that's all we can get for them," Woodhull explains, "it's still a symbol they're not alone, they have a voice."
Woodhall also shares the emotional toll of representing trauma survivors, especially as someone who experienced childhood sexual abuse himself. These personal connections transform legal advocacy into something deeply meaningful: "Living is about serving others and helping them. For whatever reason, God put me in this position to be a person who can advocate for people who are suffering."
The case serves as both healing for past victims and protection for future ones. By creating significant financial consequences for institutional failures, the settlement establishes powerful incentives for systemic change. Social workers, supervisors, and organizations must recognize warning signs, follow proper reporting procedures, and conduct thorough investigations to prevent future abuse.
Ready to hear how one attorney's persistence changed thousands of lives and created a new standard for institutional accountability? Listen now and discover how justice, even decades delayed, can still transform lives and systems.
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🎙️ Hosts: Ilona Antonyan & Mila Arutunian
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What an amazing journey it must have been to take 11,000 people and use those statements to demonstrate how the system failed to protect these children. Welcome to the Glamorous Grind where grit meets glamour and ambition isn't afraid to challenge institutions.
Ilona:Today's episode is about justice, not in theory, but in action.
Blake:Even though it's money, that's all we can get for them, it's still a symbol they're not alone, they have a voice.
Mila:Attorney Blake Woodhull led the charge in a historic $4 billion settlement against Los Angeles County for its systemic failure to protect children in the foster care system.
Blake:There's like some life-changing type experiences that you have with folks when you meet them in person and you tell them hey, I settled your case.
Mila:You can't change what happened to them, but you're making them feel heard, making the world know that what happened to them matters. But you're also helping the potential victims of the future. So you're literally changing the world.
Ilona:This case is monumental. It is not just legal history, it's human impact and we're honored to have Blake back with us to discuss how everything went down.
Mila:Blake, thank you so much for coming back with us.
Ilona:We were super excited to hear the case finally settled and we want to know more about it, because the last time you came on the show you couldn't answer some questions because it was confidential and it wasn't done yet. It was in the works. Now it's public, it's been published everywhere on the Internet and we want to know what was going on behind the scenes.
Blake:Thanks for having me back Appreciate it. So yeah, the case, just in general or summary fashion, was a case against the County of Los Angeles for systemic sexual abuse occurring over a period of about 65 years. It included foster care cases, camp detention center, juvenile hall type cases, foster care cases, camp detention center, juvenile hall type cases. And then the one that I primarily worked on were cases arising out of abuse, sexual abuse at McLaren Hall, which was a temporary shelter for foster kids. When I was here the last time. I wasn't able to answer a lot of questions, but we have reached a settlement with the County of Los Angeles. That settlement is for $4 billion and it will cover claims of approximately 11,000 people.
Ilona:You said this is about systemic abuse over the last 65 years. I've seen a news article where it's you with about six other attorneys in the photograph who are all working on this with you on the case. All, I think, heroes, because you've done something tremendous that has never been done before, and you've helped so many people that now are at least 65 years old. Right, because if-.
Blake:Some even older.
Ilona:So can you tell us more about the age group of people who suffered and lived with this for so many years that are now getting justice?
Blake:Well, first of all, I do want to acknowledge the other lawyers that were involved in this. It was a monumental task to get this done, as you could imagine Countless hours in working on working up the cases.
Mila:Can I ask you how long has the litigation been ongoing before it settled?
Blake:Well, we got our first McLaren Hall case four years ago and it really started. It ramped up from there. The primary negotiation with the county went on for about a year and there were some really, really talented lawyers on each side, by the way, to get this thing done. So I did want to acknowledge those other lawyers, but in terms of the victims because that's really what this is about it's about the victims and you're right, a lot of these people have been living with the subsequent damage of being sexually abused as a child. For example, I have a case of a client who was abused in 1958 in McLaren Hall.
Ilona:How old was he or she at the time?
Blake:She was, I want to say, 10 years old. So she's what would that make her Late, 70s, 80s and she's been living with it for that whole time. And to see all sorts of different types of ways people are affected by being sexually abused as children has certainly been. It's devastating, it's tragic, but what we've been finding with the announcement of the settlement and talking to our clients now about it is many of them, the vast majority of them feel like they finally have some semblance of justice, and even though it's money that's all we can get for them was money it's still a symbol to them that, first of all, they're not alone. Secondly, that they have a voice, and that voice was given to them by us filing a civil lawsuit against the county on their behalf.
Ilona:It's crazy that it's 11,000 people that were sexually abused. That's kids, 11,000 children.
Blake:I've identified a number of things that are relatively across the board in terms of the type of damage this has caused. One is that my clients typically have either never finished school or they've had to take a a a much different or unorthodox um route to finish school later in life, say as an adult. So most of them didn't um graduate from high school, um, let alone college. Most of them have have spotty employment so they have difficulties maintaining uh gainful employment. I have one client who's 60 years old and he's had 200 jobs in his life and oftentimes that's because of a lack of trust and authority.
Blake:Most have very, very difficult times in relationships, maintaining a relationship with somebody, a partner. So that's a devastating, devastating damage. Oftentimes they have a criminal background They've had, they've just resorted to you know the type of behavior that's impulsive and damaging, oftentimes because they also don't have a regular job, so they don't have any money so they need to go engage in criminal activity to survive. So those are sort of very common types of damages that we see and oftentimes a client will have every single one of those.
Blake:I mean just one of those alone creates instability in your life and makes it difficult to manage. But all of them combined frankly, I don't know how some of them even have made it this far.
Mila:And frankly, I don't know how some of them even have made it this far, so immense psychological, emotional damage as a result of this. I mean, and foundationally, what happens to you as a child forms kind of the foundation of your life, so that completely makes sense.
Mila:But I do want to ask the question that I think most viewers will be wondering is how do you prove damages After 20 years, after 30 years I'm sure witnesses are either gone or dead Like how do you prove that, a, this happened and then, b, that a lot of these issues and these individuals' lives are attributable to the sex abuse, as opposed to whatever issues resulted in them landing in the foster care system? How do you differentiate that? Are there experts involved?
Blake:With the size of this case.
Blake:Those types of things that you talked about are very prevalent in, say, a one-on-one type case where you have one plaintiff and you're suing the foster care system or you're suing the school district or the Little League organization or the YMCA or something right here in this context it was literally impossible to do that detailed of discovery because, first of all, it would take 25 years to get through that many cases if you tried to litigate them like an individual case. So in this context, what we did was we had them sign these fact sheets and they're signed in a penalty of perjury, so it's like that's their statement. It's as if they had their deposition taken or written discovery that we that we do as as litigators, as lawyers, and that's what's essentially going to be evaluated to assess their damages. And they were allowed to provide an impact statement as to how it affected them depression and anxiety and triggers and they were able to be very detailed with that type of information and we helped them do that.
Blake:So we really didn't do a lot of traditional methods of discovery to prove up the case. It was, um, it was really more of a person saying, hey, I was in McLaren Hall at this particular time giving very detailed information that was corroborated many times by other people involved as well, and then sometimes some people have had some therapy or they have had some things that we could produce documents to show that. But for the most part there really wasn't a ton of discovery. We took some depositions of some principal people who are still alive, some witnesses, some whistleblowers and some other folks, but at the end of the day that's how we were able to quote unquote prove damages was essentially self-corroborating by people giving their own statements and their own words.
Ilona:Were any of the abusers still alive and potentially already convicted of any crimes related to any of the 11,000 people?
Blake:So a lot of people are dead, as you probably can imagine. Some are still alive. We don't have any ability to criminally prosecute anybody and we certainly, you know, didn't expect the district attorney to turn around and go. We're going to charge somebody from the 1980s. It just they just didn't have that kind of bandwidth to really do even the county to do some you know, serious deep dive on the alleged perpetrators.
Blake:Oftentimes also, some of our clients were five, six, nine, 12 years old. They don't even remember the names of their, of their abuser. They can give a physical description. We saw a lot of very similar physical descriptions during particular time periods and some people had like a tattoo that they remember, or a or a nickname or something like that. But it was even hard to identify a lot of the perpetrators because of memory loss, because of the passage of time. There's more awareness now. It is still different times. I'm not saying that kids aren't abused anymore.
Blake:And then, the real answer to your question, though, as you know, sometimes the only way you get people to make changes, you hit them in the pocketbook, and that's what's happening here, and there's a lot of people that are, that are pissed off over the fact that the county's paying $4 billion. I'm not the I'm not the most popular person around, being what you know. I'm a. You know I've been called a lot of names for for this, uh, for doing this, because of the negative aspect of this. Oh, this is just a money grab. These are just the lawyers coming in. They don't really care about people, things like that. But if even the taxpayers, you know, get pissed off enough to where they're not electing these people anymore and they're running these people out and we're getting the right people in.
Blake:From the power that I have as a lawyer in filing civil lawsuits, that's all I can do, so the only thing I can get is money, but I also know that money is a powerful tool to get people to change.
Mila:What an amazing journey it must have been to take. 11,000 people put together statements on behalf of all of them and use those statements to demonstrate how the system failed to protect these children. The perpetrators obviously awful, and I also wish we, as a mom of three, we could do something to punish them. But we punished the underlying system that failed our kids and I do believe that because the settlement is so high, because it's all over the news, these types of things will not happen again on that type of systematic level.
Blake:And that was you. Awareness certainly leads to change and awareness communicated in the right way, and that's what we're hoping with some of this. And you know, the thing I've actually been focusing on more than the amount like the amount is sort of shocking and it's historical right Everybody's talking about. It's never been done before on this scale and there's never been a government entity who's ever paid this amount of money in a settlement of any kind, and blah, blah, blah. And that's true. But to me, the issue is the number of victims. The amount of money mirrors the number of victims. If there weren't this number of victims, the amount wouldn't have been this much.
Blake:So, yeah, you guys need to get your shit together. And then, number one, acknowledge what's been done to these people over decades of time. I mean, just think, just like to actually think about that for a second 65 years. I mean that's wild and it's inexcusable for there to be that many victims over that much time. And these are just the victims that came forward. So I'm like, okay, yeah, it's $4 billion and you might be offended by that, but why aren't you more offended by 11,000 people? They mirror each other.
Ilona:That's why the amount is what it is, and if it's 11,000 who came forward, there are many who already died and took their lives, that were impacted, that didn't make it this far in life. How did y'all join forces and turn it into a class action?
Blake:It kind of happened organically, and I always say it's not a true class action, it was called a coordinated proceeding, which is a little different but we don't need to get into the distinction right now, but it sort of happened organically.
Blake:I remember specifically and I still have the chart, I'm going to frame it someday where that we internally made is like a little pie chart and um, and had a timeline and we had nine clients from McLaren hall and and I have this awesome paralegal, michelle Keeks I got to give her a shout out, she's like the greatest paralegal in the history of paralegals and she made this little color coded pie chart and it was like she was like this is a little weird, blake, we're getting, we have nine McLaren Hall cases and like three of them are from this particular time period and three of them from this time period and two from here and like and they're all one's in the 70s and they're like this is really strange, you know there might be something here. So internally we started really, you know, looking more into that and then all of a sudden these people just came out of the woodwork.
Ilona:How did you find them, did you?
Blake:advertise them. Well, we advertised, we said, did you ever get abused in McLaren Hall? But the bottom line is we ended up with about 850 clients. When you're first sort of starting out and you're filing these complaints, you don't really know what the universe is out there. Then all of a sudden we would go to a case management conference or something and they would go. Then the judge would go you know, I'm getting a bunch of these cases, and then all of a sudden you find out oh, this other law firm is also filing a bunch of cases. Let me call them up and see what's going on.
Blake:And then for McLaren Hall, in a coordinated proceeding there always needs to be a liaison counsel, which is like leadership counsel. And so what happened was myself and another lawyer from a different firm, Slater Slater, who we had the majority of the McLaren Hall cases. We became leadership counsel or liaison counsel for that particular case. Then what happened is we originally were we had them sort of separated into three buckets. We had the detention center, juvenile hall cases in one bucket. We had true foster care cases where a person was abused by a foster father, and then McLaren Hall, and so we were originally going to try to mediate with the county on those individually.
Blake:But then we decided that the only real way we could do this is to pool sort of our resources together, and we just got together and we were the primary ones who were negotiating with the county. So if you had like three or four cases, or even 100 cases, you really weren't involved in the main negotiation with the county, and that's the way all coordinated proceedings go. That's the way the Roman Catholic Church cases are going. There's always a liaison council on both sides. By the way, the county hired a bunch of different law firms too to represent them for particular cases, but there was leadership council for the defendants as well. So that's really the only way it works, though, because if you get everybody involved it just doesn't happen. But the actual coordination of everything really did just kind of happen organically, and then, through discussions with the county, we learned that, hey, we need to do this all together because it's not going to be manageable.
Ilona:Could you share with us the most touching story of all those people that you've worked with and how it impacted their life, I actually.
Blake:So I actually brought a statement that somebody sent me and I don't know if it's like the most touching, but this is just an example of of kind of the stuff that we get from clients and we don't always get these, by the way, sometimes our clients can be challenging. But this is from a guy and I won't say his name just for privacy reasons, but he sent this to us after the settlement and he's in prison. And, by the way, we had to get 850 people to sign releases and a lot of those can be done via DocuSign things like that. But I actually was going to prisons, going to jail, I was going to convalescent hospitals, I was going to all these different places to get clients who, who otherwise couldn't DocuSign things to sign, to physically sign the releases. And there's some really neat. There's like it makes me emotional, but there's like some life-changing type experiences that you have with with folks, when you meet them in person and you tell them hey, I settled your case, I'm going to get you some money and just some wild things. So anyway, we got this from a guy who's in prison and he says to everyone involved I just wanted to thank everyone helping to get us some kind of justice.
Blake:I've had a really hard life and I've been told it's because of the emotional, mental damage done to me as a kid. You people are like guardian angels to me. If any of you ever need my help, please don't hesitate to call. I'm 6'9" and 370 pounds, so I'm great for painting or moving or whatever you need. But from the bottom of my heart, thank you all. I hope the best of your dreams come true for you all and I pray to God every night to ask him to do that for all of you guys. I know people always say bad things about lawyers, but you all are so above and beyond awesome, so once again, thank you so much. I mean I can't add anything.
Mila:That was a very powerful letter. And coming from someone in prison, someone who is now keenly aware of how the abuse he experienced in childhood has affected his life and probably landed him in prison. Now you got pretty emotional reading that letter. How do you balance the emotions? Obviously, the legal strategy is one thing, and you have to be very sharp for that, which you are. But you're not just doing this as a job. You find so much purpose in it. How do you balance the emotions from the work?
Blake:I don't.
Mila:No good lawyers do I have learned that.
Blake:I don't do it very well, look, I mean I actually think it's okay to be moved emotionally and to be moved to even crying. I mean I had a really interesting experience when that one thing that came out in the you know about the seven, the seven different lawyers and they call us the dream team and all that. Right, we did a whole like photo shoot and all this stuff and I actually don't like that stuff. I was kind of uncomfortable.
Blake:I don't come on, but I had a really bizarre day that day. Right before I went had to go do that I I met a client in a convalescent hospital and, um, he couldn take care of himself anymore and his mom was taking care of him. She passed away. So he's in this convalescent hospital so he doesn't have email. He did so he didn't even know about the settlement. So I went in there and his room was pitch black, dark, 10 AM and he was sleeping and I woke him up and told him about the settlement. We probably talked for half an hour and just had this really, really nice, really nice time in terms of connecting and he was very happy about it.
Blake:And then I went and did that photo shoot thing and then I went to, then I was at, went to Hollywood to a facility where for stroke victims and, ironically, the, the, the. This facility was right down the street from a Baptist church that my dad used to preach at in Hollywood, fountain Avenue Baptist Church, and so it was already a little emotional, right, I'm driving down Fountain Avenue going to this facility and this facility was kind of dirty and overrun and just very depressing and my client was naked when I walked in. He had a sheet over him and he was asleep and he had a stroke and I, um, kind of woke him up and explained to him that I got a settlement for him and he was very happy. He wasn't super, super verbal, but um, yeah, I, I got in my car afterwards and I just wept I don't know what to say. I just wept and I think that's okay, you know, and it's not just a sad type of a cry, it's also, um, I am a purpose-driven person and when you, when you see it right there that I've affected this guy like he's going to have some resources now to maybe help with his condition and he's, he has a chance to recover from a stroke and, um, and for them just to say thank you and for them to, um, express gratitude, they give me back more than what I've given them. That's what I really feel like, and so how do I balance it? I don't know. I I feel it, I embrace it like a warm blanket, like let's go. I'm going to feel this right now and I think that's okay and I think it's good for us, and then I have to maintain boundaries and things like that for sure, with clients and not get too involved in some things that just don't have anything to do with the case. But, at the end of the day, those types of events like that's I'm sorry, but that's living.
Blake:Living is not, you know, even about the money or or, um, you know, the, the, the living in San Diego and all the benefits of that, and the material is in the consumer areas, and that's not what living is about. Living is about serving others and helping them, and this was a way that I was able to do that and I will be. I will be way that I was able to do that and I will be. I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to do it and for whatever reason God put me in this position, to, to, to be a person who can advocate for people who are suffering, and I I don't think I mentioned this the last time, but I was a victim of sex abuse as a child. This the last time, but I was a victim of sex abuse as a child. Maybe I did, I don't remember.
Blake:So for me to be able to represent people just like me, I can relate to them, I understand them on a certain level, like, what else is there that's better than that, and so, to balance it. I don't actually consciously think about, well, how am I going to balance this? Maybe I don't do it very well, maybe I'm I'm you know, I'm a mess. Sometimes I'm. I have my moments. Trust me, and I have other things outside of work that I do to try to help me. Do you know? I coach football and I I take long walks and I have three awesome kids that I you know I'm now an empty nester as of a couple of weeks ago, but three awesome kids that I have great relationships with and I have good friends and things like that, that kind of. You got to step away from it, of course, but at the end of the day, like it's, it's been like a call. It was a calling for me to do it and I'm just really proud of being able to to help all these people. What else can you ask for?
Mila:I feel like you're exactly where you need to be. I've known you for probably seven years and I've never seen you more alive, I guess, than I do now, and I want to say, like you're a warrior, like I see you as a warrior fighting for people, and not only, may I note, are you helping the people who this happened to. Clearly, you know that's obviously they're going to get money. You can't change what happened to them, but you're doing the next best thing, which is A giving them a voice, making them feel heard, making the world know that what happened to them matters and the way it affected their lives matters. But you're also helping the potential victims of the future that now there will be better practices in place to prevent these things from affecting future kids. I mean, kids are the most vulnerable population in our society, and when they are placed, not under their control, into a system that is supposed to help them get better and that system abuses them, there's nothing worse than that. So you're literally changing the world.
Ilona:When you tell me they're going to get money and make some things of people who you know win lottery and then they go lose it or buy expensive things or their relatives can take advantage of them. So here you're dealing with a lot of clients who are now older, in their 60s or, like you mentioned, in a convalescent home, who may be dying.
Ilona:They're going to their relatives who may be estranged from them will hear that they're coming into this money Now they're going to be possibly facing the risks of being taken advantage of by their friends possible elder abuse now right.
Ilona:Because they want their money and, like you said, they don't know their settlement. They don't have internet or mail Like a relative can come to their bed and, hey, sign this and take everything they're going to earn. Is there anything in place potentially to protect them from having a trust or having something else, so that their money is protected and so they can decide who they're going to leave it to through a trust, through administration?
Blake:Yeah, so we've already set them up, if they choose, with a person in a company that's going to be able to facilitate that for them. So all that information has been provided to them on setting up some sort of framework that will protect them. The other interesting thing about this case is that their settlement, for the most part, will be paid out over five years, so they're going to get a little bit of a chunk. They'll get 20% of their settlement per year for five years, and so that could be a good thing where they don't just get it all in one lump sum like the lottery thing. But we can't force them to do that. But we provide the information, we recommend it and we'll be dealing with I mean, because this is payable out over five years, we're going to be dealing with our clients for the next five years, giving them advice, trying to support them, trying to help them.
Ilona:And for those who are older and who have been separated from their spouse but are still legally married. If they don't have a will or trust in place and they die, that settlement automatically will pass on to their spouse right.
Blake:We have a case just like that where a guy, he passed away and he had a life partner, a male, who claimed that he was with him for like 15 years or something. And we were like well, did you ever get married? Do you have a will? Do you have any documents you can show that express his desire for whatever he gets to go to you? And he didn't have anything like that. And we found his children and his ex-wife, but she wasn't his ex-wife. They never legally got divorced. So she's like that's my money, you know, and so it's like we, you know, we we don't really get involved in that family dynamic, but we also have a responsibility to make sure the money goes to the right people.
Ilona:Well, if any of your clients may think they're divorced, but they want to know for sure, they should call us.
Ilona:I will and look at the court records to see if a judgment was ever entered. Because what I've seen happen is people are like, oh yeah, I paid some lawyer to divorce me and they actually don't go through with the paperwork. And often lay people think that oh, automatically you're divorced six months later after you filed and served, and it doesn't happen if you don't submit a judgment. So many of those people who are older, who haven't seen their ex for a long time, may still be married.
Blake:I'll send them to you. I'll send them to you, for sure.
Mila:So now we're going to play Red Flag, Green Flag. We are going to talk about institutional behavior for what it is, whether it's real reform or a reputational spin. You tell us if it's a red flag or a green flag and why.
Blake:All right.
Ilona:You ready? I'm ready.
Mila:Let's do this Okay.
Ilona:Settlement funds are dispersed, but survivors are forced to waive their right to public testimony.
Blake:First plus. You would say that's a red flag, but sometimes to actually get a settlement in place you have to give up certain things, and sometimes that's maintaining confidentiality and you can't just go around and publicly talk about it. Now, in this case, we don't really have that and people can still talk about what happened to them and what the county did to fail them, and so I guess that's an. It depends whether it's a red flag or a green flag. I certainly prefer disclosure and that can create more awareness and some more accountability if things are able to be disclosed pertaining to a settlement. Accountability if things are able to be disclosed pertaining to a settlement. But other times, like I said, as I'm sure you guys know from time to time, that's the only way you actually get a settlement done.
Mila:is you got to give that up? I never get a defendant to agree to waive confidentiality except for in sex, harassment or sex abuse cases because they have to.
Blake:Yeah, so I totally understand.
Mila:Okay, A county announces major reforms to its child protection policies but doesn't fire or discipline any leadership from the time of the abuse.
Blake:Yeah, that's got red flag written all over it, right? I mean, what's the point of having a policy procedure if you're not enforcing it? There's a reason and purpose for policies and procedures and in the context of these cases, it's to protect children. And when you don't enforce it and just let behavior to continue, children are going to continue to get abused. That's what this whole case is about.
Ilona:Well, our other guest who is doing CWS nowadays, he's saying that still happens, that these people will just get transferred to a different position and they stay.
Blake:That's an oversight issue. It's not a policy or procedure problem. It's an oversight issue, and so if you have a supervisor or somebody who is just ignoring that, then obviously that person needs to be removed. Now how do you find out? Well, if the person who has disclosed it or the person who's talked about it notices that nothing's been done, they could go to a higher level. There's always a higher level, right? Somebody always has to answer to somebody, and so that's just an oversight issue. If somebody doesn't do something about a report, because nowadays you have mandatory reporting and you have all kinds of procedures and policies in place and laws in place Just comes down to enforcement.
Ilona:Again Comes down to enforcement and policies in place and laws in place. It comes down to enforcement again. It comes down to enforcement. All right, a public official apologizes on camera but privately lobbies against transparency measures.
Blake:Well, that's a red flag. I've had this happen many times in my practice and I won't be careful what I say. The Roman Catholic Church is the worst at this. I've had cardinals and bishops. I've heard them testify, or I've had them say in meetings that they're committed to compensating victims of sex abuse at the hands of their pedophile priests over decades of time and then, privately, they absolutely do whatever they can to not pay a dime on those cases. They file for bankruptcy and they delay and hope people die.
Mila:So that's a major red flag for me.
Blake:It actually hits me personally because I just despise that. That's almost worse than just coming out and saying we don't think this happened and I'd have more respect for them if they did that. That's like that's almost worse than just coming out and saying we don't think this happened and you know, I'd have more respect for them if they did that. But to come out and to publicly claim that they're going to do something and, you know, try to save face with the public and then in private, where it really counts, by the way, it doesn't matter what we say in a press conference, right. What matters is what's happening behind the scenes. To go and do the opposite of that, that's just evil and dark.
Mila:A law firm launches a hotline for survivors in other counties to safely report abuse.
Blake:So, that's a yeah, that's a green flag. I mean, hotlines aren't the end-all be-all. They can even hotlines. A lot of times it's important who the recipient is. Make sure that you have proper training and make sure you have people that know how to deal with crisis situations and trauma situations. But at the end of the day, it's also led to a lot of benefits in terms of again providing somebody a voice, even in private, where they maybe wouldn't want to come forward because of the shame and humiliation and the embarrassment that's created from being abused and the concern and the worry of how people are going to receive that and how they're going to. You know. So sometimes you don't go to family members. I didn't, I didn't, I was going to take mine to the grave, right. And so if you have a hotline or something like that where you can talk to somebody that you don't even know but you know, you know cares about you and will support you and provide you with some resources, and that's that's a win, win.
Mila:I always hear this quote. What will you do with your pain?
Blake:You know, I'm sure you've heard of it, yeah.
Mila:And you know, a lot of people take their pain and they use it to be angry or victimize themselves and say how awful their lives are and blame all their problems on it. But with you, I see something so different and it's so refreshing and this is why I love. Your energy is because you take your pain. I mean, you were abused as a child and you've dealt with so many things in your life that I am aware of, and you have used your pain as a weapon to protect other people and help them cure their pain, and that's just very powerful. So I just want to say, on the record, I'm very proud of you.
Blake:Thanks, mila, you're saying that because you're my friend, I appreciate that. And there's, I mean, I've sort of languished for many years, even in the legal field, just doing things that I just wasn't happy with or content or liked or anything, and questioned what am I doing? And all those and I do want to thank Herman Law for hiring me. They recruited me and it was. I kind of feel like my life sort of went full circle once I started doing this type of work.
Blake:Um, because that is true, I'm not, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna play a victim but I can't help victims. You know, my abuser was a male neighbor and so it wasn't somebody who really had authority over me and it happened just for a I call it a season. And so, um, I had really neat parents. I had a cool mom and dad and my you know, my mom sold Avon and my dad was a minister and we kind of had humble um beginnings but a very loving home and I had really neat. I have really neat brother and sister that I to this day love and get together all the time and and um, I had.
Blake:So I had really neat support within my family and um, and highly educated family too, you know. And so my, my dad kind of pigeonholed me into being a lawyer. He said that he just he wanted to be a lawyer and and he felt a call to become a minister instead. But he was the you know national champion in debate his freshman year at Pepperdine and the guy was like a genius, so he had those analytical skills and and the logical reasoning type of a brain and kind of identified that in me very early and so he was like you're going to be a lawyer. But once I became a lawyer I was like, ah shit.
Mila:Speaking of lawyers, we have a lot of listeners who are lawyers and a lot of people will see this verdict and think, oh yeah, $4 million verdict of course that's so easy. And think, oh yeah, $4 million verdict, of course Like that's so easy. No, like. I am sure that there were days when you did not think you could push one foot in front of the other, when you hit obstacles, walls, wanted to give up, and I heard this quote I posted about this the other day that what is the secret to success? It's passion. And why is it passion? Because when you're passionate about something, you become literally an unstoppable force, Because every time you fall down, you won't care, you will get back up again and keep going. So tell us, how many times did you want to give up and your passion drove you to keep going until you reached that $4 billion settlement.
Blake:Yeah, I work from home and I have certain pictures or things around me, that kind of of McLaren hall, by the way, like I've done a site visit there and we have a and we have a diagram of it, and I've had a diagram of McLaren hall on my wall where I just look to the right and I can see it.
Blake:So I use things to like I keep me motivated. But yeah, I've had my moments where I'm in the corner, stuck in my thumb and fetal position and going why am I doing this? And and just some of the darkest, worst things you possibly can imagine. And just when you think it couldn't be any worse in terms of stories of my clients, you hear another one. But you know, I'm oddly, I'm sort of comfortable in the dark and so that didn't necessarily make me want to quit, but, um, but yeah, sometimes I'm like I got to take a walk around the block and I can't or I just have to, I just have to stop or you just yeah, I um, I can't count how many hours I spent on this case.
Blake:What kept me motivated? With my clients, my victims? I want this to be very victim-centric and not so much about me. I'd love to be out of business, I'd love to have to go do something else because there weren't any more victims around right to represent. So that's what I really focused on.
Blake:What's next for you. I'm kind of going from one big case to another one. There's actually Polinsky Children's Center down here in San Diego. We have a lot of cases now for abuse that occurred in there, and it's a very similar type of a place as're not managed well, because you have a ton of staff members and you have a ton of people who are interacting with children every day all the time, and vulnerable children who have been removed from their home for some reason because of abuse and neglect, and then they're taken to a facility.
Blake:And just imagine the relief that they probably have being placed in a facility where they're like okay, I'm not gonna get beat up by my dad today, or I'm not gonna, or I might have food, I'm gonna have breakfast, lunch and dinner and then to go in there Pending a placement in a foster home with a more hopefully stable environment and then be abused again, all over again, sexually. And people always ask me well, where do you get your cases from, or how do you identify the cases, or where do you see that cases are coming from? Wherever there are children there you will find pedophiles, so that's their breeding ground, and when you have a large number of them all in one place, them being vulnerable children. You're going to have problems if there's a failure, if there's a failure to protect.
Ilona:It's time to get gritty Audience Q&A. Listener question. I'm a social worker and I'm overwhelmed. I see so many problems all the time, but I don't know how to speak up without risking my job. What can I do?
Blake:If somebody notices it going on, first of all, they have an absolute legal responsibility to immediately report that to a supervisor or to somebody who can take care of it right away. There is no lag time. Don't wait a day, Don't wait an hour. You immediately report it and then an investigation will ensue. And then, of course, you need to also follow the policies and procedures for the type of investigation you do.
Blake:I have lots of cases where there was a report, they did an investigation and they didn't do the investigation properly. They didn't interview the person face-to-face. And there's a reason why you interview a potential perpetrator face-to-face so you can see body language, you can see how they answer questions. Are they sweating when you're asking them questions? They're doing it over the phone, things like that. So, even like you can't just go, well, I'm just not going to follow the procedure. You just can't be that kind of a person you can't worry about.
Blake:Well, is this going to affect me? This is my boss. Who's the guy who's doing this? What if I? What if I do? Go and tell somebody? That's going to affect me personally, and I understand people that might feel that way. They got three kids and they got a job and they don't have. You know, and if they say something they don't want to get in trouble themselves because it might be their supervisor, et cetera. But you just have to have, first of all, you have to have a respect for the legal obligation that you have and then also the courage just within you to actually be a person who wants to protect children. Because that's what happens is. It's not even necessarily that the policies in place are wrong or bad, it's the implementation and the enforcement of them.
Mila:And I want to add just a couple of things from an employer perspective and the enforcement of them. And I want to add just a couple of things from an employer perspective.
Mila:First of all, like you said, if employees, especially supervisors, witness, this but really any employee witnesses sex abuse or child abuse and they don't report it. They could be liable and if a lawsuit is filed they will be deposed and they will have to talk about it. Secondly, if they're concerned about retaliation, legally an employer is not allowed to retaliate against you for making these complaints.
Mila:I've seen so often that people want to make complaints but they're terrified so they don't put them in writing. They just like kind of tell someone and then there's retaliation afterwards, but then you can't prove they made the complaint because it was quietly made and not in writing. So if you really want to protect yourself from retaliation, always document the complaints, Put it in writing, CC, everyone you can on it so that it is investigated and then later if there's any retaliation against you, you can prove that it's tied to the complaint you made. Like if you get written up after you make a complaint, if your hours are cut, if you get transferred to a different position you don't want, and it's after you made a complaint and before you made the complaint your employment was perfect.
Ilona:That's a clear tie, yeah, so it's very important we're saying because I think these people who have a duty to report and investigate need to really think about how this is going to impact this child's life. And it is important, if it happened even once or even for a few seconds, that if it happened at all, you have to take what the child says seriously, report it up the chain, because that is going to impact this child's life for the rest of their life and can destroy it and the future generations.
Blake:And the last thing I'll say about that is also, training is really important. You know, a lot of times, defense attorneys, they'll go oh, this happened a long time ago. Times are different, you know. I'm like oh, so it was okay in the seventies to have sexually abused children, like there's never been a time right where it's okay to sexually abuse children. But there was a time, though, where we didn't look for red, for red flags. You're talking about the red and green flags.
Blake:Well, there's a lot of red flags and sexual abuse. Usually. Usually, it doesn't just happen where somebody just comes in and just abuses a kid. They get groomed. You know there's grooming behaviors. There's all kinds of things that you can look for.
Blake:Lap sitting, for example, is a is a red flag, is it? Is it responsive touching or active touching? So responsive touching is a kindergarten kid comes running up to you and gives you a hug and you just kind of you know pat them on the back. That's a responsive touching. That's not. That's not a sexual abuse type activity. But are you going? Is it a person that you notice going towards these children and actively touching them, and where are they touching them? And so there's all kinds of red flags, grooming behaviors such as hey, you're my guy, I'm going to, you know I'm going to. They isolate people and they give them. They give them benefits. We have so many clients. They were given alcohol, they were given candy, they were given drugs. They were given hey, I'm going to let you out of McLaren hall for a day Like wild stuff. They would get into the car of the perpetrators and they would go to a different place, go to a park, get drunk, abuse them and bring them back.
Mila:That's why these kids will blame themselves. Yeah.
Blake:So there's a lot of grooming. There's a lot of grooming behaviors that these people need to be trained on to, to identify and look for before even the abuse happens, and not like a training video where you watch it on video. You watch it on a thing two-hour training video and you click the slides and you go through a weird scenario with some actor, like an actual training session, with maybe even people who do this for a living or who were victims themselves and who were groomed that can identify different ways that people do this, because that's what a pedophile does, is there?
Ilona:always grooming. I'm assuming there's just there's almost always grooming. Yeah.
Blake:It doesn't usually just happen in a vacuum. There's always some grooming behavior when you talk to the clients about okay, when did you first meet the perpetrator? What happened, you know? Oh well, they would give me candy or they would say, hey, you know, they would incentivize it and then normalize it once it happens.
Mila:This week's Glam Tip Legal reform may not feel glamorous, but integrity always is.
Ilona:And fighting for the voiceless. That's power, that's purpose and that's legacy.
Mila:Blake, thank you for showing us what the law can do when it's used with heart, intellect and ferocity. This case proves that even the biggest systems can be challenged and changed To our listeners. If you're in a system that's broken, speak up and don't stop. Justice starts with a voice.
Ilona:And the right attorney. We are the glamorous grind and justice that's always in style.
Mila:See you next week.
