By Jorge Casuso
October 20, 2025 -- The City Council will hold a special closed session meeting this evening to discuss the latest round of child sexual abuse cases that date back decades.
The 32 cases filed against the City and the Police Activities League (PAL) over the past two and a half years stem from allegations that former City employee Eric Uller, a volunteer with PAL, molested more than 400 teenage victims, most of them Latino.
Tuesday the Council will take up a fifth round of cases after paying settlements to 229 victims totaling some $229 million.
The meeting comes after the Council on September 9 approved a "fiscal distress" resolution due in large part the settlements that have been draining the City's reserves.
"We've gone from having $300 million to $400 million in cash (reserves), to having $150 million," City Manager Oliver Chi told the Council, noting that $60 million had been set aside to balance the current budget.
Chi called the lawsuits "a massively important issue" the City has been trying to expeditiously address.
The declaration came six weeks after the Council took up 19 cases in closed session filed on behalf of some 170 alleged victims, according to attorney Catherine Lerer, who represents most of the plaintiffs.
Two members of the public weighed in on the item calling on the City to stop settling the cases and investigate who knew about the sex abue allegations that spanned from the late 80s to possibly 2010.
"While the victims of abuse perpetrated by a city employee must be compensated, it is irresponsible for city council to continue to make lump-sum settlements with no discovery and no investigation," community activist Nikki Kolhoff wrote.
"The initial settlements were poorly advised and appear designed to stop the investigation. Then the claims piled up and the city has been settling with no change in approach.
"Now that the amounts are hovering around $300 MILLION, an investigation is long past due," Kolhoff said. "Who knew what and when did they know it? Who is being protected by these settlements that risk bankrupting our city to keep an investigation from happening?"
The sentiment was echoed by resident Dannie Charney.
"OBVIOUSLY YOU ARE PROTECTING STAFF AND LEADERS AND OTHERS WHO WORKED HERE DURING THAT TIME AND WERE EITHER INVOLVED OR ENABLED BY TURNING A BLIND EYE," Charney wrote.
"YOU HAVE FURTHER DESTROYED THIS CITY TAKING THIS IRRESPONSIBLE STANCE," Charney said. "STOP IT NOW. DISCOVERY - YES I AM SHOUTING - SO FED UP."
Since the Council's closed door session on July 29, the number of cases filed have jumped from 19 to the 32 cases the Council will take up this evening. It is not known how many total plaintiffs are involved in the new cases.
The latest cases have been filed since April 2023 when the City Council hoped it had closed a "sad chapter in Santa Monica history" after settling with a total of 229 plaintiffs.
The pending lawsuits echo allegations made in the first case filed in March 2019 on behalf of six alleged victims against the City and PAL claiming the defendants failed to protect them as children from sexual abuse.
The number of plaintiffs could continue growing since many of the victims are under the age of 40 and fall within the statute of limitations that applies to childhood sexual abuse victims, said Lerer, who has been advertising for clients.
As a PAL volunteer Uller had access to hundreds of children and, according to the allegations, often gave the impression he was on the police force since he worked in the Public Safety building.
Uller killed himself in his Marina del Rey Apartment in November 2018, one week after pleading not guilty to three counts of lewd acts upon a child, two counts of oral copulation of a person under 18 and one count of continuous sexual abuse.
Three weeks before his death, the City announced it was launching an internal investigation into allegations City officials were warned about Uller's behavior and took no action.
The City never released the findings or announced if the investigation was completed.