How Big Is Your Team?

Video Transcript

I’m sex abuse attorney Jeff Herman. Uh, my law firm is called Herman Law. I’ve been representing victims of sexual abuse in civil cases for over 25 years. I was inspired to do this work back in the late 1990s while I was representing victims in commercial cases, uh, had a very important case. Um, a mother of a young child came to me whose son, unfortunately was sexually abused, and I heard her story and decided that I wanted to help this family. Uh, this changed the course of my life. It was a very significant case, and what I found out was, in this case, was that a school for autistic preschool children had hired a convicted pedophile without doing a background check. Um, and I wondered, how could this happen? And what I realized is that it happens all too frequently. And so I took that case on and then began in my, my journey of representing victims in sex abuse cases. I believe my mission is to give victims a voice, and we do that through civil litigation by filing a case, a civil lawsuit against institutions that enable predators to molest children. We give victims a voice, but we give them back something that was taken from them. We give them back a measure of justice. Now, we can’t take away what happened, but the measure of justice can be very significant in helping victims heal. Healing is a journey. It’s not a destination, meaning that people are always healing, they’re never healed, but there are significant milestones on that journey. And I think closure in a civil case can be one of those important milestones. Of course, in a civil lawsuit, all we can do is sue for money damages. And the money at the end of the day is mostly symbolic. It’s important, it’s helpful, but to the victims I know for them it’s a measure of justice. That is how our system of justice works. It’s about the money damages.