The city of Santa Monica has announced it is paying more money to settle claims after a former employee of its Police Activities League allegedly molested more than two hundred children.
The settlements total nearly $230 million now, but survivors and attorneys say the city has not been held accountable. They question how Santa Monica and its police department allowed 229 children to be abused right under their noses for more than a decade.
“It happened 16 times over a period of two years, in his car, in parking lots,” said Aldo, a 43-year-old survivor who said he was 12 years old when Eric Uller began molesting him.
He and 228 other victims have now settled with the city for alleged abuse that began in the late 1980s and continued into the early 2,000s.
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Uller was a civilian employee with the city and volunteer with Santa Monica’s Police Activities League for more than a decade, once named an employee of the year. His alleged victims say he pretended to be a police officer and often carried a badge and handcuffs— all the while molesting them at multiple locations throughout the city.
He was arrested in 2018 and then died of an apparent suicide. In previous interviews, Santa Monica’s former police chief and a former president of the Police Activities League both denied knowing Uller was doing anything wrong. Attorney Brian Claypool says it’s impossible that no one knew.
“We want to know why the city of Santa Monica not one time conducted an investigation of Eric Uller prior to 2019. There had been several reports of Eric Uller assaulting young children at Santa Monica PAL in the 1990’s, yet not one single investigation from the Santa Monica Police Department,” Claypool said.
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The city of Santa Monica says it has created a child protection committee and hired a child protection officer to oversee youth programs, and updated screening of volunteers.
In a statement, the city called the victims’ suffering “unfathomable and a “sad part” of Santa Monica’s history.
“The settlement represents the City’s best effort to address their pain. The actions of this former employee happened two to three decades ago, and do not represent the exemplary work of our employees and the PAL program today,” the city said.
Aldo said the wounds of his abuse remain, but he hopes the future might be brighter for others.
“There’s really nothing that can fix what has happened, you know. I’m thankful for it coming out in the open so we can stop any potential abuse in the future,” he said.
