What’s More Expensive: Prevention—Or Turning a Blind Eye?

The number is staggering, but it is not abstract: More than $200 million.

That is what the Los Angeles Unified School District has paid in connection with the crimes of Mark Berndt, a third-grade teacher whose actions have become one of the most widely cited examples in discussions of educator sexual misconduct prevention and institutional accountability. Just this week, the district agreed to pay an additional $30.5 million to 19 more survivors. And still, years after his conviction, victims continue to come forward.

Mark Berndt

In the aftermath of cases like this, a familiar set of questions often emerges—particularly from parents and school leaders navigating school safety training for educators and student protection policies. Will prevention education lead to more reports? Will it frighten children? Will it create problems where none existed before?

These are understandable concerns. But they are rooted in the wrong question.

The question is not whether child sexual abuse prevention education will surface more reports. It is whether we are willing to confront what those reports reveal—and what it costs when we do not.

Because the record in this case is not one of unpredictability or isolated misconduct. It is a record of warning signs that were observed, communicated, and ultimately unaddressed—an example often cited in discussions of school abuse reporting failures. Complaints were made as early as the 1980s. Concerns were raised by parents, students, and colleagues. The behaviors, in hindsight, reflected clear patterns consistent with what experts now identify as manipulation/grooming behavior in schools—patterns that, had they been recognized and acted upon, might have interrupted the trajectory of harm.

Instead, they were absorbed into a system that failed to respond with urgency or clarity.

The financial consequences are now well documented: massive settlements, bond measures to cover decades-old claims, and ongoing litigation shaping school liability in abuse cases across California and beyond. Yet to focus solely on the financial impact is to miss the deeper point. The true cost is borne by the children who were harmed, often in ways that reverberate across a lifetime.

It is in this context that concerns about prevention education deserve a more careful examination. There is a persistent belief that teaching children about boundaries, manipulation/grooming, and reporting will somehow introduce fear or create risk. The evidence—and decades of research in child protection policies in schools—suggest otherwise. Well-designed prevention education is neither sensational nor alarmist. It is developmentally appropriate, grounded in principles of autonomy and safety, and designed to give children the language and confidence to identify and disclose inappropriate behavior.

Importantly, such education does not create abuse. It creates the conditions under which abuse can be recognized and reported.

This distinction matters. When institutions observe an increase in reporting following the implementation of abuse prevention education programs, it is often misinterpreted as a sign of increased risk. In reality, it reflects what experts in reporting abuse in education systems have long understood: reports emerge when individuals—especially children—are given the tools and permission to speak.

For school administrators, this raises an equally important consideration. There can be a perception that increased reporting translates into increased liability. However, the legal and institutional history of cases like Berndt’s suggests the opposite. Liability expands not when reports are made, but when they are ignored, minimized, or mishandled—an impact of ignoring abuse reports that is both human and financial.

Over time, the failure to respond to early warning signs compounds risk in ways that are far more difficult to contain.

What emerges from this case is not simply a narrative of individual wrongdoing, but a broader illustration of systemic failure. Abuse of this magnitude and duration does not occur in a vacuum. It unfolds within environments where ambiguity is tolerated, where concerns are deferred, and where the imperative to act is softened by competing priorities—conditions frequently cited in analyses of institutional failure in abuse cases.

Prevention, in this sense, is not a discrete program or a single training. It is a shift in orientation—from reactive to proactive, from individual blame to systemic accountability. It requires not only educating students, but also equipping adults with the clarity and confidence to recognize and respond to concerning behavior. It requires reporting structures that function as intended, and institutional cultures that prioritize student safety over reputational risk—core principles of preventing educator misconduct.

These are not abstract ideals. They are practical measures that, when implemented consistently, reduce both harm and exposure.

The question, then, is not whether prevention carries a cost. It does. But the more relevant comparison is between the cost of prevention and the cost of school abuse settlements, which continue to rise as survivors come forward years or even decades later.

In the case of the Los Angeles Unified School District, that cost is measured not only in hundreds of millions of dollars, but in decades of preventable harm.

Framed this way, the calculus becomes clearer. Prevention does not create problems. It reveals them. Reporting does not increase risk. It interrupts it.

And silence—however well-intentioned—is never neutral. It is the condition in which abuse persists.

The question is no longer whether we can afford to invest in prevention. It is whether we can afford, once again, to look away.