Adventist Health Settles Abuse Claims for $18.5 Million; Patient Exploitation Law Leaves Out Physical Therapists

One hospital for a rural region

Sonora is the seat of Tuolumne County, in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California’s Gold Country, east of the San Francisco Bay Area. The hospital, legally named Sonora Community Hospital, says it serves nearly 100,000 residents of Tuolumne and neighboring Calaveras counties through its main campus and outlying clinics.

It belongs to Adventist Health, a nonprofit system based in Roseville, Calif., and affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The system says it serves more than 80 communities in the West and Hawaii. Its board is chaired by a regional church administrator.

What the women allege

The case rests on a civil suit filed Aug. 8, 2024, in Tuolumne County Superior Court, case CV66330. Three women filed first; an amended complaint later named eight. In an April 2025 ruling that allowed the case to proceed, the court summarized the claims: unidentified women allege that a hospital employee used his health care role to sexually abuse adult patients from 2007 to 2022, mostly during what the complaint calls “massages.”

According to the complaint, as The Union Democrat reported in August 2024, Elias isolated patients in private treatment rooms, learned about their personal lives and chose women in chronic pain. The women’s lawyers say he told some patients to undress and touched them under the pretense of massage. One woman says he called her his “sister in Christ,” FOX40 reported, a reference to their shared church.

The first patient to complain told several employees after an incident in 2007, the complaint says. She was not referred to human resources until March 2024, after other women came forward. She died in 2025, before the case settled, Llewellyn said.

Other complaints stalled the same way, the women allege. One says an employee she told advised her to go to human resources but did not report it herself. Another says a scheduler, told of an assault, rearranged the appointment.

Elias, who the complaint says worked at the hospital for decades, did not respond to The Union Democrat’s requests for comment. The hospital has confirmed only that he is a former employee.

“Any amount of money doesn’t make the abuse go away, but some accountability is better than none,” one of the women told The Union Democrat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

What the record establishes

Some facts rest on more than the complaint. In a statement to The Union Democrat, Adventist Health said that when it received a formal complaint in 2022, it suspended Elias, investigated, ended his employment and reported him to the Physical Therapy Board of California. It did not say when managers first learned of any allegation, whether it disputes the earlier reports or whether it has changed any policy.

The state board filed an accusation against Elias in March 2025. His license was revoked effective April 3, 2026, under a stipulated agreement in which he did not admit the allegations, The Union Democrat reported.

After leaving Adventist, Elias worked at Sonora Physical Therapy, a separate private practice. Court calendars list that practice as a defendant in the case. The women allege that he assaulted a former Adventist patient there and that Adventist had told the practice why he was fired. Whether the settlement resolves the claims against the practice or against Elias himself has not been made public.

In an unrelated case, Elias pleaded guilty on April 6, 2026, to felony driving under the influence causing injury in a November 2025 crash in Sonora. He was sentenced to five years of probation and 90 days in jail, according to the district attorney’s office.

A deadline that ran out

District Attorney Cassandra Jenecke said in August 2024 that her office had received allegations about some, but not all, of the women through the state Department of Consumer Affairs, and that the statute of limitations had expired. California allows 10 years to charge felony sex offenses that require registration as a sex offender. Misdemeanors carry much shorter limits. The district attorney did not say which offense she considered or which women’s allegations she reviewed.

The civil courts waited, too. Individual suits the women filed against Elias were paused while the parties anticipated a possible criminal case. In January 2026, the court noted that no charges were pending in those cases and said an open-ended pause was no longer justified. By June, it had put the cases on hold until the claims against Adventist were resolved.

Why it could go on

The record points to gaps in California law as much as to failures inside the hospital.

The state’s crime of sexual exploitation of a patient applies only to physicians, psychotherapists and alcohol and drug counselors. Physical therapists are not covered. The main alternative, sexual battery, reaches a provider who passes off touching as treatment as a felony only if the patient did not understand what was happening. Without that, or proof of restraint, the charge is generally a misdemeanor carrying up to six months in jail. In 2018, a bill that would have extended sexual battery to professionals whose work gives them access to patients’ bodies, naming physical therapists among them, was held in the state Senate Appropriations Committee and went no further.

Reporting rules have their own limits. Since 2020, health facilities have been required to report a patient’s written allegation of sexual misconduct to the licensing board within 15 days. Health workers must call the police when they treat a patient for an injury caused by an assault. Neither rule, as written, required an employee to act on a patient’s spoken complaint about a colleague. Hero Not Zero found no California law requiring a hospital to report an adult patient’s account of abuse by a clinician to police.

Liability law shaped the case, too. In 1995, the California Supreme Court ruled that a hospital was not automatically responsible when a technician sexually assaulted a patient during an exam. So the women had to argue that Adventist itself was negligent in hiring, supervising and keeping Elias, conduct the court noted likely spanned different managers over the years. What the hospital knew, and when, was the heart of the case. The settlement leaves it unanswered.

Questions remain that only the hospital and regulators can answer. When did any manager first hear a complaint about Elias? Did anyone at the hospital call the police? Did the hospital report the allegations to the California Department of Public Health, which requires licensed facilities to report sexual assaults on patients? And why did the licensing board take until 2025 to file an accusation on a report the hospital says it made in 2022?

A familiar pattern

Large health care abuse cases elsewhere followed a similar arc. A 2016 Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found more than 2,400 doctors whose sexual misconduct cases involved patients; half still held licenses. The University of Southern California has paid more than $1.1 billion over claims against a campus gynecologist. Columbia University agreed in May 2025 to pay $750 million to 576 patients of a former OB-GYN, after ProPublica reported on the university’s failures. Those payouts followed criminal cases or investigative reporting.

The laws California passed in response were built largely around doctors. A 2018 law requiring practitioners on probation for sexual misconduct to tell their patients does not cover physical therapists. A chaperone law taking effect in 2027 applies only to sensitive-area ultrasounds.

Sonora has seen this before. In 2023, the local high school district agreed to pay $3.5 million to a former student abused by a girls basketball coach, who had pleaded guilty in 2020. That lawsuit alleged that school administrators knew of concerns and that no one reported them to authorities. Llewellyn’s firm brought that case as well.

What happens next

Llewellyn said a request to dismiss the case was filed on Sept. 23. The individual suits against Elias remained on hold as of June 2026, and no further hearing date appears in public court calendars.

The settlement’s confidentiality has limits. A California law in effect since 2019 bars settlement terms that prevent people from disclosing the facts of sexual assault claims filed in court.

Other women may still sue. A state law reviving older adult sexual assault claims covers assaults since 2009 and closes on Dec. 31, 2026. A second window for claims against institutions accused of covering up abuse runs through Dec. 31, 2027.

Sources

Court records

• Tuolumne County Superior Court, tentative ruling on demurrer, Doe 1 et al. v. Adventist Health System/West et al., CV66330, April 18, 2025: https://www.tuolumne.courts.ca.gov/system/files/tentative-rulings/tr_d1_04182025.pdf
• Tuolumne County Superior Court, Department 5 calendar notes, Jan. 21, 2026 (Jane Doe v. Elias cases): https://www.tuolumne.courts.ca.gov/system/files/general/cn_d5_01212026.pdf
• Tuolumne County Superior Court, Department 5 calendar notes, May 20, 2026 (CV66330 parties and counsel): https://www.tuolumne.courts.ca.gov/system/files/general/cn_d5_05202026.pdf
• Tuolumne County Superior Court, Department 5 calendar notes, June 17, 2026 (stay of Jane Doe v. Elias cases): https://www.tuolumne.courts.ca.gov/system/files/general/cn_d5_06172026.pdf
• Lisa M. v. Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital (1995) 12 Cal.4th 291: https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/4th/12/291.html

Officials’ releases and statements

• Adventist Health statements and Tuolumne County District Attorney’s Office statements, as reported by The Union Democrat, Aug. 16, 2024, and Sept. 23, 2026 (see News coverage)
• Adventist Health Sonora, service area description: https://adventisthealth.org/sonora/about-us/community-magazine
• Adventist Health, release on appointment of CEO Kerry Heinrich: https://www.adventisthealth.org/news/adventist-health-appoints-kerry-heinrich-as-next
• North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists, release on Adventist Health board leadership: https://www.nadadventist.org/news/adventist-health-appoints-two-new-leaders-system-board-directors/
• Physical Therapy Board of California, consumer information on sexual misconduct: https://ptbc.ca.gov/consumers/sexual_misconduct.shtml

Laws and legislative records

• Business and Professions Code 729 (sexual exploitation by physicians, psychotherapists, alcohol and drug counselors): https://california.public.law/codes/ca_bus_and_prof_code_section_729
• Physical Therapy Board of California, laws and regulations reference guide, including Business and Professions Code 2660.1: https://www.ptbc.ca.gov/publications/law_reference_guide.pdf
• Physical Therapy Board of California, disciplinary guidelines: https://www.ptbc.ca.gov/laws/law_documents/sec_100_displn_guide.pdf
• California Senate committee analysis of SB 442 (2023), describing Penal Code 243.4 penalties and the fate of AB 2078 (2018): https://billtexts.s3.amazonaws.com/ca/ca-analysishttps-leginfo-legislature-ca-gov-faces-billAnalysisClient-xhtml-bill-id-202320240SB442-ca-analysis-375301.pdf
• AB 2078 (2018), legislative history: https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_201720180ab2078
• Penal Code 801.1 (statute of limitations for sex offenses): https://california.public.law/codes/penal_code_section_801.1
• Business and Professions Code 805.8 reporting form, Physical Therapy Board of California: https://www.ptbc.ca.gov/forms/805_8_reporting.pdf
• Penal Code 11160 reporting duty, Shasta County Health and Human Services summary: https://www.shastacounty.gov/health-human-services/page/domestic-violence-reporting
• Health and Safety Code 1279.1 (adverse event reporting): https://california.public.law/codes/health_and_safety_code_section_1279.1
• AB 2777 (2022), bill text: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2777
• AB 250 (2025), summary by Liebert Cassidy Whitmore: https://www.lcwlegal.com/news/ab-250-expanded-revival-window-for-certain-sexual-assault-claims/
• Code of Civil Procedure 1001 (confidential settlement agreements): https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2022/code-ccp/part-2/title-14/chapter-3-5/section-1001/
• SB 1448 (2018), Patient’s Right to Know Act, summary: https://www.thehealthlawticker.com/new-california-law-will-require-practitioners-to-disclose-probation-to-their-patients
• AB 849 (2025), Medical Safety Chaperone Act, California Department of Public Health letter AFL 25-34: https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CHCQ/LCP/Pages/AFL-25-34.aspx

Reports and data

• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Doctors & Sex Abuse” (2016): https://doctors.ajc.com/sex_abuse_numbers/

News coverage

• The Union Democrat, “Lawsuit claims sexual misconduct by former Adventist Health Sonora physical therapist,” Aug. 16, 2024: https://www.uniondemocrat.com/news/article_96222486-5c36-11ef-8149-c350daf90180.html
• The Union Democrat, “Adventist Health Sonora agrees to $18.5M settlement in sexual abuse lawsuit,” Sept. 23, 2026: https://www.uniondemocrat.com/news/article_bd185dc3-bcbb-4103-8c99-f5ae67592876.html
• myMotherLode, “Lawsuit Filed Against Adventist Health And Former Sonora Physical Therapist,” Aug. 2024: https://www.mymotherlode.com/news/local/3409190/lawsuit-aimed-at-adventist-health-and-its-former-sonora-physical-therapist.html
• FOX40, “Adventist Health’s Sonora hospital settles sexual abuse lawsuit for $18.5M,” Sept. 2026: https://fox40.com/news/local-news/tuolumne-county/adventist-health-sonora-sexual-abuse-settlement/
• Lodi News-Sentinel, “Adventist Health Sonora settles abuse lawsuit for $18.5M,” Sept. 24, 2026: https://www.lodinews.com/news/article_0973c0bc-7661-4230-a120-a19dea69a4f5.html
• Fierce Healthcare, “Adventist Health strikes $18.5M settlement resolving sexual abuse lawsuit,” Sept. 2026: https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/providers/adventist-health-strikes-185m-settlement-resolving-sexual-abuse-lawsuit
• Becker’s Hospital Review, “Adventist Health hospital settles sexual abuse lawsuit for $18.5M,” Sept. 2026: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/legal-regulatory-issues/adventist-health-hospital-settles-sexual-abuse-lawsuit-for-18-5m/
• Adventist Today, “Adventist Health Settles Sexual Abuse Lawsuit for $18.5 Million,” Sept. 28, 2026: https://atoday.org/adventist-health-settles-sexual-abuse-lawsuit-for-18-5-million/
• ProPublica, “Columbia Will Pay Survivors of Abusive Doctor $750 Million After ProPublica Revealed University’s Failures,” May 2025: https://www.propublica.org/article/columbia-university-750-million-settlement-robert-hadden-sexual-assault
• San Diego Union-Tribune, “USC to pay $1.1 billion to settle sex abuse claims,” March 26, 2021: https://www.pressreader.com/usa/san-diego-union-tribune/20210326/281522228868456
• The Union Democrat, “Sonora Union High School District settles lawsuit in Emerald case for $3.5 million,” July 2023: https://www.uniondemocrat.com/news/article_1e047cd4-2dab-11ee-b54c-0fcde28bbc97.html