Panish | Shea | Ravipudi LLP attorneys Wyatt Vespermann and Mariah Ogden have filed a lawsuit on behalf of seven sex abuse survivors of former County pediatrician Patrick Clyne. The lawsuit is brought against Santa Clara County and former Deputy Director of Department of Family and Children’s Services, Ken Borelli, alleging that county officials spent more than a decade covering up sexual abuse by Clyne rather than stopping him.
The complaint, filed May 8, 2026, in Santa Clara County Superior Court, alleges that County employees not only failed to investigate abuse allegations against Clyne but took active steps to preserve his standing and keep him in roles giving him access to children.
The lawsuit details that County officials were first warned about Clyne in 1996, when a written incident report documented inappropriate sexual contact involving a foster child in his care. Five years later, in 2001, four boys independently came forward and described sexual abuse by Clyne. According to the lawsuit, rather than opening a mandatory investigation, a high-level County manager directed investigators to stand down and take no action.
“For over a decade, the County permitted Patrick Clyne to maintain a position of trust with access to the County’s foster youth,” said plaintiff’s attorney Wyatt Vespermann. “County officials knew what Clyne was doing to these children. Not only did they fail to take any action to stop it, but they made a deliberate choice to cover it up.”
According to the lawsuit, the County gave Clyne wide-ranging official roles that together created extraordinary access to children: it hired him as a staff pediatrician at County medical clinics, it assigned him to child-abuse medical evaluations, appointed him to the County Child Death Review Team, presented him as an expert witness in criminal cases, and referred foster children to him for medical care. That combination of overlapping authority, the suit alleges, gave Clyne both access and the institutional credibility to exploit children.
The plaintiffs allege that the County’s endorsement of Clyne was what made the abuse possible. Families brought their children to him specifically because the County had vouched for him. He used that trust, the suit alleges, to subject children to sexual abuse disguised as routine medical care.
“The County didn’t just fail to stop him,” Mr. Vespermann said. “It actively built the reputation he used to get those children into examination rooms.”
The seven plaintiffs – identified only by initials to protect their privacy – were children when they allege Clyne abused them. The lawsuit describes a pattern of sexual abuse carried out during what Clyne presented as routine pediatric examinations, in County clinics and foster-care settings over roughly a decade beginning in the early 2000s.
The lawsuit includes a particularly stark example of the culture the plaintiffs say enabled the abuse. In 2009, a foster mother brought her daughter to Clyne at a Children’s Shelter clinic, during which she alleges the child was sexually abused. The foster mother says she reported what happened to a County social worker that same day. Nearly two years later, she learned the worker had never filed a report. The reason the worker gave, according to the lawsuit: Clyne was “a very well respected doctor.”
Regulatory action against Clyne came years after his County ties ended. The California Department of Social Services initiated proceedings to bar him from any involvement in licensed foster care, and in 2025 the Medical Board of California accepted the surrender of his medical license.
The lawsuit brings claims for childhood sexual assault, sexual battery, negligent hiring and supervision, and failure to perform mandatory duties against Santa Clara County, Ken Borelli, and Dr. Patrick Clyne.
“Our clients are coming forward because accountability is long overdue,” Mr. Vespermann said. “What happened to them should never have been possible, and the people responsible – including the County officials who made deliberate choices to cover for Clyne – need to be held accountable.”