The city this week settled a civil lawsuit with a woman who alleged that a now-retired police officer sexually assaulted her at 17, and the police department said Friday it has referred a criminal case against the officer to prosecutors.
The Long Beach Police Department opened an investigation into Ali Assef in 2023 after a woman filed the lawsuit alleging Assef assaulted her on multiple occasions 30 years ago when she worked as a waitress at Dale’s Diner.
Assef previously declined to comment on the allegations.
The woman, now in her mid-40s, was able to file the suit in 2022 when the state loosened the statute of limitations on old sexual assault cases.
The City Council on Tuesday approved a $495,000 settlement in the case, with criminal charges now possible. A spokesperson from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office could not immediately be reached for comment as to the status of the case.
The civil case was settled “without any admission of liability” and the decision to settle the case was made “to avoid the uncertainty and additional expenses associated with a jury trial,” Long Beach Deputy City Attorney Howard Russell said in an email.
The woman, who the Post is not naming, said in her lawsuit that Assef, an officer with LBPD from 1987 to 2017, groped and assaulted her twice when he was in uniform and once when he was not in uniform.
The plaintiff said she met the officer when she was 17 in 1995 and he was in his 30s.
In one of the assaults detailed in the lawsuit, the woman said the officer parked his cruiser next to the mouth of an alleyway that she needed to walk through to get to her car. The two talked for a short while, then he had her follow his police cruiser to a secluded area where she says he assaulted her and pointed out that he could arrest her and take her to jail.
During a deposition as part of the lawsuit, the woman said she had been impacted over the course of her life and that it affected her “as a young adult, as an adult and as a parent,” said her attorney, Timothy Hale.
The woman ultimately came forward, Hale said, when her daughter reached the same as she was when the assaults began.
“That was a major trigger for her and motivation for her to want to come forward,” Hale, her attorney said. “She is one of the bravest and most courageous survivors I have ever represented.”