California v. Claude Edward Foulk (why is this a john doe case if news reports have the victims name?)

John Doe v. Claude Edward Foulk (LA County, CA) was a 2010 criminal case in which Foulk was sentenced to 248 years in state prison, charged with 35 counts of oral copulation, sodomy by use of force, and forcible lewd acts on a child. Foulk's case is notable because of the path that it took to trial; all of the charges against Foulk involved one individual, a former adopted child of his who had always remembered the abuse, but the investigation of the case began with an instance of recovered memory by another victim.

“Rick W.” was 45 when he visited Napa State Hospital for a business meeting. While there, he spotted Foulk and immediately remembered the abuse he had experienced 34 years earlier. Rick went to law enforcement and, even though the statute of limitations on his case had run out, they began to search for other victims. In this search they found another alleged victim whose statute of limitations had run out: one of Foulk’s foster children, whom he began abusing after caring for him as a nurse and taking him into his home. He remembered another of Foulk’s adopted children, whom they contacted and found within the statute of limitations and willing to pursue legal action.

Reports of 13 more abuse cases, which involve Foulk, date back to 1965, and are also outside of the statute of limitations, were reported to the authorities after news broke of Foulk’s arrest. With Foulk’s conviction and the abundance of other victims, Rick’s inciting recovered memory is extensively corroborated.

(See Deutsch, “Claude Edward Foulk: Three Men Testify to Hospital Director Molestation,” Huffington Post (April 14, 2010) or https://www.thedailybeast.com/claude-edward-foulk-sexual-predator-gets-248-years-in-prison)