by BRIAN JOSEPH
After Hermina Nedelescu settled in San Diego in 2016, the neuroscientist found comfort and familiarity in Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church.
The gold-domed church with its colorful sanctuary and polished, stone columns reminded her of her native Romania, which she left in 1990 when she was 9 years old. She also respected the church’s leader, Father Michael Sitaras, who turned to her for advice during the pandemic.
A PhD staff scientist with the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, Nedelescu studies abnormal behaviors and brain functions, but was happy to help when COVID-19 had parishioners panicked.
Nedelescu advised Sitaras on things like wearing masks and the COVID vaccines. Over time they became close and when the pandemic ended, she continued working with him on advancing the role of women within the patriarchal culture of the Greek Orthodox church.
That’s when she says her life and research interests changed, and she transformed into an advocate for state legislation to hold clergy accountable for sexual abuse.
Nearly three years ago, at a September 2023 meeting with Sitaras at her lab, Nedelescu says he propositioned her for sex and groped her.
She says the experience sent her into a tailspin. She said she developed post-traumatic stress disorder and sought psychotherapy for the first time in her life, a development she found surprising given that she never needed it previously as a refugee from Romania.
In November 2025, she filed a suit against Sitaras and the church. The case is ongoing. Sitaras did not respond to a Capitol Weekly request for comment.
“My eyes are now open to the abuse that women experience,” Nedelescu said. “There is a Hermina prior to being sexually assaulted, and after is a completely different person now,” she said.
Before Nedelescu said her professional research had focused on the impact of drug use on brain functions. But after her encounter with Sitaras she said she’s become fascinated by ways sexual abuse can affect the brain.
“I’ve always been interested in how the environment and experiences change the brain,” she said. “So, much of that work has been dedicated to how drugs affect the brain, how drugs negatively impact the brain. And so, it’s not a big jump for me to consider now how does sexual abuse leading to sexual trauma – because it always leads to sexual trauma – how does that impact the brain?”
Nedelescu said she’s now seeking funding for new research into the impact of sexual trauma on the brain and the body.
“My eyes are now open to abuse that women experience….There is a Hermina prior to being sexually assaulted and after is a completely different person now.”
“I think that I have a moral obligation and a duty to do this because I’ve experienced this firsthand,” she said.
At the same time, Nedelescu said she also felt called to advocate for change. In 2023, a colleague – Katherine Archer, a researcher and advocate with her own pending suit involving church-related sexual abuse – clued her into a bill by former Sen. Dave Min that sought to create a new criminal offense, sexual exploitation by a member of the clergy.
Min’s bill, SB 894, was held up in the Senate Committee on Public Safety in April 2024. The committee’s analysis noted that the California Public Defenders Association opposed the bill on the grounds that it was overbroad and created an unprecedented new crime.
Nedelescu said she studied the criticisms and looked at laws elsewhere. Fourteen states plus the District of Columbia have criminal statutes involving clergy sexual abuse. Nedelescu discovered in most of those states members of the clergy were simply tacked onto existing laws banning doctors, therapists and other professionals from having sexual contact with patients or clients.
Looking for help, Nedelescu approached Assemblymember Buffy Wick (D-Oakland), who agreed to shepherd an unbacked bill through Legislative Counsel to add members of the clergy to California’s own list of barred professionals, Business and Professions Code Section 729.
On March 9, Assemblymember Chris Ward (D-San Diego) gutted AB 1739 and amended it with the language, which echoes a similar pending proposal in the Georgia Legislature.
Nedelescu celebrates the milestone but also recognizes that Ward’s sponsorship is complicating. Sexual abuse survivors have protested outside of his district office on multiple occasions over the last few months. They accuse him of working in secret to undermine their legal rights in order to protect local governments from the financial strain of paying sexual abuse claims.
The cost of those claims have become a major concern in the wake of 2019’s AB 218 by then-Assemblymember Lorenza Gonzalez, now the head of the California Federation of Labor Unions. That bill opened a special, three-year window that temporarily suspended the state’s traditional statute of limitations and allowed survivors of childhood sexual abuse to file claims on events that occurred decades in the past
School districts in general and Los Angeles County in particular were hit hard. The county last year agreed to pay billions of dollars to settle claims connected to its juvenile detention facilities dating back to 1959.
Survivors think Ward may have agreed to take on Nedelescu’s bill in order to negate their criticisms. Ward said that’s not true.
“No,” he said, calling AB 1739 “consistent with the work that I have done for previous years.”
The assemblymember added that his work on government liability is no secret.
“We are hearing loud and clear from schools, cities, counties and other entities that they are running into a real, exponential problem in the terms of the liability issues that are out there,” he said.
Claims are “very much stressing county services, city services and might be bankrupting a couple of school districts,” he said. “We have to take a close attention to something that is both going to support the liability insurance and the needs of today’s students and today’s social services without violating the rights of victims.”
Nedelescu, for her part, is undeterred, saying she’s committed to seeing the new language in AB 1739 become law. The bill is expected to be heard before the Assembly Committee on Public Safety on March 24.
“This really needs to pass. These churches have gotten away with this for a long time,” Nedelescu said. “I’m not going to stop because this is the new me,” she added. “This is what I do now.”
