West Virginia Will Pay $9.1 Million to Women Exposed to a Hidden Camera at Its State Police Academy. Nobody Could Opt Out, Nobody Objected — and Some Former Junior Troopers Have 45 More Days to File.

The class, as described in the final approval order reported by The West Virginia Record, includes “female basic trainees and students, female teachers who were not State Police employees, female cadets, female junior cadets and other women who used the academy's locker room or bathroom facilities between Jan. 1, 2015, and March 20, 2023, and were exposed to a hidden camera.” The order spells out the groups: women who attended a Basic Police Training Class in that period — every law-enforcement officer in West Virginia trains at the Institute academy, not just state troopers — female cadets who attended a Cadet Class, women invited to teach at the academy, and junior cadets who attended the program and lived at the academy from 2015 through 2019. The Junior Trooper program was for aspiring officers aged 14 to 17; it ended in 2020.

The class is mandatory, and the order explains why. Judge Ballard wrote in his June 8, 2026 preliminary order that “The state and West Virginia State Police only made offers which required that the class must be well defined, that the settlement preclude any and all potential future or other claims arising out of the presence of a camera in the WVSP Academy women's locker room and that the total settlement amount and terms thereof must be settled as a mandatory class.” No class member could opt out; with final approval, the State Police and the other defendants are released from known and unknown claims arising from the recordings. Two further lines in the order close the door on late arrivals: allegations tied to a hidden camera before January 1, 2015 are foreclosed “based upon the available evidence,” and for anyone outside the defined class, the statute of limitations began to run “at the latest” when the class-certification motion was filed in November 2024 — the judge cited public reporting beginning in February 2023 as notice that the controversy existed.

The court found no objections from any class member. Matthew Stonestreet of The Giatras Law Firm, one of the interim class counsel, told The Record: “The court's approval of this settlement, with no objections filed by any class member, speaks to how thoroughly and fairly this case was handled on behalf of every woman affected.” His colleague Troy Giatras: “This result belongs first to the women who had the courage to come forward. They endured deeply personal harm, participated in a demanding legal process and persisted despite the public attention surrounding this case. We are honored to represent them.” The court appointed three women identified only as R.C., E.G. and C.M. as representative plaintiffs; Giatras, Stonestreet, Marvin Masters of Masters Law Firm and Robert V. Berthold Jr. of Berthold Law Firm are interim class counsel.

Individual amounts “will vary based on each class member's 'level of potential temporal exposure,'” in the Record's summary of the order — a woman who lived at the academy for a months-long basic class is in a different position from one who taught a single course. The State Police were directed to wire the $9.1 million to a qualified settlement fund, and “funds will be disbursed to qualifying class members by the claims administrator.” The Record names the claim administrators as Cary Claim Solutions and Walters Administration; we found no public settlement website for either as of September 18, 2026. The practical contacts are those administrators or class counsel. Part of the $9.1 million was also approved for use in resolving the related individual cases filed under the name “Jane Doe.”

The individual cases are the other half of the story. The Record counts “more than 80 individual related lawsuits” coordinated with the class action, and reports that “more than 40 individual lawsuits” were settled with Judge Ballard's approval at Wednesday's hearing. Teresa Toriseva, who represented the individual clients, said afterward: “Our clients are relieved the settlement is final. It is our hope that something like this never happens again and that the lawsuits helped shine the light on these types of problems.” She added that “all of the plaintiffs were able to retain their anonymity though the entire legal process.” The terms of those individual settlements were not disclosed.

One ruling from last year shaped the money. On September 18, 2025, Judge Ballard held that the State Police's liability policy with National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh provided a $1 million limit per plaintiff, not $1 million for the whole scandal: “the alleged secret videotaping and invasion of privacy of each individual plaintiff would constitute a separate 'occurrence' and 'offense' and 'event' for purposes of coverage limits under the subject National Union policies.” The West Virginia Supreme Court dismissed the insurer's appeal on November 21, 2025. The settlement also carries non-monetary terms: the order says the State Police has taken “significant steps” to protect women using the academy, including buying and installing security equipment.

The scandal surfaced in February 2023 through anonymous letters alleging misconduct inside the State Police, including hidden recording devices at the academy. (The sources differ on the addressee: the settlement coverage in The Record and MetroNews describe the letter as sent to then-Governor Jim Justice, while The Record's 2025 report on the individual suits describes an August 2022 letter to Justice that was never made public and the February 2023 letter as going to Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, lawmakers and others.) Former Corporal Joseph Comer later acknowledged writing the February 2023 letter; he has his own retaliation suit pending against the agency and was in court on it earlier this month. The class complaint, filed in Kanawha Circuit Court in May 2024 by Masters and Berthold against the State Police and the Department of Homeland Security that oversees it, alleged that a trooper identified as J.P., since deceased, installed the devices and that others maintained them; that after his death two troopers found a thumb drive of videos and took it to a major who “directed them to destroy it”; and that after the camera's existence became public on February 16, 2023, the agency “did not inform the plaintiffs of the videotapes or photographs.” Those are allegations. The State Police and the other defendants have not admitted liability, and the settlement contains no finding.

Between filing and approval the case produced more than 40 depositions, thousands of pages of discovery, several mediations and the insurance fight. The class-certification motion was filed in November 2024; the June 8, 2026 order conditionally certified the class and preliminarily approved the deal; September 16 made it final and dismissed the covered claims with prejudice.

For scale: Settlement Insight's open database holds 39,208 police-misconduct claims paid by U.S. cities with a reported amount (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and the FiveThirtyEight dataset). The median is $15,000; a quarter settle above $32,500; the top one percent above $1,666,667. A $9.1 million figure sits above 99.8 percent of them — but that comparison is between one fund and individual payments, and the number that matters here, what each woman receives, has not been disclosed. What each class member receives will only be known when the administrator's allocations are, and the reporting does not yet say when that will be.

The reporting does not say whether class members had to file claims to be paid, or when that deadline fell; WCHS's phrase — “45 more days to submit claims” — implies a claims process with a deadline that has already passed for everyone else. The extension the judge granted on September 16 is for “some former junior troopers,” in WCHS's report, who were given 45 more days to submit claims — the girls who attended the residential Junior Trooper program between 2015 and 2019, all of whom would have been minors at the time; WCHS does not say why the extension was granted. Forty-five days from September 16 is October 31, 2026, by our count; the order itself may state a different date, and the reporting does not quote one. Anyone who was a junior cadet in those years and has not been contacted can reach the claim administrators — Cary Claim Solutions or Walters Administration — or class counsel before the end of October: The Giatras Law Firm in Charleston, Masters Law Firm, or Berthold Law Firm, all listed in the order as interim class counsel.

What is settled cannot be reopened. With the class made mandatory and the release covering known and unknown claims, a woman who used the locker room in the class period and does not participate is still bound. That is the trade the state demanded and the court accepted — and, with no objections filed, the one the class accepted too.