California senators demand feds address sexual abuse complaints in LA County juvenile facilities

U.S. Sens. Alex Padilla and Laphonza Butler are demanding the federal Department of Justice intervene to address a litany of sexual abuse allegations and other wrongdoing in Los Angeles County’s juvenile camps.

More than 600 former detainees have filed lawsuits since December 2022 alleging they were sexually abused or harassed while in custody in the county’s juvenile facilities. The allegations date back as far as 1972.

In a letter Tuesday, April 23, to Attorney General Merrick Garland, the California senators asked why the department stopped monitoring the camps after discovering abuses in the late 2000s and to detail the actions it will take now that the allegations have resurfaced.

The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division initially started monitoring the camps in 2008 after investigators concluded the county had “violated youth’s constitutional and federal statutory rights and subjected them to harm,” according to the letter. The county, in response, agreed to address 41 areas of concern under the supervision of a DOJ-appointed monitoring team.

The process, originally supposed to take four years, dragged out for more than six before the DOJ declared the county in compliance in February 2015.

“However, this abuse of institutionalized children clearly continued, and as a result, hundreds, if not thousands, of young girls were abused, and their lives forever altered,” Padilla and Butler wrote. “Given the reports of childhood sexual abuse spanning decades, we have grave concerns how the Camps were deemed in compliance by DOJ in 2015.”

The letter requests the DOJ, within the next 30 days, provide the senators with all evidence supporting “the DOJ’s determination that the Camps complied with the terms of the MOA,” what it has done since then to hold the county accountable, and what it “can, and will,” do in response to the new allegations.

“Many of these reports are not only deeply disturbing, but they also generate many questions regarding the DOJ monitoring and accountability protocols in place for these institutions,” the senators wrote.

Most of the allegations came about as a result of the passage of the Child Victims Act. The law, in effect since 2020, allows the victims of childhood sexual assault to sue up to the age of 40, and allowed those over 40 to sue during the first three years of the act’s passage.

Cost to settle ‘profound’

Last year, Los Angeles County CEO Fesia Davenport estimated the county could be forced to pay $1.6 billion to $3 billion for “more than 3,000 claims alleging childhood sexual assault at various County and non-County facilities,” according to a recommended budget at the time.

“The cost to settle these claims will have a profound impact on the County budget for decades,” Davenport wrote.

The lawsuits from former juvenile detainees describe a pattern of abuse across multiple facilities. Officers physically harmed or threatened the children into silence. And those who attempted to report incidents often were ignored, or even punished, according to the lawsuits.

Some of the victims spent only days in the facilities for minor crimes.

“The reality is that we probably don’t even know today how many people were really affected,” said attorney Doug Rochen, who is representing hundreds of clients, in a June interview.

Just last month, the Probation Department arrested a female probation officer for allegedly having sex with an inmate at the Dorothy Kirby Center, a coed facility that houses “adjudicated youth with mental health issues.”

Other investigations

If the U.S. Department of Justice does get involved, it won’t be alone. The state attorney general’s office already is monitoring the Probation Department through a 2021 court judgment that requires the county to ensure youth detainees receive appropriate educational, medical and recreational services.

And the Board of State and Community Corrections, the regulatory agency overseeing California’s prisons and juvenile halls, nearly shut down two of the county’s largest juvenile halls over the poor conditions earlier this month, but a last-minute shuffling of staff allowed the county to reach the minimum standards necessary to stay open.