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

U.S. Senators Alex Padilla and Laphonza Butler are calling on the federal Justice Department to intervene to address a litany of allegations of sexual abuse and other wrongdoing at Los Angeles County juvenile camps.

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

In a letter Tuesday (April 23) to Attorney General Merrick Garland, California senators questioned why the department stopped monitoring the camps after discovering abuses in the late 2000s and detailed what steps they would take now that the allegations resurfaced.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division began monitoring the camps in 2008 after investigators concluded the county had “violated the youth’s constitutional and federal statutory rights and caused them 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, initially expected to take four years, took more than six years before the DOJ declared the county compliant 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 were forever altered,” Padilla and Butler wrote. “Given decades-long reports of child sexual abuse, we are seriously concerned about the manner in which the camps were found compliant by the DOJ in 2015.”

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

“Many of these reports are not only deeply troubling, but they also raise numerous questions regarding the DOJ’s oversight and accountability protocols in place for these institutions,” the senators wrote.

Most of the allegations stem from the passage of the Child Victims Act. The law, in effect since 2020, allows victims of childhood sexual assault to sue until the age of 40, and allowed those over 40 to sue for the first three years following the adoption of the law.

The cost of the settlement is “profound”

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

“The cost of settling these claims will have a profound impact on the county budget for decades,” Davenport wrote.

Lawsuits filed by former juvenile detainees describe a pattern of abuse at several facilities. The police physically harmed the children or threatened them to keep them quiet. And those who tried to report the incidents were often ignored or even punished, according to lawsuits.

Some of the victims spent only a few days in centers for minor crimes.

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

Last month, the probation department arrested a female probation officer for allegedly having sex with an inmate at the Dorothy Kirby Center, a co-ed facility that houses “adjudicated youth with mental health issues.”

Other investigations

If the U.S. Department of Justice gets involved, it won’t be alone. The state attorney general’s office already oversees the probation department through a 2021 court ruling that requires the county to ensure juvenile inmates receive appropriate educational, medical and recreational services.

And the Board of State and Community Corrections, the regulatory agency overseeing California’s prisons and juvenile centers, nearly closed two of the county’s largest juvenile centers due to poor conditions earlier this month, but a shakeup Last-minute staffing allowed the county to meet the minimum standards necessary to remain open.