Thousands of documents that could contain key details on breastfed sexual abuses in a Santa Clarita detention camp, the disappearance of Santa Clarita – including so -called “grooming drawings” – were dispersed inside the establishment and never gave themselves to the lawyers of the victims, according to a company that continued the county of the decade incidents.
As part of the preparation of an imminent trial in June, the lawyers of the Manly law firm, Stewart & Finaldi had organized on April 15 to visit Camp Scott, a County Clotté de la Fermé camp where many of their customers say they have been sexually mistreated as a child.
Inside the establishment, there were trains of files according to which the county should have turned to the company more than a year ago through Discovery, said lawyer Courtney Thom, whose company has around 150 civil cases alleging sexual abuse by the county probation staff.
“You can understand my shock when I walk where my clients were raped as a child, and there are documents everywhere,” Thom said at a hearing of the Superior Monday court in downtown Los Angeles.
Thom said that she had discovered thousands of paper grievances, a locked filler labeled “Personal files A – W”, and a drawing she believed was signed by Thomas Jackson – A probation assistant Accused by at least 20 women for having sexually assaulted them at the camp.
The drawing, included in a judicial file, was named “Tami” in Big, Block Orange Letters and seemed to be signed by a “Jackson. T. “
Lawyer James Sargent, who represents the county and accompanied Thom for the tour last week, called his claims “inflammatory and incorrect”.
“They want to disseminate what they consider to be a dirty laundry,” Sargent, who told the judge of the Superior Court Lawrence Riff that the files of the staff they had discovered had nothing to do with the staff appointed in the prosecution.
The drawing, he said either. Tami Wilson, a former camp supervisor, told her that she remembered having received the hand drawn card by a youngster, he wrote in a judicial file.
The county announced earlier this month that they planned to pay $ 4 billion to settle nearly 7,000 alleged sexual abuse complaints in the county minors and reception houses. The regulations – considered as the greatest sexual abuse regulation in the history of the United States – was born from Bill 218 of the Assembly, a law of the State in 2020 which gave victims of sexual abuse on childhood a new window to deposit civil proceedings against alleged predators and the agencies which employed them.
A handful of eminent companies – including Manly, Stewart & Finaldi – refused to participate in the regulations and have current disputes.
In the aftermath of AB 218, states legislators introduced several bills in an attempt to facilitate governments and school districts to meet the financial repercussions.
One of these tickets – SB 577 – is scheduled for Tuesday. The author of the bill, the state senator, John Laird, said that the legislation was intended to “restore a certain balance”, reducing the financial blow to public agencies while confirming the right of a victim to continue.
County lawyers claim that one of the reasons why the change of law of the State has had such a devastating financial assessment is that many of the files they need to combat the decades of decades have long been over. Lawyer John Manly argued that the complaint had stolen from what his business saw at Camp Scott.
The county “told all Sacramento that they have no document,” said Manly, who urged the judge to allow his business to publicize the images they had taken from the damage. “We must be able to share this with the legislators.”
Riff agreed with the county’s request that videos in the interior of the Scott camp remain confidential for the moment due to security risks, although he has asked the two parties to try to find common ground on the question of whether certain videos could be made public. Although Camp Scott has not been used to host young people for years, Sargent has written in a file that could soon change.
The judge of the Superior Court of County, Miguel Espinoza, ordered the county to prepare to close the Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall – the last remaining juvenile hall of the county, where approximately 270 young people are detained – due to problems resulting from the chronic inactive.
“The young people currently in Los Padrinos will have to go somewhere, and if some are at Camp Scott, the public release of photos and videos could be seriously prejudicial,” wrote Sargent.
Thom noted that journalists and television teams were authorized to broadcast images taken inside the camp, including a 2001 documentary, “Scott Lock-up camp.
“The Times was there to photograph,” said Thom. “MTV filmed more than us.”
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