In a lawsuit filed this week in Los Angeles County, survivors of “predatory” county probation employees describe rapes and other sexual assaults at a juvenile detention facility over more than a decade.
The 69-page complaint filed in Superior Court Wednesday alleges that the offenders include at least 10 people working at the Camp Joseph Scott detention facility from 1996 to 2008.
The Santa Clarita juvenile camp shut down in 2020, but for decades, it housed girls 17 and younger who were typically detained for three- to nine-month terms following an arrest.
The allegations of abuse at the camp that have now come to light are disturbing. One teenager who was placed there in the late 1990s said in the court documents that she was forced to engage in sexual intercourse with a deputy probation officer two to three times a week throughout her stay at Camp Scott. After she became pregnant as a result of the sexual assault and had a miscarriage, he ordered her to keep it secret because he had “a way to make things go away.”
In the case of Jane ML Doe — a pseudonym used to protect her identity — a probation officer promised her special packages and extra phone time for sexual acts, the suit filed by a high-powered private law firm alleges. And after she left Camp Scott, it states, the officer continued contacting her and eventually took her to a motel for sex.
Another woman reported that when she was alone as a teen in a laundry room with a probation officer, he told her that if she didn’t perform oral sex on him, he would make sure she would serve “double time” at Camp Scott and and that she “wouldn’t go home.”
Most of the women represented in the lawsuit said that probation officers would watch girls undress and take showers. Others said that the supervising employees would grope or inappropriately touch them while in bed or when they were isolated from other girls and staff.
Jane MJ Doe states in the lawsuit that she once told an abuser that she would report him — only to hear in reply that no one would believe her because she was “a convict.”
Karla Tovar, a spokesperson for the probation department, said the agency would not comment on pending litigation.
At a meeting of the county’s Probation Oversight Commission on Thursday, several participants said the lawsuit’s details were troubling and that the county needed to investigate the complaints. Commissioner Danielle Dupuy said she found news about the alleged sexual abuse of girls under the watch of the Probation Department “deeply disturbing.”
“To me, 2008 really isn’t that long ago,” Dupuy said, “and I am concerned about what we may be missing in terms of anything like that continuing.”
As the case moves forward, Dupuy said that the probation department’s policies should be thoroughly scrutinized to prevent any situations of county employees failing to report incidents of abuse that they witness or learn of.
“As long as the youth probation department still exists,” Dupuy said, the county should make sure that such a culture of sexual abuse is “deemed to be completely unacceptable and will not continue.”
Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, the Irvine law firm that filed the lawsuit, has won hundreds of millions of dollars for victims in high-profile sex abuse settlements over the past decades, including cases involving Catholic priests, the Los Angeles Unified School District, and Larry Nassar, the Michigan State University doctor who abused scores of U.S. gymnasts.
The lawsuit was filed as a result of a 2020 state law that established a three-year window in California law for victims of childhood sexual abuse to seek redress for past incidents.
“This case will shine a spotlight on a culture of child sexual abuse that has existed throughout the Los Angeles County juvenile probation system for decades,” plaintiff’s attorney John Manly said in a statement. “The criminal conduct of those who used their positions of authority to sexually assault these children must be exposed.”
Over the last 20 years, Los Angeles County has faced repeated questions about conditions at its juvenile detention facilities. In 2008, after several years of investigating its halls and camps, the U.S. Department of Justice reached an agreement with the county, declaring that its facilities violated the constitutional rights of young people in detention. Staff frequently used excessive force, and amid violent conditions, youth had poor access to mental health resources and rehabilitative programming. Seven years of court oversight resulted.
Last year, the California Department of Justice reached a settlement with the county — and another round of court oversight ensued. Issues to be resolved included the excessive use of force and chemical spray, and poor conditions at the juvenile halls, including young people forced to urinate in buckets. The California Board of State and Community Corrections declared L.A.’s two juvenile halls “unsuitable for the confinement of minors” later in the year, after state inspectors found basic health and safety violations, inappropriate isolation and poor access to health care. The county’s probation department has said it has corrected the issues, though concerns remain.
The lawsuit filed this week comes at a time when the county is seeking to prevent the incarceration of girls and young women. The county is also developing a Youth Justice Reimagined plan, an effort to rely on community-based therapeutic programs instead of incarceration, including replacing juvenile detention facilities with “safe and secure healing centers.”
At Thursday’s public meeting, LA Youth Uprising Coalition Coordinator Kruti Parekh — who has worked with young people in the county’s youth justice system for the past 17 years — said the probation department has often lacked accountability. “I have worked with young people that have been emotionally verbally, sexually and physically assaulted inside of cells, and inside of facilities,” she said. “We have to be able to find a way to help young people without the harms that the system continues to create.”
