This story was updated on April 30 to reflect developments in the settlement’s approval process.
A record-breaking $4 billion settlement has been approved for thousands of people who were sexually abused as children in Los Angeles County’s juvenile justice centers and foster care shelters.
The settlement was approved by the county Board of Supervisors on April 29.
The payouts would be the culmination of yearslong class action lawsuits representing 6,800 plaintiffs who say they were abused by foster care and probation staffers dating back to 1959.
The majority of the plaintiffs allege that they were abused in the 1980s, ’90s and 2000s in county-run juvenile detention facilities or MacLaren Children’s Center, a shelter for foster children, according to a statement released by Los Angeles County.
“This settlement with L.A. County represents a significant victory for survivors, many of whom have waited decades for justice and served life sentences of trauma for doing no wrong,” said Adam Slater of Slater Slater Schulman LLP in a press release. Slater’s firm represents more than 3,500 former MacLaren residents. “While no amount of money can erase the horrors that they endured, this agreement acknowledges the profound harm inflicted on thousands of children over the course of decades.”
Plaintiffs were empowered to bring these decades-old abuse allegations to light due to a 2020 state law that gave survivors of childhood sexual assault a three-year window to sue even in cases where the statute of limitations had run out.
“On behalf of the County, I apologize wholeheartedly to everyone who was harmed by these reprehensible acts,” Chief Executive Officer Fesia Davenport said. “The historic scope of this settlement makes clear that we are committed to helping the survivors recover and rebuild their lives — and to making and enforcing the systemic changes needed to keep young people safe.”
If approved, the settlement would dwarf similar class action lawsuits alleging systemic sex abuse within institutions, including settlements of $2.46 billion reached by the Boy Scouts of America and $1.5 billion paid to victims of predatory Catholic priests in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Davenport’s statement said that it is the costliest financial settlement of any kind Los Angeles has faced and “will have a significant impact on the County’s budget for years to come.” The county will be paying it off through 2051, she said; the plan to pay includes using cash reserves, judgement obligation bonds and proposed department budget cuts.
“The message sent with a settlement of this magnitude is clear — any facility harboring a culture of abuse will be held accountable,” attorney Slater said. “But the problems at juvenile detention facilities are not restricted to Los Angeles — other cities and states need to right these historic wrongs.”
Many of the plaintiffs were teens in juvenile detention facilities operated by the Probation Department when the alleged abuse occurred, but thousands were foster youth living at the storied MacLaren Children’s Hall, which was run by the Department of Children and Family Services and housed very young children.
The 10-acre facility was home to thousands of children — as many as 300 at a time — between 1961 and 2003, when it shuttered as part of a separate lawsuit against the county led by the American Civil Liberties Union. It was originally built as a juvenile detention center, but was taken over by the county child welfare department in 1976 and became an emergency shelter for children removed from abusive or neglectful homes or changing foster care placements.
Most of the victims in the MacLaren lawsuit were 13 or younger when the alleged abuse occurred, including a male victim who said that when he was 5, a male staffer repeatedly fondled him “under the guise of providing him with assistance using the restroom.”
One named plaintiff became pregnant by her abuser and gave birth to the child while living at the facility, according to the complaint.
Plaintiffs say that when they reported abuse to their social workers, there was little to no recourse. In one instance, an accused staffer was reassigned to another unit and the child who reported her was beaten for “snitching.”
The lawsuit names specific perpetrators as well as county departments, and alleges that county officials “failed to properly screen, hire, train and supervise the County’s employees and agents that worked with and around children at MacLaren Hall.”
According to the complaint, the county failed to run routine background checks on MacLaren staff, leading to “dozens” of employees with criminal backgrounds. When checks were run in 2001, two years before it closed, 17 current employees had criminal histories that would have disqualified them from working with children.
“The County stood by as hundreds — if not thousands — of society’s most vulnerable children entrusted to its care became victims of sexual assault,” plaintiffs’ attorney James Lewis of Slater Slater Schulman said in a press release announcing the 2022 suit.
The proposed $4 billion settlement would end most of the existing sex abuse cases against Los Angeles’ child welfare and juvenile probation departments — but not all.
Among those not covered by this settlement is a suit from multiple women who say they were abused as teens by probation staff between 1996 and 2008 at Camp Joseph Scott in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Clarita. Plaintiffs in the suit describe being assaulted multiple times per week under threat of serving “double time” or never going home if they spoke out. Settling those additional lawsuits could cost the county millions more, the LA Times reported.
In 2022 when the Camp Scott lawsuit was filed, Probation Oversight Commissioner Danielle Dupuy-Watson raised concerns about ongoing issues.
“To me, 2008 really isn’t that long ago,” Dupuy-Watson said at a public meeting, “and I am concerned about what we may be missing in terms of anything like that continuing.”
The day before the settlement was first agreed upon, county officials published a document sharing reforms that have been made to better protect children in its care. Among them is background checking all employees at hire and at each promotion. It also now uses a program that alerts the county to new criminal records for employees and foster parents. The Probation Department has retained a law firm to conduct “a thorough review of policies and issues” related to the childhood sexual assault claims, and expects recommendations to be put forth from that review in the coming weeks.
The County CEO and Risk Management Team have also suggested several reforms, which they say would require “major policy and legislative shifts.” These recommendations include: a hotline dedicated to reporting abuse by county employees, expediting investigations of such allegations and creating a system for outside experts to review them.
