Judge thins claims against Sonoma County employees in foster child abuse case

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — A federal judge on Monday cut some claims against Sonoma County and its employees brought by three people who claimed they were repeatedly abused by their guardians on the county’s watch.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin dismissed several claims against county employees for a lack of specificity, tossing accusations that they provided false information to a court and negligently inflicted emotional distress on the foster children.

However, the judge also let multiple claims survive against county employee Amy Lafferty, the former Adoption Services representative whom the plaintiffs accuse of deliberately ignoring suspicious reports on their abusive foster parents.

In her order, the Joe Biden appointee said Lafferty was not immune to the plaintiffs’ breach of mandatory duty claims.

“Lafferty again argues plaintiffs’ claims are conclusory and fail to meet the ‘high legal standard’ of deliberate indifference, but she fails to show why the court should depart from its previous ruling,” Martinez-Olguin ruled.

The court previously denied Lafferty’s motion to dismiss this claim after the plaintiffs successfully argued that a reasonable officer should have seen a significant risk of harm in their adoption.

In their lawsuit, the three plaintiffs say they were physically and sexually abused by their foster family for several years after Sonoma County removed them from the custody of their biological parents in 2006. The plaintiffs were siblings under the age of five when they were placed with foster parents Jose and Gina Centeno in 2006, despite reports that the Centeno family had abused two other foster children from earlier that year.

The plaintiffs accuse Lafferty, specifically, of placing them in a home with abusive foster parents without due diligence, noting that the county worker didn’t consider their extended family members as prospective adoptees and never met with or interviewed the foster parents before their adoption.

In doing so, they claim Lafferty violated a mandatory duty required by California adoption program regulations.

Though the judge dismissed claims that Lafferty provided false information to a court while assigned to the then-foster children’s case, she still allowed the plaintiffs the chance to repair the claim in a future filing.

Claims against other county employees were not as successful.

The judge dismissed the plaintiffs claims against certain county social workers for interfering with their proper foster home placement by providing false information to a court, which they argued is a violation of their Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The claims, she said, were too general, lacked key information or failed to claim that the workers’ actions were “carried out with malice.”

The plaintiffs have until July 9, 2025, to fix their claims and refile an amended lawsuit.

The plaintiffs first sued Sonoma County and California in 2022 over claims that the county, the state and foster care agency TLC Child and Family Services ignored their pleas and reports from the social workers and others and allowed their abuse to continue.

The plaintiffs say the state agencies received frequent reports between October 2006 and September 2008 from the children’s biological extended family and others, including a county social worker, that the children were being physically and emotionally abused, including that they were seen with bruising on their arms and legs, and that they did not want to leave family visits. In 2010, the children’s teachers reported that they were coming to school with unexplained bruises.

At one point, the children told a social worker that they were kicked and hit with belts, fists and wooden spoons, and were forced to stand holding heavy objects above their heads in the shower as punishment. The children say they were later taken out of school by the Centenos and hidden in captivity.

The plaintiffs also claim that between 2011 and 2018, the Centenos shackled them to their beds with alarms to prevent them from leaving, kept them in cages and sexually abused them. One sibling, Kaya, has not been seen since 2012, the plaintiffs say. Eventually, the Centenos took the children to Mexico, where the children told the authorities about the abuse they suffered.

Mexico Child Protective Services alerted Sonoma County Child Protective Services about the reports of abuse in 2020. The children were brought back to California, and a criminal investigation began, which led to the arrests of Jose and Gina Centeno in August 2020. Gina Centeno has since died, but Jose Centeno was sentenced to multiple life sentences in August 2024.

The judge allowed several claims to survive a previous motion to dismiss the case in September 2024, although she did dismiss claims against the California with prejudice at the time, citing the Eleventh Amendment.

The plaintiffs filed the case’s fourth amended complaint in October 2024. The defendants moved to dismiss in December 2025.

This case was filed in the Northern District of California.