LA County board approves $4 billion settlement over sexual abuse claims at juvenile facilities

LOS ANGELES (CN) — The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a $4 billion settlement of more than 6,800 claims of sexual abuse at the county’s juvenile detention facilities and foster care system that date back to late 1950s.

At a board meeting in downtown LA, the supervisors unanimously approved the record settlement that dwarfs the $2.6 billion agreement reached in 2022 with Boy Scouts of America, which was the largest aggregate sexual abuse settlement in U.S. history at the time.

“It’s a bad stain on the county,” Supervisor Hilda Solis said, recalling her visit more than 20 years ago to MacLaren Hall, the since-shuttered children shelter where much of the abuse occurred, after a child had been found molested and killed on the floor of one of the offices. “The system has been too lax.”

The deluge of lawsuits by people who were sexually abused when they were minors in the county’s care comes after the California Legislature enacted a law that lifted the statute of limitations on such claims in 2020.

The majority of the claims date from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s and are said to have happened at Probation Department facilities and at the MacLaren Children’s Center, which was permanently closed in 2003.

It is the costliest financial settlement in the history of LA County and will have a significant impact on the county’s budget for years to come. The county intends to pay for the settlement using cash from reserve funds, issuance of judgment obligation bonds and cuts in departmental budgets.

The county said in announcing the settlement earlier this month that financing will require annual payments totaling hundreds of millions of dollars through 2030 and substantial continuing annual payments through fiscal year 2050-51.

In discussing what steps can and should be taken to avoid a repeat of the systematic abuse of children in the county’s care, the supervisors stressed the need to hold both employees and department heads more immediately accountable if there’s confirmed wrongdoing.

“Right now, employees are protected because of bargaining units and civil service,” Solis noted. “But when there’s criminal activity, there’s no tolerance.”

Supervisor Janice Hahn added that the focus should also be on holding the department heads accountable for what happens under their watch.

She pointed out that just recently 30 LA County detention officers were indicted by the California attorney general for facilitating “gladiator fights” between youths at at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey.

The department heads, Hahn said, should know who is working for them and show up regularly at the facilities they are responsible for to keep an eye on what is happening.

One way to more effectively address the sexual abuse of children that are entrusted into the county’s care, LA County Chief Executive Officer Fesia Davenport told the board, was to skip the so-called progressive discipline practice whereby county employees receive only lesser corrective punishment for their infractions until it reaches the point that they need to be terminated.

“These are cases where, once we have a fair, comprehensive investigation, we need to go straight to termination,” she said. “People need to understand that there are consequences to their actions, and it would actually put teeth behind our zero tolerance policy.”

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