By Jeff McDonald

Copyright sandiegouniontribune

More than 100 new lawsuits have been filed against San Diego County in recent weeks by adults who claim they were taken to the Polinsky Children’s Center as minors to escape unstable homes only to be sexually assaulted by social workers who were supposed to protect them.

The complaints are wrenching by any measure – boys and girls as young as 8 who claim they were targeted, molested and otherwise abused by county Health and Human Services Agency workers.

In claim after claim, the unidentified plaintiffs say they were assaulted, groped and ordered to perform sex acts by both male and female employees.

Overwhelmingly, the suits allege, children were threatened not to report the abuse or ignored if they did. The plaintiffs also say they continue to suffer from the abuse as adults, with lingering trauma and other adverse impacts.

“The revolting culture of Polinsky festered for years, and even decades, turning into a pedophilic black hole ensnaring the county’s most vulnerable children,” states one case filed by a plaintiff identified as Jane Roe D.S. 65, who was 9 years old when she was placed into the children’s home in 2001.

“Once the defendants got hold of her, (the) plaintiff was sexually abused, assaulted, and/ or molested by an adult member of Polinsky’s staff,” it adds.

The wave of fresh lawsuits adds to what has become a crush of litigation alleging systematic negligence and abuse of minors in the temporary custody of San Diego County.

“Many children reported to the staff and administration that they were being sexually abused while they were at Polinsky,” attorney Blake Woodhall, who represents dozens of the alleged victims, said earlier this year. “Others pleaded for help but were completely ignored or dismissed.”

County officials have refused to discuss the allegations, citing the pending legal fights. But in a written statement, the county said employees are committed to protecting the children under their care and every allegation is being investigated.

“We prioritize the safety of all children and youth in our care,” the statement said. “The county has comprehensive training, rules, procedures and additional safety to ensure the safety of youth.”

For three decades, the Polinsky Children’s Center in Kearny Mesa has served as the main county foster home for boys and girls who are removed from their homes for their own safety in times of crisis.

The shelter generally houses minors for days or weeks, until the children are returned home or placed into the care of foster parents.

Polinsky, which is licensed to house up to 204 children at a time and sees thousands of children a year, is not the only county-operated facility for boys and girls that has faced allegations of sexual abuse.

Early this year, The San Diego Union-Tribune disclosed scores of lawsuits filed by former wards of county juvenile detention programs operated by the Probation Department.

Those plaintiffs were ordered into custody by juvenile courts after law enforcement contact, and allegedly abused inside facilities like the East Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility in Otay Mesa and Youth Transition Campus in Kearny Mesa.

In May, the Union-Tribune disclosed dozens of additional cases filed by boys and girls temporarily residing at Polinsky, where they were placed after being removed from their homes by child-welfare workers.

All of the lawsuits were permitted under the California Child Victims Act, which was introduced by former Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez and passed in 2019.

The law rewrote the statute of limitations for childhood abuse victims to pursue legal claims against alleged perpetrators.

Since then, San Diego County and a host of other public agencies have been sued by former minors claiming they were molested or suffered other abuse while enrolled in schools, juvenile halls, foster homes and other facilities.

The cases already generated thousands of claims across the state that have cost public agencies billions of dollars.

In Los Angeles earlier this year, for example, officials approved a $4 billion payout – the largest settlement in L.A. County’s history – to resolve claims filed by almost 7,000 victims for abuse dating back to 1959.

So far, San Diego County is facing some 300 separate lawsuits filed by former Polinsky and juvenile hall residents.

‘Several decades’ of abuse

The most recent claims against the county and Polinsky Children’s Center employees have been piling up in bunches, including 17 separate lawsuits filed last week.

The complaints are all different but contain a disturbingly similar pattern: The alleged victims were groomed for abuse, molested and had telephone or other privileges withheld if they refused to comply.

Plaintiff John Roe B.C. 51 was 15 or 16 years old when he was placed into the Polinsky Children’s Center in 2005 or 2006, his lawsuit alleges.

Soon after he arrived, a female residential care worker began grooming him, the plaintiff claimed. She allegedly pinched him, flirted with him and made sexually explicit comments before cornering him and demanding sex.

“Under threat and color of increasing or eliminating basic entitlements including snack rations and time on the phone, depending wholly on plaintiff’s compliance and silence, plaintiff was made to endure several instances of oral copulation carried out by perpetrator,” the lawsuit says.

“Despite these 30-to-60-minute absences of plaintiff and perpetrator, no supervision nor intervention was to be had,” the complaint adds. “Rather, plaintiff’s victimization was part of an open secret involving perpetrator sexually abusing teenage boys in county custody on the grounds of a county facility.”

Most of the Polinsky lawsuits have been filed by the Beverly Hills law firm Slater Slater Schulman LLP, which is now representing more than 100 alleged victims of sexual misconduct.

“The abuse documented in these cases spans several decades and demonstrates a catastrophic breakdown in oversight and accountability within the county’s child-welfare system,” managing partner Michael Carney said.

Woodhall is a Northern California attorney who also has filed dozens of lawsuits under the California Child Victims Act. He said the county is one of the worst offenders he has ever encountered.

“Based on our investigation, the County of San Diego was apparently one of the largest employers of child molesters in the state of California,” he said.

This past spring, Woodhall staged an emotional press conference in San Diego with a number of plaintiffs who described the abuse they claimed to have been subjected to at Polinsky.

“You don’t just get over being drugged and sexually abused,” said one man pursuing a lawsuit against San Diego County. “I was a child in need of protection placed in an institution that was supposed to provide safety and care.”

Allegations of abuse inside the Polinsky Children’s Center are not only coming from plaintiffs.

According to the California Department of Social Services, which licenses and regulates Polinsky, state investigators have responded to scores of complaints at the Kearny Mesa facility in recent years.

Many of those reports, which include threats, abuse and loss of privileges, have been ruled “unfounded” – usually due to a lack of corroboration.

But records show state licensing agents have substantiated six separate violations against the Polinsky Children’s Center since 2023, including one case in which a child was struck by an adult.

“Confidential interviews revealed that S1 (Staff No. 1) hit C1 (Client No. 1) while on the playground in front of witnesses,” the investigator concluded.

No visible accountability

While San Diego County officials insist in their public statements that protecting children under their care is a top priority, allegations and violations keep occurring in the Child and Family Well-Being office, formerly known as Child Welfare Services.

Since 2018, public records show, the county paid at least $11.7 million to victims who were injured, abused or killed due to negligence or misconduct within the Child Welfare Services office.

Despite the escalating costs to taxpayers, elected officials have roundly avoided any public discussion of the practices and operations inside the Polinsky Children’s Center.

Last spring, when the Union-Tribune first disclosed the scores of lawsuits filed by former residents, no member of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors responded to requests to discuss the problem or potential remedies.

This week, three supervisors issued statements about the cases but did not address the root causes of the allegations, the lack of any audit or spell out any specific steps they would take.

“While I cannot comment on pending litigation, I want San Diegans to know this: protecting children must always be our highest priority and I will continue to demand vigilance and accountability to ensure kids in our care are safe,” Chair Terra Lawson-Remer wrote.

Supervisors Monica Montgomery Steppe and Paloma Aguirre issued virtually identical statements.

“Throughout my service, I’ve remained committed to protecting the well-being of all children, and that commitment is unwavering,” Montgomery Steppe said. “The safety and well-being of children in our care must always be the highest priority,” Aguirre said.

Mesa College political science professor Carl Luna said it is no accident that most public officials resist talking about employee misconduct or taking specific steps to stop or reduce an agency’s legal liabilities.

“If there’s no record of you saying or doing anything, it’s harder to be held liable in the future,” he said. “If boards and elected officials can get away with not telling the public what happened, it helps to put the issue that caused the lawsuit away quicker.”

Records show the Child Welfare Services office has not been formally audited in more than a decade. In 2015, an internal review was limited to a five-page report with no public findings or recommendations.

In June, when leadership of the Child and Family Well-Being office transitioned from Kimberly Giardina to Alfredo Guardado Jr., the county auditor issued a similar five-page review.

“Enclosed is our report on the Child & Family Well-Being Department Officers’ Transition Audit,” the auditor wrote. “As there are no findings and recommendations in the report, no audit response is required.”

It remains to be determined how the hundreds of individual lawsuits will be processed by the San Diego Superior Court.

In Los Angeles County, the thousands of cases were coordinated under the purview of a single judge before the massive settlement rather than combined into a class-action proceeding.

Attorneys say a similar strategy may be employed here.