What happened to you at Barry J. Nidorf was not okay.

Sylmar. 16350 Filbert Street. The hall people still call Sylmar Juvenile Hall, open since 1965. The state's Department of Justice went inside it and Central in October 2018 and came out with a judgment against the County in January 2021; the state's corrections board has since called it unsuitable to hold youth, in May 2023 and again in July 2025, and the County moved boys back in anyway. That's the conditions record. The sexual-abuse record is a separate thing, and it's a civil one: 279 former detainees named Nidorf among six County facilities in December 2022, and a federal complaint filed September 8, 2026 describes a 15-year-old held there in 2001. If you were locked up at Nidorf as a kid and a person on the County's payroll crossed a line, this is about you.

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You knew it as Sylmar Juvenile Hall, not Nidorf. Same building. The complaint filed in federal court this September says so on its fourth page: Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall, "otherwise known as Sylmar Juvenile Hall," 16350 Filbert Street. Pick the first answer either way.
You were on the long-term side, the SYTF, the unit for young people who would once have gone to the state's Division of Juvenile Justice. By November 9, 2022 the County was already counting 58 of you at Nidorf, and the state's monitor told the Attorney General in 2024 that conditions there were getting worse. One thing to know: if you were already 18 when it happened, which does happen on that side, a different clock runs. That's a call, not a no.
You were moved to Nidorf from Los Padrinos. 39 boys in August 2025, more than 20 young men in August 2026, by Probation's own count. The state board had said the hall was still unsuitable. For anything from January 1, 2024 onward California put no deadline on it at all.
Maybe it was the '90s, maybe the 2000s, and you've been assuming that's too long ago. Look at the record below: the man suing in federal court right now is talking about 2001. The claims the County paid out in 2025 were mostly older than that. What counts more than the year is when you were born; the deadline section further down says why.
You were only there a couple of weeks. Probation's own page for the hall puts the average stay at 7 to 23 days. Nobody is asking how long.
You're a parent, a sibling, a friend asking for someone who can't. Reach out anyway. Pick 'I'm asking for someone else' and the questions adjust.

The Barry J. Nidorf lawsuits and the state's findings: what the public record says, and when

None of what follows is ours. The complaints were filed by former detainees and their lawyers, the findings were made by the California Attorney General, a Superior Court judge and the state's Board of State and Community Corrections, the settlements were voted by the Board of Supervisors, and reporters wrote it up. Every line links to where it came from. Where a complaint is the source it's an allegation and we say so. And one distinction we keep everywhere on this page: the Attorney General's judgment and the state board's findings are about conditions, staffing, cameras, force, drugs. They are not findings of sexual abuse. The sexual-abuse record at Nidorf is the civil complaints, and the County's settlements are the County's own acts.

January 13, 2021

The Attorney General and the County of Los Angeles entered a stipulated judgment in Los Angeles Superior Court after a state Department of Justice investigation, opened in October 2018, into conditions at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall and Central Juvenile Hall. More than 80 witnesses interviewed, thousands of pages read. The state's findings, as alleged in its complaint: insufficient services and youth safety endangered, including by excessive and inappropriate physical and chemical force. The County agreed to four-year plans on staffing, force, room confinement, grievances and cameras, with an independent monitor. A conditions case, start to finish. California Attorney General release, January 13, 2021 (reprinted by YubaNet).

December 20, 2022

279 people who'd been held as kids sued Los Angeles County, saying probation staff sexually abused them in its halls and camps. Nidorf, in Sylmar, is one of six facilities named; Los Padrinos, Central, Challenger, Camp Scott and Camp Scudder are the rest, and the earliest of it goes back to the 1970s, the latest to 2018. How were kids kept quiet? Threats of solitary, the complaint describes, and phone privileges pulled, and no family visits. Allegations, every one. Probation wasn't available for comment. CBS Los Angeles.

May 9, 2023

Judge Michael P. Linfield granted the Attorney General's motion to enforce the 2021 judgment, People v. County of Los Angeles, case 21STCV01309. The court found the County still hadn't met provisions on medical care, staffing, getting kids to class, outdoor recreation, a behavior plan, and camera installation at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall. Two weeks later, on May 23, the state's corrections board found Nidorf unsuitable to hold youth, nine violations of Title 15, and gave the County 60 days to move roughly 300 young people out of Nidorf and Central. They went to Los Padrinos in July. Nidorf's secure youth treatment facility kept its residents and kept running. California Attorney General.

July 13, 2024

A reporter's tally put the childhood sexual abuse filings against the County in Los Angeles Superior Court at about 5,200 plaintiffs as of May 2024, at least 2,300 of them about Probation facilities. One of the complaints read for that story is about Nidorf: a teenager, identified only as L.A., who says a probation officer gave him privileges, then molested him repeatedly across 14 months in 2016 and 2017 and used threats to keep him from telling. An allegation in a pending case. The Imprint.

November 19, 2024

The Attorney General and the County jointly asked the court to amend the judgment after what the release calls "alarming reports from an independent monitor about the continued deterioration of conditions at Barry J. Nidorf Secure Youth Treatment Facility and Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall." The monitor's list: staffing, drugs coming in, staff instigating fights between youths, missed medical appointments, retaliation against kids who file grievances, cameras that didn't cover everything. The amended terms require an ombudsperson at each hall, an anti-retaliation policy, and a rewrite of the County's policy on reporting child abuse. Bonta: the County "has utterly failed in this responsibility to date." California Attorney General.

April 29, 2025

The Board of Supervisors approved a $4 billion settlement of more than 6,800 sexual abuse claims against the County, conduct back to 1959 and mostly from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, at Probation facilities and at MacLaren Children's Center. Payments run through 2030 and continue to fiscal year 2050-51. "On behalf of the County, I apologize wholeheartedly to everyone who was harmed by these reprehensible acts," its chief executive said. On October 28 the Board added $828 million for more than 400 more cases, and by February 27, 2026 County Counsel was saying about 5,000 further cases had been served after the two settlements, more than 16,000 claims in all. None of these figures is broken out by facility. The County has never published a Nidorf number and we won't invent one. County of Los Angeles.

July 7, 2025

Two years on, the Board of State and Community Corrections looked again and wrote the one sentence that matters here: "the Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall remains unsuitable for the confinement of juveniles." The County had fixed six of the nine violations from 2023. Not the safety checks, though. Not room confinement, not use-of-force training. The SYTF had its own list of noncompliance and 60 days to fix it. The board's chair said it would not be appropriate to move more youth in. On July 23 the Attorney General asked a judge to put the County's halls in receivership. On August 14 the Probation chief told the board in writing he was reopening the hall anyway under the court-approved plan to thin out Los Padrinos, and 39 boys were moved in; the board's spokesperson: "The BSCC did not approve the move." Judge Peter Hernandez said no to the receivership on October 10, for now, and kept the judgment in force. Board of State and Community Corrections.

September 8, 2026

The newest one. Doe v. County of Los Angeles, 2:26-cv-10077, filed in federal court in Los Angeles by six plaintiffs who sue as Jane and John Does. One of the six, John S.C. Doe, was 15 or 16, he says, and at Barry J. Nidorf in 2001 and 2002. A staff member sexually abused him on at least four occasions, by his account, kept him back from recreation, and told him he'd never go home if he talked. The other five were at Los Padrinos and Central. The complaint pleads childhood sexual assault under California's statute, says no government claim was required, and says the plaintiffs learned of the County's alleged failures "through public disclosures and advertisements in approximately 2025." It's a complaint; nothing in it is proven. As of September 9 the docket showed the complaint and nothing else. CourtListener docket, C.D. Cal..

We checked this on September 13, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from September 8, 2026. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall lawsuit

The County of Los Angeles. Nidorf is not its own defendant; it's a building the County owns and runs through its Probation Department, and the County is the party named in every complaint on this page. The theory is the plain one. A staff member who abuses a kid in a locked unit answers for himself. A County that hired him, put him alone with children, and ran a hall the state's own monitor said had gaps in its cameras and punished kids for filing grievances answers for what it let happen. That's what the September 2026 complaint alleges in its own words: failure to screen and retain suitable staff, failure to train and supervise, isolation that went unnoticed. And the state's judgment of 2021, the enforcement order of 2023 and the amended judgment of 2024 are the sort of record a lawyer uses to show what the County knew about how its halls were run, even though not one of them is a finding about sexual abuse.

Because the County is a public body, three things change, and a lawyer walks you through them. No punitive damages against the County; California law bars them. No cap on what a jury can award. And a childhood sexual abuse claim doesn't need a government claim filed first, no six-month form, no missed window, whatever year it was. The September 2026 complaint pleads exactly that.

One more thing, because people ask. People ask about the $4 billion. The County approved it in April 2025, then added $828 million that October, and every dollar of both went to claims that were already on file. If you signed on to one of those, it's done, and say so on the call. If you didn't, none of that money was for you and none of it closes your door; the County's own lawyers counted about 5,000 new cases arriving after the settlements. Where you were held sorts the intake, not the case: this page is Nidorf's, and the County-wide page, with Los Padrinos, Central, Challenger and the camps, is a click away below.

Your deadline: the California statute of limitations for sexual abuse at a county juvenile hall

Until you turn 40, or five years from the day you understood what it did to you, whichever comes later. That's California's rule for anything that happened to a minor before 2024, Code of Civil Procedure section 340.11, and it's why the questions ask your birth year. Born in 1987 or later and the door is open on age alone. Born before that and it turns on discovery, and for a suit against the County itself filed at 40 or older the statute also asks for a showing that the County knew or should have known, plus certificates of merit from a lawyer and a therapist. Hurdles, not walls; the County has settled claims from the 1980s. A lawyer decides, not a calendar.

For anything from January 1, 2024 onward, no deadline. None. The Legislature took the clock off entirely for conduct from that date forward, section 340.1, and that covers the SYTF today and every boy moved into the hall from Los Padrinos since August 2025. One more rule that cuts your way because the County is a public body: a childhood sexual abuse claim doesn't need a government claim filed first, under Government Code section 905(m) and section 340.11(s). Any year. No form, no missed six months.

Plainly. Held at Nidorf in 2024 or after: you have time, full stop. Born in 1987 or later: you have time. Born earlier, held in the '90s or the 2000s or before: you may, and one call finds out. And if you were already 18 when it happened, which the SYTF makes possible, a different clock runs, and that's a call too. We don't quote figures for it here because a lawyer has to look at your dates first.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told a soul. Not a parent, not a public defender, nobody.
You told an officer, or you filed a grievance, and it got worse. The state's monitor has written that down about the County's halls, Nidorf's SYTF among them.
You were only there a week or two. Or you were there for years on the SYTF side.
You went back more than once, or bounced between Nidorf, Central and Los Padrinos. Most people who were ever held did.
You don't have a word for what happened and you're half sure it wouldn't count. That's for a lawyer to weigh, not you.
You live in Nevada, Arizona, anywhere else now. The case sits in California and you don't need to.

Facilities covered

Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall, 16350 Filbert Street, Sylmar, the old Sylmar Juvenile Hall, open since 1965 and named for the County's probation chief of 1984 to 1997. The building's roles, year by year: a juvenile hall for pre-disposition youth through July 2023; home to the young people who would once have gone to the state's Division of Juvenile Justice from the time the state stopped taking them in July 2021, 58 of them counted there by November 2022, formally the Barry J. Nidorf Secure Youth Treatment Facility from July 17, 2023; and, since August 2025, a juvenile hall again, receiving boys from Los Padrinos under the court-approved depopulation plan while the state board still lists it as unsuitable. Both sides of the campus are on this page. Held somewhere else the County ran? Los Padrinos, down in Downey, has its own page at /los-padrinos-juvenile-hall-survivors. Central, Challenger, Camp Scott, Camp Scudder, Dorothy Kirby, MacLaren, the camps that have since closed: those sit on the County-wide page, /la-county-juvenile-halls-survivors. The questions here still work; answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall?

You'd sue the County of Los Angeles, which owns and runs it. 279 people did in December 2022 naming Nidorf among six facilities, six more did in federal court on September 8, 2026 with one of them describing Nidorf in 2001, and the County has settled more than 11,000 claims across its halls, camps and MacLaren. Whether you can depends mostly on your birth year and when it happened, which is what the questions above sort out.

I was at Sylmar Juvenile Hall, not Nidorf. Same thing?

Same thing. Same building on Filbert Street, renamed for a probation chief; nobody who was there in the '80s or '90s calls it anything but Sylmar, and that's fine. Answer the first question with the first option, whatever you call the place.

Is Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall still open?

Yes, both halves. The secure youth treatment facility never closed. The juvenile hall side emptied in July 2023 after the state board found it unsuitable, and the County reopened it in August 2025 to take boys from Los Padrinos, over the board's objection; more were moved in August 2026. The board's timeline through April 2026 still lists the hall as unsuitable, with corrective plans due back in June 2026. That's a conditions fight. It bears on a sexual abuse claim only for what it says about who was watching the units.

Is this the LA County juvenile hall gladiator fights case?

No. That was a criminal case about Los Padrinos in Downey, not Nidorf: in March 2025 the Attorney General indicted 30 County detention officers over fights between youths there in the second half of 2023, charges about fights, not sexual abuse. By April 14, 2026 nearly half of those cases had been dismissed at the state's own request, four officers had pleaded no contest on terms ending in dismissal, and 16 remained pending. Nobody has been convicted and every remaining defendant is presumed innocent. It has nothing to do with whether you can file about Nidorf.

I already got money from the LA County settlement. Can I file again?

Not for the same thing. A settled claim is settled, and the County now requires every plaintiff to file a detailed factual summary under penalty of perjury. Say so on the call and nobody wastes your time. If something different happened, at a different time or place, that's a separate question, and a lawyer answers it, not us.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Here, nothing. Every case is on contingency. The lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing. Not for the call, not for the review, not for the case.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

You answer 6 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
You decide. You find out your options. If you want to stop there, you stop there.

How this works

ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed California attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

You never pay a dollar

Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.