What happened to you at Kearny Mesa Juvenile Hall was not okay.

Meadow Lark Drive. The old hall, the one they tore down and rebuilt as the Youth Transition Campus. By February 2025 at least two dozen people had sued San Diego County saying probation officers abused them as children in its juvenile halls, most of them at Kearny Mesa, and that when they said something, nobody did anything. Since then the Attorney General has opened an investigation, and eight more people filed in July. If you were locked up at Kearny Mesa as a minor, this is about you.

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This applies to you no matter what

You told a staff member and nothing came of it. One of the eight people who filed in July says she reported it to a staff member at Kearny Mesa in 2004 and believes it was disregarded. That is not a weakness in a case. It is the case.
You were only there a week, maybe less. The man who sued in August 2025? His complaint says one week at Kearny Mesa, in 2000. One week was plenty.
It was the '90s. Or before that. The suits on file already reach back to 1970, and honestly your birth year matters more than the year it happened, which the deadline section gets into.
A juvenile record, a later one, either. Nobody was at juvenile hall for being an angel. What you were in for has nothing to do with what an adult in a county uniform was allowed to do to you.
It was after the rebuild, at the Youth Transition Campus. The new buildings opened in 2022 and the same department runs them. For anything after the start of 2024, there is no deadline at all.
You're a parent, a partner, a cellmate from back then asking for someone who can't. Reach out anyway.

The Kearny Mesa juvenile hall lawsuits and the state investigation: what the public record says, and when

None of what follows is ours. It comes from the complaints filed against San Diego County, the Attorney General's office, the county's own Grand Jury, and the reporters who read the filings, and every line links to where we found it. Everything in a complaint is an allegation until a court says otherwise; the County has admitted nothing, and no officer has been convicted of anything described here.

February 16, 2025

At least two dozen. That was the San Diego Union-Tribune's count of people suing the County who say a probation officer sexually assaulted them as a child in one of its juvenile facilities, most of them at the old Kearny Mesa detention facility, a count it built from claims pulled by public records request. Filed across 2023 and 2024, the suits describe conduct from 1970 (the earliest) to 2022 (the latest), and each accuses the Probation Department of the same three failures, in screening, in investigating complaints, in disciplining anyone at all. In discovery the County said many of the records were already gone. Its policy: facility records are destroyed after five years. San Diego Union-Tribune.

May 13, 2025

California Attorney General Rob Bonta opened a civil rights investigation into San Diego County and the County Office of Education, to determine whether the County has engaged in a pattern or practice of unlawful treatment of youth at the Youth Transition Campus and East Mesa. It is an open investigation. His office has not announced findings, and it asked anyone with information to write to its Bureau of Children's Justice. California Attorney General.

August 8, 2025

John Doe v. County of San Diego was filed in San Diego Superior Court. The complaint alleges the plaintiff was held at Kearny Mesa for one week in 2000 as a minor and was repeatedly sexually assaulted by a staff member in secluded areas of the facility. It alleges that for decades the facility had systemic failures in hiring, oversight, and supervision, and retention of unqualified, unfit and incompetent employees, resulting in numerous reports over the years of physical and sexual abuse that was normalized and allowed. The County is the defendant. Singleton Schreiber, the filing firm.

June 2026

The 2025–2026 San Diego County Civil Grand Jury reported that it had become aware of numerous allegations of civil rights abuses at the Youth Transition Campus and East Mesa, recorded as a fact that the Attorney General's office has received many complaints about systemic failures at both facilities, and found that the probation officers working there do not wear body-worn cameras. It recommended the County equip them. San Diego County Grand Jury report.

July 2026

Eight more people, Jane and John Does, sued in San Diego Superior Court; the County Counsel's office moved the case to federal court in San Diego. One plaintiff alleges the abuse by two officers began when she was about 14 and continued until about 16, that in or about 2004 she reported it to a staff member at Kearny Mesa, and that she believes her verbal reports were disregarded. The complaint says the County has clearly established sexual abuse and assault in jails, prisons and juvenile halls as an issue that must be addressed. The Union-Tribune put the County's pending caseload from former residents of its juvenile halls, shelters and foster facilities in the hundreds. San Diego Union-Tribune, via Corrections1.

August 28, 2026 update

KPBS reported that the Superior Court is ending its administrative support for the Juvenile Justice Commission, the body that inspects the county's juvenile halls, on September 29, and that at least nine of ten commissioners say they will resign without liability insurance. Hundreds of plaintiffs are alleging misconduct and abuse in those institutions in pending lawsuits. KPBS.

We checked this on September 12, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from August 28, 2026 update. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Kearny Mesa juvenile hall lawsuit

The County of San Diego. Every one of these suits names it, and that is the point. An officer who abuses a kid in a cell answers for himself. A county that hired him, put him alone on a unit at night, heard about it and left him there, answers for all of them. That is the theory the complaints plead: negligent hiring, supervision and retention by the Probation Department, and a failure to investigate what it was told. Two of the filed suits say the County was told. One says a girl reported it to a staff member in 2004 and nothing changed. Another says the reports over the years were so many that the abuse became normalized.

There is one more thing the record says about the County that a lawyer will want to hear from you: it told the court in 2025 that many of its own records were gone, destroyed under a five-year policy. Which means what you remember, and who you told, and who else was on that unit, matters more than it would anywhere else.

The County is a public body, and that changes a few things a lawyer walks you through. No punitive damages against it, by statute. But no cap on what a jury can award, and for a claim like this you do not file a government claim first; the legislature took that step away. The individual officers can be named too. None has been convicted of anything on this page, and your case does not wait on a criminal one.

Your deadline: the California statute of limitations for childhood 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 is later. That is California's rule for anyone abused as a minor, Code of Civil Procedure 340.1, and it is why we ask your birth year. Born in 1987 or later and the door is open on age alone. Born earlier, it turns on discovery, which is a conversation with a lawyer, not a date on a calendar. The people already suing describe, for the most part, the 1990s and 2000s; one goes back to 1970.

Because the County is a public body, one more rule matters, and it cuts in your favour. Normally you'd have six months to file a government claim before you could sue a county, and missing it ends things. Not here. Childhood sexual abuse claims are carved out of that step, under Government Code 905(m), so there's no missed-claim trap waiting for you. And anything from January 1, 2024 onward has no deadline at all, since the legislature removed it.

Put plainly. Held at Kearny Mesa in 1997 or later? You almost certainly still have time. Earlier than that, you may, and one call to find out beats assuming you don't.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told a soul. Not a spouse, not a cellmate, nobody. Most of the people already in these cases carried it for twenty years first.
You don't have a word for what happened. Strip inspections that went somewhere they shouldn't have. A hand where it had no business. It counts.
You were told it was part of your punishment. That sentence is in the complaints. It was never true.
You went on to prison later, or you're there now. It has no bearing on this.
You reported it and were punished for it, or threatened with more time. That is exactly what the suits describe.
You live in Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, anywhere. What matters is where it happened. Not where you are now.

Facilities covered

Kearny Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility, 2801 Meadow Lark Drive, San Diego. The county juvenile hall from the 1950s, torn down, rebuilt as the Youth Transition Campus. That opened in February 2022, and since October 2024 it has held every youth in county custody, sentenced or still waiting for court, and it's the intake too. Same site, same Probation Department. The Girls Rehabilitation Facility, East Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility, Camp Barrett (closed) and Rancho del Campo (closed) are named in the same wave of suits. A different San Diego County facility? The questions still work. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue San Diego County for abuse at Kearny Mesa juvenile hall?

At least two dozen people had sued the County over its juvenile halls by early 2025, most of them over Kearny Mesa, eight more filed in July 2026, and the County is the defendant in every one. Whether you can depends mostly on when you were born and when it happened, which is what the questions above sort out. And asking? Free.

Has anyone been convicted?

Not that the public record shows, for anything on this page. These are civil complaints against the County, and the Attorney General's investigation is open with no findings yet, which is fine, because a civil case doesn't wait for a criminal one or need one, only you and what you remember.

What if the County destroyed the records?

It told the court in 2025 that many were gone, under a five-year destruction policy. That is an argument the lawyers make, not your problem to solve. What it does mean: your account, the names you still have, whoever was on the unit with you, all of that carries more weight now. Not less.

It was thirty years ago. Does that still count?

It may well. The clock in California is your 40th birthday or five years after you connected the harm to what happened, whichever is later, and the suits already on file describe the 1990s. There is no government-claim deadline to have missed. One call sorts it.

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.