What happened to you at Polinsky was not okay.

The county took children to Polinsky because home wasn't safe. That was the whole idea of the place. Since September 2024, more than 300 people have told the San Diego Superior Court, in lawsuit after lawsuit, that the shelter wasn't either, and that when kids said so, staff didn't listen. If you spent a night there, or a month, any year from 1994 on, this is about you.

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6 questions. Your answers are private and go to one person.

This applies to you no matter what

Only there a few days? That's most people. The place was designed as a ten-day shelter (in 2023 the average stay ran 19 days), and the people already in the case are describing what happened inside stays exactly that short.
You were very young. The complaints describe children of seven, eight and nine, and the plaintiffs' ages at the time run from two to seventeen. Being small enough not to have the words for it then does not count against you now.
You told a social worker, or a foster parent, or the judge in your dependency case, and it went nowhere. That is in the filings, repeatedly: reports brushed aside, the lawsuits say, and some children told, in so many words, to keep quiet.
It was the 1990s, and you assume that's ancient history. The first group to sue, more than 100 people, pleaded conduct running from 1994 to 2020, and your birth year matters more than the year it happened anyway; the deadline section explains.
Your file says you 'acted out', ran away, or were moved from placement to placement. None of that has any bearing here.
You're a sibling, a former foster parent, a partner, asking for someone who can't ask yet. Reach out anyway.

The Polinsky Children's Center lawsuits: what the public record says, and when

None of this is ours. It comes from the court's own inspection reports, from the complaints filed against the County of San Diego, and from the reporters who read them, and every line below links to where we found it. The civil complaints are allegations; the county has contested them and no court has ruled on them yet. Nobody on staff has been criminally charged in connection with these suits, and we say so.

June 3, 2024

The San Diego County Juvenile Justice Commission, a citizen board the court appoints to walk through the shelter once a year, filed its report on Polinsky. Licensed for 204 children; 27 living there that day; about 160 staff; 93 cameras, 45 of them new. In 2023 alone, state licensing had opened 37 investigations into the shelter and substantiated three, though which three, and about what, the report doesn't say. And under 'pending litigation' the box was checked No. Juvenile Justice Commission report.

September 30, 2024

The first wave. On behalf of more than 100 people who'd lived at Polinsky as children, Slater Slater Schulman filed civil complaints in San Diego County Superior Court. Staff sexually abused them, the complaints allege, between 1994 and 2020, and used threats to keep them from reporting it; the county, they say, ran the shelter without adequate background checks, screening or supervision. Michael Workman, a county spokesman, offered one line: the county 'cannot comment on pending litigation.' KPBS.

October 3, 2024

Axios San Diego went through the complaints. The plaintiffs were anywhere from two to seventeen when they were at Polinsky. What they allege runs from groping to molestation to repeated assaults, and, over and over, that a child who reported it was told it would mean worse treatment, separation from family, or confinement. The shelter, it noted, admits more than 100 children a month into six cottages and a nursery. Axios San Diego.

April 4, 2025

A second firm, Herman Law, said more than 75 lawsuits were now on file against the County of San Diego over Polinsky and held a press conference where former residents spoke, some by name. Its complaints cover 1996 to 2023 and allege four kinds of failure: the county didn't investigate reports, didn't set policies that would have protected children, hid what it knew about particular staff being unsafe, and didn't pass suspected abuse on to law enforcement. NBC 7 counted 50 new suits that day and got no response from the county. Herman Law release (PR Newswire).

July 21, 2025

A summary published by a third firm, Manly, Stewart, Finaldi & Thom, put the number of plaintiffs above 150 and quoted the complaints: a nine-year-old boy in 1998 'regularly sexually assaulted in his bedroom'; a seven-year-old in 1999 groped 'as a way to tell him to calm down'; an eight-year-old girl the same year groped by the staffer who did her hair. Each complaint names the county and 50 unnamed Doe defendants. This is the firm's own account, not a court finding. Manly Stewart article.

August 22, 2026

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported two new suits from DiCello Levitt, each with 40-plus plaintiffs, one of them brought by former Polinsky residents. That pushed the number of people accusing San Diego County of childhood sexual abuse in pending cases past 300. One complaint calls it 'a longstanding, systemic failure on the part of county officials to address warning signs, investigate credible allegations and maintain adequate supervision.' A county spokesperson, Tim McClain, said the county has 'comprehensive training, rules, procedures, and additional oversight' and 'is thoroughly investigating.' County lawyers have contested the allegations in every case so far. None of the five supervisors would say what they had done in response. San Diego Union-Tribune.

We checked this on September 12, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from August 22, 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 Polinsky Children's Center lawsuit

The County of San Diego. Polinsky is not a contractor's building; the county's Health and Human Services Agency owns it, staffs it and has run it since the day it opened, October 6, 1994. That is who every one of these lawsuits names. The theory is the one the law calls negligent hiring, supervision and retention, and in plain words it is this: the county took these children out of their homes for their own protection, which put the county in the parent's chair, and then, the complaints say, it hired people it should have screened out, left them alone with kids in cottages and bedrooms, and didn't act when children reported. Whoever did the act answers for it; the county answers for the conditions that let it happen, over and over, across 29 years.

Two things about a public defendant a lawyer will walk you through. There are no punitive damages against a county in California, ever. But there is also no cap on what a jury can award, and, for a childhood sexual abuse claim, no government claim to file before you sue. So the door is the courthouse, not a claim form.

Individual staff are named in the complaints as Doe defendants, fifty per complaint. As of today no one has been criminally charged in connection with these suits, and nothing on this page says otherwise. Your case does not depend on knowing a name; the people already in the case were seven and eight years old, and some remember only a face or a job.

Your deadline: the California statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse at a county shelter

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. And because Polinsky took babies and toddlers, not just teenagers, a child who was five there in 1994 is 37 now, still years inside the line.

For anything on or after January 1, 2024, there is no deadline at all (Assembly Bill 452). Because the defendant is a county, one more thing matters and it cuts in your favor: a childhood sexual abuse claim is exempt from the Government Claims Act, so there is no six-month claim to file with the county first and no bar for having missed one (Government Code 905(m)). What a public defendant does take off the table is punitive damages; the compensatory side has no cap.

Plainly: if you were at Polinsky in the 2000s or later, you almost certainly still have time. If it was the 1990s, you very likely do, and the first group of plaintiffs is proof that people from those years are already in court. Either way it is one call, and the call is free.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told anyone. Neither did most of the 300-plus people now suing the county; a lot of them carried it twenty, thirty years before they said a word.
You can't come up with the staffer's name, just a face, or the job they did there. Read the complaints; that's what they look like too.
You were too young to put a word to it, and you're half convinced it wouldn't count. It counts.
Your dependency file, or your juvenile record, is not a clean one. It has no bearing here.
You were later at a juvenile hall, a group home or a foster home where something else happened. Say so. The county is the defendant in those cases as well.
You live in Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, anywhere. The case is filed in San Diego; you don't have to live there.

Facilities covered

The A.B. and Jessie Polinsky Children's Center, 9400 Ruffin Court, Kearny Mesa, San Diego: the six residential cottages, the infant nursery, the on-site school and clinic, and the county's receiving and intake there. It is still open and still the county's only emergency shelter. A county juvenile hall instead, Kearny Mesa or East Mesa, or the old Camp Barrett? A foster or group home the county placed you in? The questions still work. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue San Diego County for what happened at Polinsky Children's Center?

More than 300 people already have, across suits filed since September 2024, and a large share of them were Polinsky children. Whether you can depends mostly on when you were born and when you were there, which is what the questions above sort out. There is no county claim form to file first.

Has anyone at Polinsky been arrested or charged?

Not in connection with these lawsuits, as far as the public record shows, and we won't tell you otherwise. The suits name the county and unnamed Doe staff. A civil case does not need a criminal one, and most of the people already in court never got one.

Has San Diego County settled the Polinsky lawsuits?

No. As of August 2026 the county's lawyers have contested the allegations in every case, the county says it is 'thoroughly investigating', and the cases are pending in San Diego state and federal courts. Los Angeles County settled its own shelter and juvenile hall cases in 2025; San Diego has not, and nothing here promises it will.

I was at Polinsky back in the 1990s. Am I too late?

Probably not, no. People from the 1990s are already in the case; the earliest group, 100-plus plaintiffs, pleaded conduct starting in 1994, the year the place opened, and some of the children the complaints describe were seven, eight, nine years old in 1998 and 1999. Mid-thirties now. Whether the door's still open for you turns on your birth year, which the deadline section above walks through, and that's a one-call question.

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.