What happened to you in a San Diego County juvenile hall was not okay.

Six places, one county. Kearny Mesa and the campus that replaced it, East Mesa out by the border, the Girls Rehabilitation Facility, Camp Barrett in Alpine, the ranch at Campo, and Polinsky, the shelter the county took kids to when home wasn't safe. By August 2026 more than 300 people had sued the County of San Diego saying an officer, a staff member or a social worker sexually abused them as children in its juvenile halls, its shelter or a foster placement it made, and that when they said so, nothing happened. Most of the suits name one of those six places. The County has settled none of it. If you were held or placed in any of them as a minor, this is about you.

Free
Confidential
No obligation
You never pay a dollar

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

This applies to you no matter what

You told someone and nothing came of it. One of the eight people who sued in July 2026 says she reported it to a staff member at Kearny Mesa in about 2004 and believes it was disregarded. Another told a supervisor, the Union-Tribune reported, and the officer was back on her unit within weeks. That isn't a hole in a case. It's the case.
You were there a week. Or a night. The man who sued in August 2025 says one week at Kearny Mesa, in 2000. Polinsky was built as a ten-day shelter. Short stays are most of the people already in court.
You can't say which building it was, only that it was the county's. Kids moved between the hall, the camps and the ranch all the time. Pick the one you remember best and say the rest on the call.
It was the '90s, or earlier. The suits on file reach back to 1970. Your birth year matters more than the year it happened, and the deadline section below walks through why.
You had a record then, or you have one now. Nobody was in juvenile hall for being an angel, and nobody was at Polinsky by choice. Neither has anything to do with what an adult in a county job did.
You're a parent, a partner, a former foster parent, a cellmate from back then, asking for someone who can't. Reach out anyway.

The San Diego County juvenile facility lawsuits and investigations: what the public record says, and when

None of what follows is ours. It comes from the complaints filed against the County of San Diego, the Attorney General's office, the county's own Civil Grand Jury, a federal court docket, 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 contested the suits and admitted nothing, and no officer or staff member has been convicted of anything described here. One more thing, because this page covers a whole county: the complaints and findings below name Kearny Mesa and the Youth Transition Campus, East Mesa, Camp Barrett, Rancho del Campo, the Girls Rehabilitation Facility and Polinsky. Rancho del Rayo is listed on this page because the same Probation Department ran it, on the same Campo site as Rancho del Campo; no separate record on Rancho del Rayo is cited here.

September 30, 2024

Slater Slater Schulman filed civil complaints in San Diego Superior Court for more than 100 people who'd lived at Polinsky Children's Center as children. Staff sexually abused them between 1994 and 2020, the complaints allege, and threatened them to keep them from reporting it; the county, which owns and runs the shelter through its Health and Human Services Agency, is accused of failing to screen and background-check employees and failing in its duty to protect the children placed there. A county spokesman, Michael Workman, said the county cannot comment on pending litigation. KPBS.

November 1, 2024

A suit filed the week before in San Diego Superior Court alleges that a 16-year-old serving two court-ordered stints at Camp Barrett in 2012 was sexually assaulted by two different probation officers, one of them in her on-site living quarters, the other in a restroom on a field trip, with a threat to postpone his release. The complaint calls it a systemic failure to protect the youths in the county's care. The camp itself, out in rural Alpine, isn't there anymore; the county shut it in 2018. One more detail, and his lawyer only found it in June 2024. His demand letter, unredacted, had been sitting on the county's own website. For months. San Diego Union-Tribune.

February 16, 2025

At least two dozen. That was the Union-Tribune's count of people suing the County who say a probation officer sexually assaulted them as children in one of its juvenile facilities, a count built from claims it obtained by public records request. They were filed in 2023 and 2024, and the earliest thing in them happened in 1970, the latest in 2022; most of it, the 1990s through the 2010s. The old Kearny Mesa hall comes up most. Rancho del Campo and Camp Barrett come up too, both closed by then, and so do East Mesa and the Girls Rehabilitation Facility, which are still open. Each accuses the Probation Department of failing to screen officers, failing to intervene, failing to investigate complaints and failing to discipline anyone. In discovery the County said many of its records were already destroyed; its policy destroys facility records after five years. San Diego Union-Tribune.

May 13, 2025

Attorney General Rob Bonta opened a civil rights investigation into the County of San Diego and the County Office of Education, to determine whether the County has engaged in a pattern or practice of unlawful treatment of youth at East Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility and the Youth Transition Campus. It is open. His office says it has made no determinations about any complaint or allegation, 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 by Singleton Schreiber. 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, and 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 moved the case to federal court on September 10, 2025 (S.D. Cal. 3:25-cv-02350); it did not oppose sending it back, and the judge returned it to San Diego Superior Court on November 5, 2025. Singleton Schreiber, the filing firm.

June 4, 2026

John S.P. Doe v. County of San Diego, case 26CU030712C, was filed in San Diego Superior Court by Stinar Lannen. The plaintiff says he was fifteen and sixteen at Rancho del Campo, the county's ranch facility at 957 Forrest Gate Road in Campo, in about 2002 and 2003, and that a staff member abused him in the yard after lights out under the pretext of a strip search. The complaint pleads that he was made to believe the abuse was part of his punishment and that a complaint would fall on deaf ears, and that the County closed Rancho del Campo in 2016. On July 10, 2026 the County moved it to federal court, docket 3:26-cv-03974, and the complaint itself sits there as Exhibit A to the removal notice. the complaint, on CourtListener (RECAP).

June 2026

The 2025–2026 San Diego County Civil Grand Jury said it had become aware of numerous allegations concerning civil rights abuses at East Mesa and the Youth Transition Campus. It recorded, as a fact, that the Attorney General's office has received many complaints about systemic failures at both. And it found something simpler: the probation officers working in the county's juvenile facilities don't wear body-worn cameras. It told the County to equip them. A grand jury report is not a court finding, and this one says so. San Diego County Grand Jury report.

July 19, 2026

Eight more people, Jane and John Does, sued in San Diego Superior Court, and the County Counsel's office moved the case to federal court. One plaintiff alleges the abuse by two officers began when she was about 14 and went on until she was about 16, that in 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 called the allegations similar to the prior claims from former residents of Kearny Mesa, East Mesa, the closed Camp Barrett and Polinsky, and put the County's pending cases from former residents of its juvenile halls, shelters and foster facilities in the hundreds. County officials declined to comment. San Diego Union-Tribune, via the Spokesman-Review.

August 22, 2026

Two new suits from DiCello Levitt, each with 40-plus plaintiffs, one for former Polinsky residents and one for former wards of the county's juvenile halls: at least 88 people, and a county-wide total past 300 in pending cases. The phrase one complaint uses is a longstanding, systemic failure: county officials, it alleges, didn't address warning signs, didn't investigate credible allegations, and didn't maintain adequate supervision and accountability within these institutions. The county's answer came through spokesperson Tim McClain: comprehensive training, rules, procedures, and additional oversight, he said, and it is thoroughly investigating. County lawyers have contested the allegations in every case; none of the five supervisors would say what they had done in response. All of it is pending in San Diego state and federal courts. San Diego Union-Tribune.

We checked this on September 13, 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 San Diego County juvenile facility lawsuit

The County of San Diego. One defendant, whichever building it was. Probation ran the halls, the camps, the ranch and the Girls Rehabilitation Facility. Polinsky belongs to the Health and Human Services Agency. Different departments, sure, but it's one county, one board of supervisors, one courthouse. Every suit on this page names it, and that is the whole 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, was told, and left him there, answers for all of them. That is what the complaints plead, in the language the law uses: negligent hiring, supervision and retention, and a failure to investigate what it was told. Two of the filed suits say a child reported it and nothing changed. A third says the reports over the years were so many that the abuse was normalized.

There is one thing in the record about the County that a lawyer will want to hear about from you. In 2025 it told the court that many of its own records were gone, destroyed under a policy that clears facility records after five years. Which means what you remember, who you told, who else was on the unit or in the cottage with you, carries more weight here than it would almost 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, for every year. The individual officers and staff can be named too, once they're identified; most complaints name them as Does. No one has been convicted of anything on this page, and your case does not wait on a criminal one. Two of these facilities have their own pages, Kearny Mesa and Polinsky, if you want the record on one place in detail. This page is for the county that ran them all.

Your deadline: the California statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse in a county juvenile facility

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 before 2024, Code of Civil Procedure 340.11, 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, and once you're past 40 the law also asks for a showing that the County knew or had notice of the risk, which is exactly what these complaints plead. That's not a date you look up on a calendar; it's a conversation you have with a lawyer.

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), and the legislature made the carve-out retroactive, so there is no missed-claim trap for any year. And anything from January 1, 2024 onward has no deadline at all; the legislature removed it.

Put plainly. Held in a County facility 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, or that reporting would cost you your release date. Both sentences are in the complaints. Neither was ever true.
You can't come up with a name. Only a face, a nickname, a shift. Read the complaints; most of them look like that too.
You went on to prison later, or you're there now. It has no bearing on this.
You live in Arizona, Nevada, anywhere. What matters is where it happened, not where you've ended up.

Facilities covered

Where, exactly. Camp Barrett in Alpine, closed 2018. The Juvenile Ranch Facility at 957 Forrest Gate Road in Campo: Rancho del Campo, closed 2016, and Rancho del Rayo beside it. The Girls Rehabilitation Facility, next to the old hall in Kearny Mesa, in its current building since 1981. The old hall itself, Kearny Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility at 2801 Meadow Lark Drive, which had been the county's hall since 1954 and is gone now; the Youth Transition Campus, opened February 2022, stands where it stood (that one has its own page: /kearny-mesa-juvenile-hall-survivors). East Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility, 446 Alta Road, out near the border, open since June 2004, and one of the two halls the Attorney General is looking into. And Polinsky, the A.B. and Jessie Polinsky Children's Center at 9400 Ruffin Court in Kearny Mesa, the county's emergency shelter since October 1994; Health and Human Services runs it rather than Probation, but it's the County's all the same (its own page: /polinsky-childrens-center-survivors). Between them, that's every juvenile facility the County of San Diego ran in the years these complaints cover. Somewhere else the county placed you? The questions still work. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue San Diego County for abuse in juvenile hall?

More than 300 people already have, in suits pending as of August 2026, and the County of San Diego is the defendant in every one, whether it happened at Kearny Mesa, East Mesa, a camp, the ranch or Polinsky. Whether you can depends mostly on when you were born and when it happened, which is what the questions above sort out. Asking is 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. That's fine. A civil case doesn't wait for a criminal one or need one, only you and what you remember.

Has San Diego County settled the juvenile hall lawsuits?

No. As of August 2026 its 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 juvenile hall and shelter cases in 2025; San Diego has not, and nothing here promises it will.

What if the County destroyed the records?

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

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.