Foster kids would be removed from cells in Sacramento County if new lawsuit prevails

The relative of a foster child allegedly being housed in a cell is suing Sacramento County, seeking a court order that would force the county to remove all children from the facility.

The lawsuit, filed last week in Sacramento Superior Court by NAACP Sacramento President Betty Williams, alleges that while her 14-year-old relative was under the care of the county, she was preyed upon by a pimp and forced into sex work.

The county has been housing foster children in a former juvenile detention facility in Rosemont for more than six months, despite receiving state letters requiring them to be removed. A September letter to the county from the California Department of Social Services Foster Care ombudsperson Larry Fluharty stated the county is housing teenagers in “jail-like” cells, containing metal bunk beds, and metal toilets covered with wood. The environment could “retraumatize” youth and make them feel “physically and psychologically unsafe,” he wrote.

The county declined comment on the lawsuit because it does not comment on pending litigation, said Samantha Mott, a county spokeswoman.

In December 2021, the girl, who is unnamed in the lawsuit because she is a minor, ran away from home, the lawsuit alleges. After about two days, police returned her to the house, and contacted the county’s Child Protective Services. Social workers then removed her from the house and moved her into an office building, where the county was housing foster children before the detention facility. While there, she attempted suicide, and was returned home.

The girl allegedly tried to run away from school in March 2022, and the county again removed her from her home and housed her in the office building. That’s where she met a pimp, who entered the building and forced her into sex work, the lawsuit alleges. The county at one point sent her to a group home in Bakersfield, where the pimp followed her, then back to the office building, where she continued to be trafficked, the lawsuit alleges.

In August the county moved the girl and the other foster children from the office building to a nearby former juvenile detention facility called the Warren E. Thornton Center (WET), on Branch Center Road. She still frequently goes missing and is under control of the pimp, the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit alleges the county violated state laws, including failure to investigate continued reports of sexual abuse, failure to keep a record of all the reports received, failure to properly train employees, and failure to place a so-called 300 hold on the girl.

Before the county removed the girl from her father’s house, she had been a cheerleader making straight As, Williams said. Now she hardly ever goes to school and has failing grades.

“My heart breaks every day,” Williams said. “It’s almost like a slow death. Watching the potential of this flaming light just leave the body. It’s something that I think about every day, every night when I go to bed and every time I get up. It’s the feeling of being hopeless. That I’m at the mercy of a system that doesn’t seem to care about our children.”

The girl told Williams the facility felt like a jail, she said.

“You take a child who’s been ripped from her family and stuck her in a jail cell,” said Robert Thompson, Williams’ lawyer. “(The county) should’ve been working on a plan for years. Other counties find permanent housing solutions, whether building something from the ground up or finding some sort of facility to house these children and properly supervise them. This is their job.”

Most facilities for foster children are in residential neighborhoods, where it’s harder for pimps to wait outside, Thompson said. The WET center is in an industrial area surrounded by public parking lots.

The county has applied for a state license to keep the children at the WET center. It has not yet received it yet. The county has also issued a request for proposals seeking providers to operate a so-called temporary shelter care facility for foster children on Feb. 10. It has not yet signed a contract.