Home / Sexual Abuse Lawsuits / San Diego & San Bernardino Juvenile
— California · county juvenile facility abuse claims
Los Angeles County’s $4 billion settlement showed what accountability looks like. Hundreds of survivors are now pursuing that same accountability against San Diego and San Bernardino counties — for abuse by probation officers, counselors and staff at juvenile halls, camps and children’s shelters stretching back to the 1970s.
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A lawsuit is never the urgent step. You are. The RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline is free, confidential and staffed 24 hours a day at 1–800–656–4673, with online chat at hotline.rainn.org. If you are in crisis, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by calling or texting 988.
If a child is being abused now, report to the NCMEC CyberTipline at 1–800–843–5678 or your local child protective services. If anyone is in immediate danger, call 911. Where you safely can, keep letters, records, names and dates — but your safety and your health come first, always.
Survivors suing over the Polinsky
Children’s Center alone
Former detainees in the May 2026
San Bernardino federal suit
Hundreds of lawsuits filed
against the two counties
General AB 218 deadline — or
5 years from discovery
Almost everyone who contacts us waited, often for decades, and usually for one of these reasons.
Survivors assume a shuttered institution means there is nobody left to sue.
Heman G. Stark closed, and claims arising from it are still being filed. The responsible public entity remains, and so does its liability.
Survivors from the Polinsky Center often think the litigation is only about detention.
More than 100 survivors allege pervasive abuse of children aged 2 to 17 at the county’s emergency shelter, from the early 1990s through 2023.
The age-40 rule makes survivors close to the line assume they have already lost.
AB 218 allows filing until age 40 or within five years of discovering the connection to your adult harm, whichever is later. The discovery route reaches past 40 for some survivors.
Retaliation taught survivors that reporting made things worse, and that lesson lasted.
Plaintiffs in the Polinsky litigation describe threats of worse abuse for reporting. Documented retaliation goes directly to what the county knew and tolerated.
— The record
Since 2019, San Diego and San Bernardino counties have faced hundreds of lawsuits from survivors who were sexually abused as minors in county-run juvenile facilities by probation officers, counselors, and other staff. The complaints describe the same institutional failures documented across California: chronic under-supervision, ignored complaints, underreported incidents, and probation departments that protected staff instead of children.
A 2008 U.S. Department of Justice report documenting undertrained staff, unreported abuse and missing safeguards in county facilities now serves as powerful supporting evidence that officials were on notice — and failed to act.
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East Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility | Staff abuse claims brought by former detainees. |
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Kearny Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility | San Diego Juvenile Hall — abuse allegations spanning decades. |
| Girls Rehabilitation Facility | Claims by women abused there as minors. |
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A.B. and Jessie Polinsky Children’s Center | The county’s emergency shelter for children, where more than 100 survivors allege pervasive abuse of children aged 2 to 17 from the early 1990s through 2023, enabled by what plaintiffs describe as a total lack of supervision and failed background screening. Plaintiffs proceed under Roe pseudonyms and describe threats of worse abuse for reporting. |
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San Bernardino Juvenile Hall | A federal lawsuit re-filed in U.S. District Court in Riverside in May 2026 alleges 10 former detainees were sexually abused by staff, with county negligence claims reaching back to the 1970s. |
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High Desert Juvenile Detention & Assessment Center | Apple Valley — multiple former detainees allege officers exploited their authority while the Probation Department ignored complaints and failed to investigate known predators. |
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Juvenile Detention & Assessment Center (JDAC) | Staff abuse claims arising from county supervision failures. |
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Heman G. Stark Youth Correctional Facility | Chino — once ranked among the most violent juvenile institutions in the nation before its closure, and now the source of numerous sexual abuse claims. |
Los Angeles County resolved more than 6,800 juvenile facility and foster care claims for $4 billion. Survivors’ attorneys are pressing San Diego and San Bernardino toward the same reckoning. That settlement does not pay your claim and does not set your number — but it established on a public record what these county systems did, and neighbouring-county litigation is now negotiated in its shadow.
If any of these describe you, a free review is worth the two minutes it takes — and under AB 218, timing is often the whole question.
East Mesa, Kearny Mesa, San Bernardino Juvenile Hall, High Desert, JDAC, Heman G. Stark and county probation camps.
The county’s emergency shelter, where survivors as young as 2 at the time allege abuse from the early 1990s through 2023.
Women abused there as minors are filing claims alongside the juvenile hall litigation.
Where staff negligence, housing decisions or ignored warnings enabled the assault, the county can be held responsible.
AB 218 generally allows filing until age 40, or within five years of discovering the psychological harm, whichever is later.
Retaliation is alleged across this litigation and goes directly to what the county knew and tolerated.
Anonymous John, Jane Doe or Roe filing is routinely available in these cases. Compensation covers therapy and future treatment, lost earnings and life impact, and pain and suffering — with the counties’ documented notice of these dangers driving value upward.
No settlement undoes what happened in county custody. What a claim can do is pay for what you need now, and put the county’s own records on the table.
The hardest thing to prove in an institutional claim is usually notice — that officials knew and did not act. A federal report documenting undertrained staff, unreported abuse and missing safeguards in these facilities does a great deal of that work before a single deposition is taken.
It is also why claims from before and after that report can be valued very differently on otherwise similar facts.
Heman G. Stark was operated within the state youth correctional system, so claims arising there route differently from county juvenile hall claims. Polinsky is a county shelter rather than a detention facility. Each routes to a different defendant and sometimes a different court.
You do not need to work any of this out. An attorney identifies the correct defendant; you tell your story once.
— What happens next
Nothing happens that you do not agree to, and you decide what to share and when.
Which facility, roughly when, and your age at the time. Not what happened. Two minutes, free, no obligation.
Usually within a day. You decide what to share and when, and you can stop at any point without explaining why.
Probation department records, staffing logs, incident reports, personnel files and the DOJ findings — obtained through discovery, not from your memory.
Filed as a Doe or Roe where the court allows, against the correct county or state defendant for your facility.
Both questions have real answers and neither is obvious. A free, confidential conversation settles them and commits you to nothing.
— The no-fee promise
Participating firms take these cases on contingency. The fee is a percentage of any recovery. If there is no recovery, no attorney fee is owed.
No retainer. No hourly billing. No invoice arriving while you are already paying for therapy. Cost should never be the reason a survivor never finds out what their options were.
Fee arrangements are set by the law firm you sign with, not by Direct2Attorney, and vary between firms and states. Settlements on behalf of a minor generally require court approval and may be placed in a protected account until the child reaches adulthood. Read the agreement and ask questions before signing anything.
Our intake team is trauma-informed. You share only what you choose to share, and nobody pushes you past that.
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We connect you with firms actively litigating San Diego and San Bernardino county claims, including the Polinsky cases.
Roe and Doe filing is routine in this litigation. Your information is encrypted and handled under our Privacy Policy.
Your age, the discovery date and any government claim requirement are checked first, not last.
What Direct2Attorney is
A legal marketing and referral service. We check whether your situation matches what participating law firms are looking for, and connect you with one of them if it does.
What Direct2Attorney is not
We are not a law firm, a counseling service or a reporting agency. For support, the RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline is free and confidential 24/7 at 1-800-656-4673. In an emergency, call 911.
You do not need a police report. You do not need a conviction. You do not need to know which county department ran the building, and you will not be asked to describe anything on this page. If you were held at any of these facilities, that conversation is free, confidential, and yours to end whenever you choose.
— Filing deadlines
California’s deadline for childhood sexual assault claims is set by AB 218, codified at Code of Civil Procedure § 340.1, which generally allows filing until age 40, or within five years of discovering that adult psychological harm was caused by the abuse — whichever is later. Claims against county and state entities can carry additional, much shorter procedural deadlines.
Select your state
The age-40 rule makes timing central. A survivor at 39 and a survivor at 41 can be in very different positions on identical facts.
Claims against counties frequently require a written government claim presented within months, well before the lawsuit deadline itself.
Where a therapist helps you connect adult harm to childhood abuse, the five-year clock may start at that realization rather than at the abuse.
Heman G. Stark was a state facility; Polinsky is a county shelter. The correct defendant changes the procedure and sometimes the deadline.
Because these rules have moved so much in recent years, the answer people assume is almost always wrong — and it is wrong in both directions. It costs nothing to have someone check the state where it happened.
This is general information, not legal advice, and it is not a calculation of your deadline. Filing deadlines are set by state law, differ by claim type and defendant, change when legislatures amend them, and can be shortened or extended by facts specific to your situation. Nothing on this page tells you whether your claim is timely. Only an attorney licensed in your state can determine the deadline that applies to you. If a deadline passes, a claim is usually barred permanently regardless of its merits, so the safer course is always to ask early.
Most people guess, and a lot of them guess wrong in the direction that costs them the claim. Finding out takes about two minutes and costs nothing.
Yes. The Polinsky Children’s Center litigation is one of the largest pieces of the San Diego cases — more than 100 survivors allege abuse at the county’s emergency shelter involving children as young as 2, from the early 1990s through 2023.
Stark was operated within the state youth correctional system, so claims route differently from county juvenile hall claims — but survivors from Stark are actively filing. An attorney identifies the correct defendant; you only need to tell your story once.
It does not pay your claim and it does not set your number. What it did was prove on a public record that these county systems failed children on a massive scale, and establish what juries and county boards treat as serious. Neighbouring-county litigation is now negotiated in its shadow.
Not necessarily — AB 218 allows filing until age 40, or within five years of discovering the connection between the abuse and your adult harm, whichever is later. But at 39, every month counts, so get your deadline confirmed immediately.
No. The defendant is the county or state entity that operated it, not the building. Claims arising from closed facilities including Heman G. Stark are actively being filed.
Often, yes. The county had a duty to supervise and protect the children in its custody. Where negligent supervision, housing decisions or ignored warnings enabled the assault, the county can be held liable.
Nothing. The review is free and confidential with no obligation. If a participating law firm takes the case, it will normally work on contingency, meaning the fee comes out of any recovery and no attorney fee is owed if there is no recovery.
Ask on the call, or by email first if that feels easier. There is no obligation either way.
