Bittersweet Justice: Sacramento County, California

Occasionally there is justice for those negatively affected by the child welfare and adoption systems. Unfortunately, it is usually bittersweet and much too late. This will serve as REFORM Talk’s justice files.

“Sacramento County is paying $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged a child was sexually assaulted while in foster care in the 1990s.

The lawsuit, filed in 2022 in Sacramento Superior Court, alleged the county placed a 5-year-old child in a foster home from 1993 through 1995, where the child was sexually assaulted multiple times by two men who lived in the home. The suit alleged one of the men forced the child to watch him masturbate and that one of the men fondled the child’s genitals.

Then from 1997 to 2001, the county had the child in a new foster home, where the child was sexually assaulted by two different men who lived in that home, the suit alleged. In the second home, the men rubbed the child’s genitals, made the child watch porn and perform oral sex.

The child told a county social worker and police about the abuse, but the county took no action, and the assaults continued, the suit alleged.

“Maltreatment of children in foster care, particularly sexual abuse and assault, has been a chronic problem that (the county has) failed to address in any reasonable manner consistent with their duties to children in foster care,” the suit alleged.

The settlement, signed in July and obtained by The Sacramento Bee from a California Public Records Act request, is the most recent payout in the Sacramento region regarding foster care.”

“Sacramento County is self-insured, meaning it paid the settlement directly out of its own budget using taxpayer funds.”

Sacramento County pays $1.5 million to settle foster care sexual assault suit

[Yahoo News 8/20/26 by Theresa Clift, The Sacramento Bee]