Angelenos were shocked and saddened earlier this year when Los Angeles County officials agreed thousands of young people had been sexually abused inside county foster homes and juvenile halls many years ago, and so deserved financial compensation.
The payout of about $4 billion — the biggest such settlement in United States history — was also shockingly large, but, well, there’s no excuse for preying on children, and crime must have consequences. If, that is, such crimes occurred on anything like such a scale.
Because this week county officials were also shocked to read the superbly sourced and researched investigation by Los Angeles Times reporter Rebecca Ellis with its claims from some of the plaintiffs that they were paid to join the lawsuit against L.A. County, alleging that vulture lawyers from law firms specializing in bilking taxpayers were behind the cash payouts.
It’s old-fashioned gumshoe reporting. Ellis spent two weeks outside a county social services office in South Los Angeles where some of the region’s poorest residents gather each morning to get food stamps and other government aid. Over that time, she found seven people who said they were paid there within the last year to sue the county for sexual abuse. While some said they were indeed abused, two said that they were told to fabricate stories of such abuse.
The crux of the issue: in many cases, the county has zero records of who was in its facilities decades ago. So one plaintiff was handed a script of how to respond to questions about alleged abuse. As to the up-front payout: “It seemed “a good way to get some quick money,” he said. He not only was never sexually abused in juvenile hall — he was never in juvenile hall.
Why weren’t county lawyers suspicious, the way this reporter was, of the fact that hundreds of the plaintiffs were represented by the same law firms, which formerly specialized in slip-and-falls and auto accident cases? Of that $4 billion the county has agreed to pay, about $1 billion is going to lawyers.
Finally getting its act together to find how this huge hit to taxpayers was allowed to happen, the Board of Supervisors launched an investigation this week on how claims were vetted, including setting up a hotline for tips.
We’re glad the supervisors are finally doing their jobs, but what took them so long?