The Reckoning of LA County: Camp Scott

0:00A warning. This episode contains discussion of sexual assault that may be disturbing. Listener discretion is advised.

0:17The further north you drive on Bokeh Canyon Road, the more rural it gets. The city thins out. The landscape opens into rolling hills and canyon terrain, a scene of red dirt, oak woodlands, and dry chaparral clinging to the foothills. trails wind through those hills meant for hiking and sightseeing the two-lane road eventually curves towards the Sierra Polona mountains and the edge of Angeles National Forest it feels like you're headed somewhere peaceful and untouched up there before you hit the mountains you'll see it a large wooden sign perched beneath an elm tree and set into gray stone right next to a turnoff lined with a white picket fence.

1:04At first glance, the sign looks like the kind of marker you'd see at the entrance to a national park. Something welcoming, something wholesome. The sign introduces you to Camp Joe Scott. Camp Joe Scott, or Camp Scott for short, first opened in 1958. By the late 1980s, it had a gym, a softball field, and basketball courts. The wood-paneled buildings were surrounded by a thicket of lush elm trees. Two dogs, Mikey and Missy, ran around the property, and the facility regularly hosted dance parties and other social activities. They say the air smelled like fresh popcorn. Early reporting by the Los Angeles Times described Camp Scott as a facility resembling a summer camp.

1:56Only, it wasn't a summer camp. It was a detention center. A juvenile detention center for girls, 12 to 18 to be exact. And much of what happened in that center, behind that white picket fence, stayed hidden, dismissed, buried, or quietly ignored for decades. Now Camp Scott is closed, and everyone is finally learning the real reason why. It was kind of the first time it had been on people's radars as a systemic issue, and then you just saw the numbers go up and up and up and up and up. The floodgates opened.

2:49This is The Opportunist, an original podcast from Podcast One. You're listening to a story called The Reckoning of L.A. County, Camp Scott. I'm Sarah James McLaughlin. In this episode, we're digging into the dark underbelly of Camp Joseph Scott, uncovering the reality of daily life there for young girls, and the stories it mirrors across Los Angeles County.

3:34When Camp Scott was converted to a girls' juvenile detention center in 1987, it was viewed as a step forward, a meaningful solution to a growing problem in L.A. County and across the country. Crime rates were climbing. Headlines warned of so-called dangerous girls, which fueled public anxiety about female youth violence in the late 80s and early 90s. And public officials began arguing that the system wasn't built to handle them properly. Before Camp Scott, the options for girls in the justice system were bleak. They were often either sent to foster homes or to the California Youth Authority, the juvenile equivalent of a state prison.

4:21Back then, boys had camps and rehabilitation programs, but girls didn't. Camp Scott was meant to change that. The idea behind Camp Scott and similar programs was reform, but not punishment. It was for girls like Cherie, who said that her whole life revolved around drugs. Or Raynell, who by the age of 17 had been coerced into prostitution for years. It was for girls who'd been charged with assault and fraud and other felony-level crimes. But they were still girls. Kids who needed help. Here's Dominique Anderson, a former inmate at Camp Scott. Speaking to ABC News. A lot of these kids don't have families.

5:14A lot of these kids, mothers and fathers, are dealing with addiction, prostitution, jail, the criminal justice system themselves. They're runaways, they're ward of the court. So they know no one's coming to look for you. Early reporting from the Los Angeles Times in 1987 painted a hopeful picture of Camp Scott. Apparently, its first director, Mary Diederich, was warm and affectionate. She hugged the girls and called them honey. She was an example of what this camp was meant to be, a place where troubled girls could be disciplined, but also supported. The probation officers at the camp were meant to be at the center of that support system.

5:59Here's Rebecca Ellis, a government reporter for the Los Angeles Times. So these probation officers, for the most part, were the ones interacting with kids in the halls. They would escort them to meals, check in on them in their rooms. They were kind of the ones doing the day-to-day face-to-face contact with these kids who were in these halls. Thomas Jackson was one officer at Camp Scott who did just that, beginning in the mid-90s. But the goal for Jackson, and others like him, was not to act just as guards at these facilities, but as mentors. almost as father figures. The belief was that these girls needed that parental guidance.

6:42They needed men like Jackson to keep them safe and to prepare them for life beyond the camp's gates. But Camp Scott certainly wasn't as nurturing as some initial news releases might have made it seem. In the fall of 2001, MTV aired a documentary about life in Camp Scott, which brought millions of viewers inside the facility. MTV was nearly ubiquitous in those days. It acted as the primary 24-7 source for music videos, trends, and pop culture. The result? teens across the country had an inside look at the raw, unvarnished lives of teen girls at Camp Scott. And it wasn't always pretty. Camp Scott was ultimately created to act as California's first military-style detention camp for girls, and it lived up to that label.

7:43This documentary didn't sugarcoat life there. Instead, it showed what was meant to be a tough but necessary alternative to jail for troubled youth. Everything was highly regimented. Days began early, schedules were fixed, rules were non-negotiable. The girls attended school on site. They participated in counseling, work programs, and physical training. Advancement was earned through behavior. Progress was tracked, measured, and rewarded. At the camp, drill sergeants, aka probation officers, called every shot. Girls were told when they could eat, talk, or go to the bathroom. They showered in groups and were punished with solitary confinement.

8:34The goal was to scare the girls straight and keep them out of trouble. It was harsh, but many believed it was fair. It was strict, but it was also intentional. Probation departments across California believed this routine, the predictability of it, could correct the chaos these girls, mere children, had already seen out in the real world. Even the location was strategic. Wedged in the hills above Santa Clarita, Camp Scott was deliberately removed from dense neighborhoods and city streets. Distance mattered. It pulled these girls far away from gangs, family conflict, and familiar pressures. It was meant to create space for them, to reset their behavior, and start over with a clean slate, surrounded by people who wanted the best for them.

9:30Officials at the time emphasized that the camp's goal was quote, not to punish but to foster an environment conducive to building self-esteem. The end goal was always re-entry. The intention was always to send girls home with structure, coping skills, and accountability, better equipped to handle their life entering into adulthood than when they arrived as children. And at the center of it all were Jackson and the other probation officers, the adults entrusted to do this work the right way. Men and women were expected to be the best of the system, the safest hands, the ones who made rehabilitation possible.

10:16But for many of the girls who passed through those gates, the people meant to protect them weren't protectors at all.

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11:37When I got here, I was excited because I was told that I was going to find discipline. I was going to find rehabilitation. And so I was excited about that. But the things that I found here was the total opposite. That was Rennell Hartley, a former Camp Scott inmate speaking with ABC News. Rennell had been featured in the MTV documentary over 20 years ago when she was 17. The MTV film showed some of the grittiness of Camp Scott. But what it didn't show was what should have been unearthed years earlier. The rampant sexual abuse. More than once, Rannell was assaulted by the man whose very job was to protect her, Thomas Jackson.

12:26In her interview with ABC, Rannell revisited those moments with him that continue to haunt her. He had me lift up my shirt to show him my breasts. I begged him, I said, please don't make me do this. He said, you do have a review coming up, it's up to you how I write it. He had the pen, so he had the power. Another time, he made me grab his penis with my hand. Akilah Jefferson was Ronell's bunkmate at Camp Scott. She'd been raised mostly by her grandmother. Her mother had her young, and her father was already in prison. Money was always tight. Tight enough that when Akilah took clothes from a store to help her family get by, it landed her on probation.

13:13Here she is from an interview with ABC News.

13:33Once, not long after, Akilah was 15 minutes late for school. Her tardiness, which technically violated her probation, placed her at Camp Scott. Jackson sexually abused her too on multiple occasions. He would touch me. He would touch me. You know, curse me, show me different things. And like so many victims of abuse, Akilah never felt like she could say no. If I don't do it, what's going to happen? Especially if somebody is basically like caressing your head and sending you to the direction where they want you to go, what do you do? You're back here, you're a kid, you don't know. You say, no, I don't want to do this, you know.

14:24You just, you do it. Rennell and Akilah weren't Jackson's only victims. He routinely threatened girls, some as young as 12, if they refused to comply with his advances with extended sentences and time in the box. The box was a small isolation cell. Everyone knew about it. If you got into trouble, you were sent there. Once locked inside, you had no communication and no access to anything beyond a bathroom. All privileges were stripped away until your release, which typically came after two or three days. One woman who was at Camp Scott in 1998 alleges that Jackson molested her the first night she was in the box.

15:16He told her she had to earn her way out. When she complied, she said she was released from solitary the next day. The worst part? Jackson's horrific behavior towards these girls at Camp Scott wasn't an isolated case. Not by a long shot.

15:49The sex abuse allegations in LA County's juvenile halls, they really stem back decades and decades. I think the earliest claims are starting in the 50s. That's Rebecca Ellis. But they really came to light in the last few years because this law changed where all of a sudden victims were allowed to sue over abuse that occurred a really long time ago as children when they were far too young to grapple with what had happened to them. This new law was called Assembly Bill 218, the Child Victims Act. It emboldened a new wave of survivors like Rannell and Akilah to speak out and file lawsuits against LA County about employees of the county who abused them.

16:35Before AB 218, abuse survivors had to file a civil lawsuit within eight years of turning 18, or within three years of realizing that the abuse they endured caused lasting harm, whichever came later. But trauma doesn't move on a schedule, and the new law aimed to give survivors of childhood sexual abuse something they hadn't had before. Time. AB 218 gave survivors more time to report their abuse, more time to make sense of what happened to them, to come forward, and to seek justice. The new law also added a provision that changed everything. The provision stated that for three years, from January 1st, 2020 to December 31st, 2022, the law would reopen expired cases.

17:32That meant that adults who were abused as children, some dating back to the 1940s, could now file civil lawsuits against not just their perpetrators, but also the institutions that covered up or facilitated that abuse. This was a monumental change, and the lawsuits came fast. But no one was prepared for the scale of what followed in Los Angeles. So all of a sudden, we were seeing thousands and thousands of lawsuits from Californians alleging abuse in these juvenile halls. Starting in 2020, more girls, now women, came forward with their own harrowing stories about their time at Camp Scott and other juvenile halls in LA.

18:23They spoke of being leered at all hours of the day, during communal showers, while using the bathroom, as they slept. They spoke of being forced to run laps around the track in the middle of the night, often dressed only in sheer nightgowns, wearing nothing underneath. They were raped in bed. They were raped in administrative offices. Thomas Jackson was named in many lawsuits. I think it was more than two dozen. But of course, Jackson was just one of many officers in LA County who left victims reeling from abuse. There were also men like Ernest Walker. Walker wasn't just a probation officer. He was a supervisor at the Crenshaw Probation Department.

19:17That's where he met Dominique Anderson, who was in and out of the probation system. Dominique wasn't dealt an easy hand in life. Her father was murdered when she was four. Soon after, she lost her mom to cancer. Like Akilah, she was ultimately raised by her grandmother. In her ABC interview, Dominique said she got in trouble for poking a classmate with a pencil. And she wasn't just sent to the principal's office. The school called the police. When the police came, they said, you stabbed the girl with the pencil and that's a deadly weapon and it's a felony. Dominique was sent to Crenshaw, where she was put under Walker's supervision.

20:04Once, before her transfer, Walker brought her into his office. He flirted with her. He asked her if she had always had a certain effect on men. Walker was 42 at the time. Dominique was 13. Dominique recalled being flattered by Walker's advances, someone finally giving her attention. In that meeting, Walker also gave Dominique his business card, on which he wrote his personal phone number. He encouraged her to call him any time, night or day. And once she was released, she did. Dominique recalls Walker picking her up from her grandmother's home just a week or two later. He took her to a hotel, coerced her into having sex, then paid her$200.

20:58Dominique remembers spending the money to buy pizza and candy with her friends, a testament to just how young she was. I remember him telling me things like, oh, I love that your breasts are just sprouting. He was really interested in the fact that I was so young. To this day, Dominique struggles to classify what happened to her as rape simply because Welker was paying her. But under California law, a minor under 18 can't legally consent to sex with an adult. And Dominique wasn't even in high school yet. That's the tough thing about being a victim. You never see it that this person is abusing their authority.

21:44You don't see it as them preying on you as being a child. You see it as this is a man of power. This is a man of affluence. This is an educated man. He's not a probation officer. He's a supervisor. Nevertheless, Dominique recalled finally speaking out about Walker's behavior. But then, a female staff member at the camp approached her and asked her not to say anything. Not to report the assault. She said, he has a daughter, he has a career, he has a lot to lose. Dominique said she later made an anonymous report to the probation department about Walker's behavior. But the complaint stalled, and Walker instead began leaving cash for her in a flower bed at a gas station near his office.

22:38She believed the payments were there to buy her silence, and allowed Walker to keep his job for more than a decade afterward, long after she left. There are names that come up, but it seems like there was sort of this culture where abuse was tolerated. It's not just one, two, three people. There were more officers, many more officers, who would take in these young girls. They would target them, control them, isolate them, and groom them. They'd bring them treats, like hair products. For some girls, like Dominique, it felt like the first time an adult figure was doing something nice for them. It was really just another way for those officers to get the upper hand.

23:28As it turns out, this pattern of exploitation and abuse was spread out across the county, beyond L.A.'s juvenile detention centers. It's juvenile halls, it's foster care. There was a children's shelter that's pretty notorious for abuse now. It's all facilities operated by L.A. County, not just the halls or the camps. It's hard when it's this pervasive because everybody's dirty. You know what I mean? Who can you trust? It is not just the person who is preying on the child. It is also the co-workers who stand by and help these things go on. Allegations of systemic abuse and unsafe conditions in LA's juvenile halls wasn't anything new.

24:16In 2006, the Department of Justice began investigating LA's juvenile halls and camps. And in 2010, at least 11 probation officers had been convicted of crimes or discipline for inappropriate care. But with AB 218, abuse in these halls really made it into the public spotlight for the first time. And the number of plaintiffs that came forward was staggering. By May of 2023, LA County had received roughly 3 ,000 claims of childhood sexual abuse, dating back as far as 1959. And that number didn't plateau. it kept rising. Now I think there's 11 ,000 claims and counting against LA County. Survivors like Rennell, Akilah, and Dominique are just three of those 11 ,000 who have filed lawsuits against the county for the abuse they endured.

25:24And the potential repayment for all those lawsuits? it's the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history.

25:42Back in May of 2023, when the county was staring down those initial 3 ,000 claims, officials estimated the cost would land somewhere between$1.6 and$3 billion. Where things stand now tells a very different story. A massive$828 million settlement approved today by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. That's on top of the previously reached settlement of$4 billion. Nearly$5 billion. To put that in perspective, the Boy Scouts of America's sexual abuse settlement totaled$2.46 billion. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles paid about$1.5 billion. This settlement alone eclipses both of those combined. And the potential payout for individual plaintiffs is enormous.

26:44It is between$150 ,000 and$3 million. Here's Mike Arias, an attorney representing several victims, speaking to NBC LA News. It is an utter, complete failure of the system. They were literally sexually assaulted repeatedly, many of them, during their stay. And this is a culmination, hopefully, of allowing them to put this all behind them. So with this payment, maybe victims could finally be able to move on. But just as this historic settlement has moved forward, L.A. County was hit with another controversy, one that could dramatically affect who actually gets paid. When faced with more than 11 ,000 claims, and no realistic way to litigate them individually, the L.A.

27:41County Board of Supervisors approved that sweeping settlement of$4 billion in April of 2025. The public announcement of the settlement and the promise of six and even seven-figure payouts was long overdue recognition for survivors. But it also created a strong incentive for people to abuse the system. And, to the dismay of L.A. County officials and L.A. County's abuse victims, the wrong crowd took notice. On November 19, 2025, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hockman announced a criminal investigation into the very claims meant to compensate survivors. Many plaintiffs, Hockman believed, never suffered abuse at all.

28:32Instead, it seemed they were willing to falsify records, all in pursuit of a hefty payday. They looked at this opportunity to compensate these true victims of sex abuse as an opportunity to personally and profit and engage in some of the most greedy and heinous conduct at the expense of these victims. Because the settlement is a finite pool of money, every dollar paid out to someone who lied is a dollar taken away from a survivor who didn't. Hockman wants to make them pay. With respect to these fraudsters, and we estimate that there are a significant number of fraudsters involved in these fraudulent settlement claims, we're going to go after them.

29:23We're going to go after them aggressively. We're going to go after them to put them behind bars. and we're going to go after them to send a message to any potential fraudulent claimants in the future. If you want to go and rip off sex abuse survivors, you will be arrested, you will be prosecuted, and you will be punished. As prosecutors began zeroing in on individual fraudsters, another more uncomfortable question emerged. Who else stands to profit? The payout for attorneys on these cases is so high. Each victim can potentially get$3 million and the attorneys can get 40-45 % of that. This means that collectively, attorneys involved in these cases could stand to make more than a billion dollars.

30:17So it stands to reason why suspicions rose when one law firm, heavily featured in local advertising reportedly gathered thousands of potential clients in a matter of months. That sheer volume, combined with enormous profit potential, has now collided directly with the district attorney's fraud investigation. It came to light that there were some cases where people had been paid to sue, given 50 bucks outside of social services offices where people go to get food stamps and welfare benefits. Some of those people had said that they were told to just make up their claims. One person said they were given a script.