Nearly 300 sue over alleged sexual abuse at L.A. County juvenile halls and camps For five decades, boys and girls in Los Angeles County juvenile camps and detention halls have suffered repeated sexual assaults at the hands of probation and detention officers, according to a lawsuit filed by nearly 300 former detainees.The lawsuit states that not only were the plaintiffs minors, they also were incarcerated, which marks the abuse under the “color of authority.” The alleged assaults, dating from the 1970s through 2018, spanned a wide swath of L.A. County’s once vast and now mostly shuttered juvenile hall system, from Camp Scott and Camp Kenyon Scudder — girls facilities — to the Challenger Memorial Youth Center and the Los Padrinos, Central and Barry J. Nidorf juvenile halls.One man said that in 2004, when he was 17, he was forced to commit sex acts regularly with both a male and a female probation officer at Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar.“The fact that it has gone on for as long as it has, despite all of the complaints and knowledge, whether actual or constructive by the county, is a testament to a system that has failed.” A staffing crisis in L.A. County’s juvenile halls has led to surges in fights, attacks on officers and the use of chemical spray against children.Esché Jackson, the commission’s vice chair who was incarcerated in Central, Padrinos and Nidorf for two years as a youth, said at a recent hearing that the abuse allegations hit close to home as she knew girls victimized by those meant to protect them."