A lawsuit, filed last week in California in the Sacramento Superior Court by NAACP Sacramento President Betty Williams, alleges that while under the care of the county, her 14-year-old relative was forced into sex work by a pimp who frequented a group home facility run by Sacramento County for foster children. Prior to the girl’s removal from her father’s house she had been maintaining straight A’s in school and was active in cheerleading. Now she rarely attends school and is failing her classes.

The Sacramento County group home is a former juvenile detention facility in Rosemont, where foster children have been housed for more than 6 months. All the while receiving site letters requiring the children to be removed. State ombudsperson Larry Fluharty stated that the county is housing teenagers in “jail-like” cells with metal bunk beds, metal toilets covered with wood and that the environment could “retraumatize” the youth and cause the children to feel “Physically and psychologically unsafe.”