The alleged abuse occurred mostly between 1994 and 2002 during false pretenses for strip searches and showers with boys who had been detained in San Mateo County’s former juvenile hall.
A Bay Area probation officer sexually abused children under his care for years, according to 11 lawsuits that allege San Mateo County officials knew about the abuse but failed to stop it.
Domeniconi is alleged to have used both rewards and threats to force the kids to comply, the lawsuits say. Rewards described in court documents included candy, dessert or cheeseburgers, as well as a promise not to punish the boys for violating various rules at the juvenile hall. Other times, the probation officer threatened the boys to cooperate or risk being sent to the state’s youth prison system, lawyers allege.
Durand said the plaintiffs’ original complaints “named Domeniconi as a defendant and made allegations against him personally, but later corrected the error when we informed them he died in 2020.” One allegation “involves alleged activity between 2018 and 2020,” she said, but noted how “Domeniconi retired in 2016.”
“The county is responsible for hiring, training, supervising, and investigating all of their employees in order to properly protect children from sexual abuse,” Goethals said. “The intent of the committee is to focus on the future and how do we make sure this isn’t going to happen again,” said Monroe Labouisse, the current chair of the commission.
Los Angeles County has a similar but more large-scale case underway. To date, lawyers for nearly 300 boys and girls detained at the county’s facilities and camps over the last three decades allege they were sexually abused by numerous probation department employees.
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