The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved paying $7.5 million to settle a lawsuit on behalf of several girls who were sexually assaulted by a former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy.
The deal comes six months after Sean Essex – who worked for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for more than two decades – sentenced to 40 years in prison for sexually abusing the three young daughters of a woman he was dating, and allegedly abused another girl he met a few years earlier.
The girls went between the ages of 4 and 13 during the abuse, which lasted from at least 2006 until the time of Essex's arrest in 2022.
Later that year, attorney Spencer Lucas filed a lawsuit on behalf of the three sisters, who were listed as Jane Does in court. Lucas did not immediately comment on the board's approval of the deal.
In an emailed statement, the Sheriff's Department this week opened an immediate investigation after learning of the allegations two years ago.
“This man's heinous actions are inconsistent with the standards upheld by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department or the dedicated law enforcement professionals who proudly serve our communities every day,” the statement said. “Members of the department who commit any misconduct, especially crimes against vulnerable people, will be fully investigated, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
An attorney for Essex did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Before the abuse came to light, the girls' mother had been in a relationship with Essex for about five years, according to the Sheriff's Department. case summary. After the relationship ended in 2018, the girls' mother still allowed them to travel with her.
Then on April 4, 2022, one of the girls told her mother that Essex had sexually assaulted her, the Sheriff's Department wrote in its summary of the case, which was included in the board's agenda. One of the girls called Essex a traitor, prompting her mother to ask more questions.
The girls say Essex sexually assaulted them between 2014 and 2022. According to the department's brief report, he used to pass by the family's house wearing a uniform and take the girls out to get food from his car.
As the family's lawyer previously told The Times, that's where the abuse happened.
“He would pick up girls by himself in his LA County sheriff's car, take girls and abuse them in the car,” Lucas said in 2022, adding that some of the abuse took place in the parking lot of the Sheriff's Department. a lot.
33 charges were laid against Essex in August 2022 for allegedly abusing the sisters in different locations from 2013 until five days before his arrest. One of the girls was under the age of 10 at the time of the sexual acts, prosecutors said, and the other two were under the age of 14.
The case includes charges stemming from the molestation of another girl in 2006, which the district attorney's office declined to prosecute at the time and who was not in a plea agreement.
“It's shocking to us that the county didn't do more to investigate and prosecute this heinous criminal in 2006,” Lucas told The Times in 2022. .”
Previously, the Sheriff's Department said it tried to fire Essex following an internal affairs investigation in 2018, but the county's Civil Service Commission overturned his suspension and ordered the department to reinstate him.
He finally parted ways with the department in late 2022, a few months after his arrest.
This year, LA Superior Court records show he pleaded not guilty to four felony charges and was sentenced to prison. In October, the state deemed him ineligible to be certified as a peace officer in California because of his criminal convictions.
In it summary In the case, the department also identified corrective measures and errors in handling the matter. Another “issue” was the Department's “failure to fully investigate previous allegations of sexual misconduct,” the document said.
Another was the Commander's “failure to investigate/read all relevant documents” related to Essex's past misconduct.
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