Therapist, 26, Charged With Grooming a Teenage Boy She Counselled in Juvenile Hall, Abuses Him After Release

A county therapist assigned to help a teenage boy through his time in juvenile detention instead spent months grooming him for sexual abuse, prosecutors in Northern California allege, exploiting the very sessions meant to rehabilitate him.

Sofia Ann-Buitron Drotts, 26, has been charged with seven felonies over her alleged conduct towards a boy she counselled while working at a Contra Costa County juvenile hall. Prosecutors say the grooming began while he was in custody and that a sexual relationship followed after his release, when she allegedly continued to see him under the guise of therapy.

The boy's family has filed a claim against the county, arguing its staff missed or ignored warning signs. Drotts is presumed innocent, and the allegations have not been tested in court.

The Charges Filed by Prosecutors

The Contra Costa County District Attorney's office, led by Diana Becton, announced the seven-count complaint on Monday. The counts include unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, sending harmful matter to a minor and possession of child pornography.

According to prosecutors, Drotts was employed as a behavioural health clinician at the John A. Davis Juvenile Detention Center in Martinez, where she was assigned to counsel the teenager, identified in filings only as John Doe.

After he was released from custody, the district attorney's office said, the two engaged in a sexual relationship between 1 April and 14 July of this year, while he remained a minor under probation supervision.

Drotts was arrested by Concord police on 14 July, prosecutors said, after detectives received a tip from a supervisor in the county probation department. The case came to light in June, according to the family's attorney, after the boy broke the terms of his release, which the attorney alleges he did with Drotts's encouragement, missing school and ignoring his curfew.

Family's Account and Civil Claim

The teenager's mother has spoken publicly about the alleged abuse in searing terms. 'This woman used my child's most vulnerable moments to groom and make him believe she was his girlfriend,' she told reporters, describing how the family had trusted the therapist with their son's care.

On the same day the charges were announced, the family filed a government claim against Contra Costa County, a precursor to a lawsuit, through the Oakland civil-rights attorney John Burris.

The claim alleges that Drotts began grooming the boy when he was 14 or 15, in 2024, and that over the roughly two years he spent in the juvenile hall she 'abused her position as his therapist to establish an inappropriate emotional connection' with the objective of sexual abuse.

The claim also faults the county itself, alleging that a 'team of county agents and supervisors failed to identify the red flags or supervise Drotts, and so the sexual abuse continued'. Burris said the conduct 'violates every moral, legal, and professional standard meant to protect vulnerable clients' and argued the therapist's supervisors must be held accountable for failing to monitor the relationship.

Contra Costa County officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. These are the family's allegations and remain unproven.

A Breach of Trust in a Custodial Setting

The case turns on the particular power imbalance between a therapist and a detained young client. A juvenile-hall clinician is placed in a position of acute trust, treating a minor who is confined, often vulnerable and dependent on the adults responsible for his care, which is why professional and legal standards forbid any personal or romantic relationship with such a client.

That a therapeutic relationship assigned by the state allegedly became the vehicle for abuse is what has alarmed child-welfare advocates, and it is the thrust of the family's argument that the failure was institutional as well as individual. The allegation that the contact continued after the boy's release, under the cover of ongoing therapy, sharpens the claim that safeguards meant to protect him did not work.

Drotts faces her felony counts as the county confronts questions about how a clinician it employed and supervised was able, if the allegations are borne out, to remain alone with a boy in her care for as long as the family says she did. For now there is a charge sheet, a grieving family and a county that has yet to explain what its own oversight did or did not catch.

If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual abuse, confidential support is available. In the US, the RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline can be reached on 800-656-4673. In the UK, contact the NSPCC on 0808 800 5000.