A San Bernardino County jury has awarded a man $33 million after it concluded that sheriff’s deputies and a county welfare-fraud investigator failed to report that his mother neglected him as a child and that the neglect led to him being sexually abused by one of the deputies, the victim’s lawyer said.
Because the jury assessed some damages to people not named in the case, the county is actually on the hook for $27.5 million.
The abuse happened after the victim moved in with Deputy Jeremie Russell Cox in Yucca Valley in 2014 when he was 14, said his attorney, Christopher J. Keane, who filed the lawsuit in 2021. The abuse lasted until the boy moved out at age 21, Keane said.
“I’m hopeful he takes some comfort that his fellow citizens decided what happened to him was wrong,” Keane said. “I hope everybody takes child abuse and child neglect reporting more seriously.”
The county’s attorneys plan to file motions challenging the verdict, county spokesman David Wert said without elaboration.
Keane said the county argued that there was no evidence of neglect and that Cox made up that allegation to justify taking the boy in.
The Southern California News Group does not typically name sex-abuse victims unless they request it.
Cox testified in the civil case that he met the boy when he caught him and his friends vandalizing a home, Keane said, and eventually took the boy in, away from a troubling home life.
Cox, who had most recently worked at the Morongo Basin jail in a 25-year Sheriff’s Department career, was arrested in 2021 after the boy moved out and apparently reported the abuse.
In 2022, Cox was sentenced to eight years in state prison after he pleaded guilty to eight counts of lewd acts with a child 14 or 15 years old and two counts of oral copulation on a person younger than 16, Superior Court records show. Cox was denied parole in 2023 and in 2024, according to state prison records.
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The crimes were not connected to Cox’s duties, sheriff’s spokeswoman Gloria Huerta said.
The jury decided on Sept. 23 to award $11 million in economic damages and $22 million in non-economic damages. The judge said the county was 75% liable for the $22 million — or $16.5 million for the $27.5 million total.
In the payout, besides Cox, in much lesser amounts, the judge assigned liability percentages to a welfare-fraud investigator and a Cox supervisor, both accused of knowing the mom’s neglect, and another deputy who the boy allegedly had relayed his stories of neglect to, Keane said. Those assessments were tied to their jobs and for not reporting the alleged mom’s neglect.
In the 25% the county isn’t liable for, the jury found additional fault with Cox and fault with the boy’s mother as individuals, but they were not part of the lawsuit so those damages don’t need to be paid, Keane said.
The jury, Keane said, determined the neglect led to the sexual abuse.
