SAN JOSE, Calif. — Newly obtained documents in the killing of Sophia Mason show that Hayward police — after getting a missing person’s report about the 8-year-old in March 2022 — swiftly determined what Alameda County social workers had failed to see for more than a year: The girl was in danger and needed immediate help.
But by the time officers found Sophia just three days later, it was too late. She was already dead, decomposing in the bathtub of a house where her mother and the mother’s boyfriend had lived in Merced.
The documents, compiled by police and obtained after this news organization successfully sought a court order, confirm the findings of ongoing reporting by the Bay Area News Group detailing how Alameda County’s Department of Children and Family Services failed to protect Sophia in the year before she died. County social workers repeatedly ignored evidence of the danger Sophia was in under her mother’s care — and did not meet their legal obligations to elevate allegations of abuse to law enforcement.
The revelations also underscore emerging concerns about systemic issues within Alameda County’s child welfare agency, which compares poorly to its peers across California in meeting state requirements for timely action to protect the vulnerable children under its charge.
The repeated failures by DCFS to take routine investigative measures is deeply disturbing, said Nicol Stolar-Peterson, a licensed clinical social worker who routinely testifies as an expert witness in child abuse cases.
“It’s extremely troubling, because it’s really the basics,” Stolar-Peterson said. “We’re talking about basic minimum steps — again, which is standard of care. And that’s concerning because we’re talking about children’s lives and children’s safety.”
Hayward police began their investigation in response to a missing persons report filed by Sophia’s aunt on March 8, 2022. They quickly reviewed Sophia’s records from Alameda County DCFS, as well as her spotty school attendance reports, and learned that Sophia’s mother, Samantha Johnson, had a history of prostitution, including an active OnlyFans account.
“I am concerned for Sophia’s welfare,” Officer Jennifer Kell wrote in one report. She cited a mounting pile of facts, including a report of “genital bruises made by Kaiser employee (sic) to CPS and the school information that Sophia has not been enrolled or attended school in California since October 2021.”
“I believe Samantha has knowledge of how Sophia obtained genital bruising and has been avoiding law enforcement and child protective services,” the officer added.
All of that information — which led Hayward police to try urgently to locate Sophia — had been available to DCFS for months. Yet county social workers made the opposite determination, declining to intervene in Sophia’s case despite the many concerns raised by the girl’s relatives, her school and medical professionals, according to the Hayward police reports and other records this news organization has obtained from DCFS.
“If a parent is receiving multiple allegations of abuse that are being called into a CPS (child protective services) hotline from various different sources — as we see in this case — that should be a red flag — a huge red flag,” said Carly Sanchez, an attorney who is representing Sophia’s grandmother in a suit against the county.
The Hayward records include several instances in which officers suggest — although they never say directly — that DCFS mishandled other aspects of its responsibilities to protect Sophia. A key example is the agency’s failure to order a forensic interview for Sophia, which would have been conducted by an expert specifically trained to interview children suspected of being abused.
Forensic interviews, a Hayward police officer noted in one report, are “recorded and observed by the social worker, district attorney’s office, and detective,” in contrast to interviews and contacts made by DCFS workers, which are not recorded and cannot be used in criminal cases.
The Alameda County’s Department of Children and Family Services did not return a request for comment from this news organization.
Another concern for Hayward police officers was DCFS’s response to a visit Sophia and Samantha made to a Kaiser Permanente hospital in San Leandro on Sept. 30, 2021. Clinicians at the hospital noted that the girl had suspicious bruising across her back, buttocks, hip and thigh, as well as apparent cigarette burns on her arms. None of those injuries looked like they could have come from a car crash or from falling off monkey bars, as Sophia’s mother claimed.
“Injury pattern of … bruising not consistent with this Mechanism,” the medical report said. “Concerns arise from called in report of suspected child abuse.”
The Kaiser clinicians reported the suspected abuse to DCFS and asked a pediatrician to conduct a more thorough exam of Sophia. But Johnson left with Sophia before that exam could take place.
Despite the bruises on Sophia — documented in the Kaiser medical records — a county social worker determined two days later that the girl showed no signs of abuse and that clinicians’ concerns were “unfounded.”
According to its own records, DCFS also waited six days to inform police in San Leandro, where Sophia then lived, of the clinicians’ concerns — a violation of state law that requires county child protective services to report abuse allegations to local law enforcement within 36 hours. But San Leandro police say they have no record of any reports regarding Sophia.
After the discovery of Sophia’s body, Hayward police arrested Samantha Johnson and interviewed her. It was then that the family’s worst suspicions were confirmed, records show.
Samantha admitted that she had lied to Kaiser workers in the fall of 2021 and that Sophia’s injuries at that time were the result of her boyfriend, Dhante Jackson, beating the girl with a belt. She also described Johnson’s physical and sexual abuse of Sophia in Merced, including that he would “punch her in the face,” “lift her from her ponytails,” and had “put his we-wee in her mouth.” She told officers she was “unable to stop him when he was in rage mode, hitting Sophia.”
Samantha Johnson and Dhante Jackson have since been charged with murder and felony child abuse in Sophia’s death, and remain in custody in Merced.
Last week, Sophia’s grandmother filed a lawsuit against the county and three DCFS social workers involved in Sophia’s case, alleging that they broke more than a dozen state child welfare regulations during the last 14 months of Sophia’s life and falsified records to cover up their failures.
Whether Sophia’s death will prompt any further probes into DCFS’s handling of abuse cases remains to be seen. Despite initial calls for investigations into DCFS following this news organization’s reporting on Sophia’s case last year, no formal inquiries have been announced.
Issues within the agency appear numerous. As this news organization previously reported, at the time Sophia’s body was discovered in March 2022, the county ranked second-to-last in the state in its ability to conduct in-person investigations within 10 days of reports of abuse or neglect, as required by law. The county also failed to respond to the most critical reports of abuse — which require a response within 24 hours — at twice the state’s average overdue response rate.
The two county supervisors who previously called for investigations — Nate Miley, who previously lamented that the girl’s death was “really effed up,” and David Haubert, who also previously complained that “something obviously failed” — declined to comment last week, citing the litigation against the county in the girl’s death.
Sophia’s aunt, Emerald Johnson, still wonders if Sophia would be alive had county social workers acted as quickly as Hayward police officers did in March 2022.
Speaking to those officers was an immeasurable “relief,” she said, adding that it was the first time that she felt authorities were taking her claims about Sophia seriously. She just wishes that it could have happened sooner.
Of Alameda County social workers, she added, “I have no confidence in them whatsoever.
“I just feel very angry. Fifteen months is a really long time — something could have been done.”
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