Losing Sophia
Social workers were repeatedly warned about girl's abuse, but they failed to stop her death
`It really makes you wonder, “Where did it all go wrong? Why wasn't this child protected?” ' — Merced police Sgt. Kalvin Haygood
INSIDE THE BATHROOM of the modest two-story home in north Merced, a tiny, 55-pound body lay decomposing in a tub. The roaring exhaust fan and burned incense failed to mask the putrid smell. ¶ In the backyard, soiled sheets, candy wrappers, and other food packaging littered a locked metal shed — used for punishment, police were later told. The outline of a small handprint blemished a dusty brown nightstand inside.
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This is how police found Sophia Mason, an 8-year-old Hayward girl who had lived through so much cruelty in the months before her death but never received the protection she needed from Alameda County's Department of Children and Family Services. Now, a three-month investigation by the Bay Area News Group is raising critical concerns about the county agency that left Sophia under the care of a mother who had a history of mental illness and neglecting her, until she died.
“It was probably the most disturbing thing I've seen in my career,” said Merced police Sgt. Kalvin Haygood of the scene he encountered March
11. “I just can't begin to imagine what that child went through.
“It really makes you wonder, `Where did it all go wrong? Why wasn't this child protected?'”
That question is far more difficult to answer than it should be. Alameda County is refusing to disclose details of how it handled at least eight separate reports of abuse or neglect involving Sophia, thwarting the intent of a California law written to enable public scrutiny of government agencies charged with keeping children safe.
The county has made only meager disclosures that contain none of the observations or evidence compiled by investigating social workers — material that is regularly released by other California counties under the terms of the law. Nor did it release any reports it should have made to police regarding the suspected abuse of Sophia. Hayward police have said they received no information that warranted their investigation.
“If Alameda County is actually giving you all of
the records that they're required to, it means no social worker wrote down what they saw and no social worker or supervisor ever got to take a look at what they did,” said Ed Howard, senior counsel with the University of San Diego School of Law Children's Advocacy Institute, who co-wrote the law mandating disclosure in child death cases, SB 39.
“And that would be horrifying if that was common practice in Alameda County.”
The few records the county did provide show its social workers made glaring errors in assessing Sophia's risk of future mistreatment and overlooked several red flags that experts say should have prompted a more aggressive response to ensure her safety. At one point, a caseworker checked a box indicating that Sophia's mother, Samantha Johnson, had no history of drug or alcohol abuse, even though she resided in a sober living home at the time.
Michelle Love, who leads Alameda County DCFS, declined multiple requests for an interview. The agency also did not respond to an extensive list of questions regarding its response to Sophia's case.
Samantha Johnson is in custody, charged with child abuse and murder, while her boyfriend, Dhante Jackson, suspected of murder and sexual abuse of the girl, is at large.
But aggrieved family members have no doubt where the failure lies.
“Her life could have been saved,” said Sophia's aunt, Emerald Johnson, a fierce defender of the child and who made at least three of the reports to DCFS last year. “The bottom line is they didn't believe me. They didn't believe Sophia.”
“Now,” she added, “her blood is on their hands.”
Just 15 months before her death, the girl relatives affectionately knew as SoSo had been an exuberant child — a performer who loved to sing and dance and doted on the grandmother she'd lived with in Hayward since infancy.
But the horrors she would soon encounter had been foreshadowed, even before she was born.
When relatives learned Samantha Johnson was pregnant at age 21, they immediately worried about her child's welfare, citing her mental state, drug use and her record of prostitution. Samantha had logged three arrests for solicitation between December 2010 and December 2011 and had long been a client of the Regional Center of the East Bay, an organization that supports people with developmental disabilities.
“She was excited, but I was horrified,” said Melissa Harris, Samantha's cousin. “To me, Samantha's intellectual capacity is no greater than that of a 10- to 12-year-old. And no one would say that a 10- to 12-year-old should be taking care of a child.”
After Sophia's birth on New Year's Day 2014, Samantha Johnson disappeared for days at a time, leaving Sophia with her grandmother, Sylvia Johnson, her family said. And in March 2014, Alameda County DCFS received its first call about the infant, which relatives said was filed by a family friend who hoped to help the grandmother gain custody of Sophia.
But the responding social worker said they did not identify any safety threats to the infant, and ultimately ruled that the allegations of “severe neglect” were unfounded.
For the next seven years, Samantha remained on the periphery of the girl's life, while Sophia was raised in Hayward. Despite the extended absences of her mother, Sophia grew up surrounded by an expansive support system, relatives said, including aunts, cousins, neighbors and her grandmother, Sylvia, who considered Sophia her “little sidekick.”
As can be seen in the family's charming home videos, Sophia loved to put on a show, beaming and begging family members to watch. Relatives admired the child's energetic spirit and compassion for those around her.
“Sophia was such a loving little girl — like a little angel on Earth,” said Florine Thompson, the girl's great-aunt.
“She was just the sweetest little girl,” Emerald Johnson said. “If something was wrong or you were going through something, she was always trying to make you feel better.”
Although multiple relatives considered attempting to adopt Sophia, they said they never saw the necessity of going through the formal process because Samantha seemed to accept the family's role in raising her daughter.
But in January 2021, shortly after Sophia's seventh birthday, her mother came back into her life. With what relatives believe was the encouragement of Jackson, her boyfriend, Samantha began taking an interest in Sophia and sneaking the girl out of her grandmother's home late at night to take the child to Jackson's home.
That prompted the second DCFS report made in regards to physical abuse of Sophia — one of at least seven complaints that would be made in the last 15 months of her life. Although the DCFS records — which have been heavily redacted by county officials — do not provide any details about the allegations, Emerald Johnson said she filed the report after Samantha showed up at her mother's house in Hayward with police officers to reassert her custody and remove Sophia from the home.
A safety and risk assessment completed by a DCFS social worker found that Sophia faced no safety threats at that time and was not at risk of future mistreatment, though it contains no notes with details from the case worker.
From there, Samantha took Sophia to live with her in a nearby motel, but within six weeks of that report to DCFS, four additional calls were made to the agency regarding concerns that Sophia was being physically abused and neglected, DCFS records show.
Yet in response to each of those calls — made between Feb. 2 and Feb. 22, 2021 — social workers determined that the allegations did not warrant an in-person evaluation nor any further investigation into Sophia's wellbeing. Again, the records include no notes from social workers about why those determinations were made.
That was the finding even for a Feb. 11 call, which resulted from an extraordinary effort engineered by Emerald Johnson to save the girl.
Convinced Sophia was in peril, Emerald Johnson persuaded Samantha's caseworker with the Regional Center, Sophia's DCFS social worker, and Hayward police to join her in a Hayward park with Sophia and her mother to discuss the girl's welfare. Police confirmed the meeting, saying that an officer provided security while DCFS conducted interviews.
Sophia, Emerald said, showed up shaking and crying, her body bruised and scabbed. When asked about the markings on her body, Sophia told the DCFS social worker that her mother and Jackson were beating her, Emerald said.
But the revelation seemingly had no effect.
“At the park that day, that's when I feel like they really could have saved her life,” Emerald said. “But then I watched (Samantha and Sophia) both get into the car together as Sophia was crying and shaking and begging to go with me.”
“It was awful,” Emerald added, “traumatizing honestly.”
Though DCFS records acknowledge receipt of two complaints on the date of the meeting, the material made public contains no references to the meeting