Pipper Bratt was two months shy of her 15th birthday when she arrived at Casa Pacifica Centers for Children & Families, a group home and treatment center for troubled teens near Camarillo.
On her first day, Aug. 5, she left without permission and was brought back by a Ventura County sheriff’s deputy, according to a lawsuit filed recently by her parents. Over the next six weeks, she continued to leave and deputies continued to bring her back.
During one of those unauthorized absences, she was allegedly victimized by a 33-year-old man in Santa Barbara County. He now faces felony charges, including rape, human trafficking and child pornography.
The last time Pipper walked away from Casa Pacifica was the night of Sept. 19. At about 9:30 p.m., she was hit by a vehicle on Lewis Road, in front of the facility. She died four days later, still a week from turning 15.
Pipper died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office is investigating her death. The case is still open, but the medical examiner’s initial opinion is that Pipper died by suicide.
On Nov. 19, Pipper’s parents, John and Cindy Bratt, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Casa Pacifica in Ventura County Superior Court. The suit accuses the nonprofit of failing to properly supervise and protect Pipper, despite a history of psychiatric hospitalizations and a series of warning signs in the last months of her life, including drug use and self-harm.
“The red flags were all over the place,” said Wyatt Vespermann, the Bratts’ attorney. “This girl needed a higher level of supervision, and they failed miserably.”
Casa Pacifica issued a brief statement in response to the lawsuit. It said the staff there was “deeply saddened by the tragic loss of Pipper and extend our heartfelt condolences to her family and all affected.”
Casa Pacifica is cooperating with the California Department of Social Services in its investigation of Pipper’s death, the statement says, and will respond in detail to the lawsuit at a later date through court filings.
Shawna Morris, Casa Pacifica’s CEO, would not address the specifics of Pipper’s case but did speak with The Star about the facility’s general policies and procedures.
She said Casa Pacifica has individualized treatment plans for all of its residents. It does not, however, physically prevent them from leaving the property. Its state license does not allow that, she said, because the children in its care are not incarcerated or under involuntary psychiatric commitment.
“Our staff is trained in de-escalation,” Morris said. “We will work with them and try our very best to make them come back, especially if they’re not thinking clearly. … At the end of the day, we are an unlocked facility.”
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The tumultuous last year of Pipper Bratt’s life
Pipper was the second youngest of Cindy and John Bratt’s eight children, and one of five they adopted.
The couple’s biological children are now 50, 31 and 32. As those children grew up, the Bratts cared for a series of foster kids, and in 2013 they adopted one, a baby boy.
John and Cindy said they had no plans to adopt again, but as they were in the middle of the process with their son, the adoption worker told them about four sisters who needed a home. Pipper was the youngest, at 2 years old. Her sisters were 4, 6 and 8.
The adoption worker told Cindy the girls would have to be separated.
“I said, ‘You can’t do that. You can’t separate them,'” Cindy said. “And she said, ‘Then adopt them.'”
They did, and the family soon moved from Fresno to Orcutt, in northern Santa Barbara County.
Last year, Pipper was diagnosed with depression and anxiety, Vespermann said, and put on medication. About a year ago she was hospitalized for 19 days at a psychiatric facility in Bakersfield.
In March, Pipper told the staff at her school that John Bratt had sexually abused her, and she was removed from the Bratts’ home by Santa Barbara County Child Welfare Services. She was placed in foster care, hospitalized again and lived in a group home in Santa Maria and a youth shelter in Santa Barbara.
According to an excerpt of a May 30 juvenile court assessment shared by Vespermann, Pipper recanted her accusations of physical and sexual abuse and said she wanted to re-establish a relationship with John and Cindy.
The court assessment said Pipper “continues to require the protection of the Juvenile Court.”
“Both the parents and the child have stated they agree that Pipper needs to be in a facility to stabilize and focus on her mental health,” the assessment says. The county of Santa Barbara moved her to Casa Pacifica in early August.
111 runaway incidents at Casa Pacifica this year
According to her parents’ lawsuit, Pipper had problems at Casa Pacifica on a near daily basis. She left on her first day at 4:30 p.m., and sheriff’s deputies brought her back at 5:45 p.m. She pulled the fire alarm two days later, left again that day, and was again returned by law enforcement after a little more than an hour. Two days after that, she cut herself with a broken eyeliner pencil.
Throughout August, she left repeatedly and was picked up by police, sometimes returning under the influence of marijuana, the lawsuit states.
On Aug. 31, Casa Pacifica reported to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office that Pipper was at a Walmart grocery store in Camarillo. Police found her and detained her in handcuffs, and Pipper said she’d taken “random pills” that she found on the floor of the store, the Bratts’ lawsuit states.
Ventura County Sheriff’s Capt. Jason Hendren, the chief of the Camarillo police station, said Pipper was one of two Casa Pacifica residents picked up at the Walmart at around 11 p.m. on Aug. 31. The two girls said they were not injured and were “not involved in any criminal activity,” Hendren said. Deputies returned them to Casa Pacifica.
It’s common for sheriff’s deputies to locate Casa Pacifica residents and return them to the campus. So far this year, as of Dec. 3, Casa Pacifica had reported 111 incidents of missing residents to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, according to data Hendren provided.
That’s down significantly over the past few years. In 2019, the year before Morris became CEO, Casa Pacifica reported 693 runaways to the sheriff’s office.
One reason for the decline is that the facility has fewer children to care for. There are now 30 beds in three separate residential programs for people under the age of 18, about half the capacity in 2019.
According to her parents’ lawsuit, Pipper was in Casa Pacifica’s short-term residential therapeutic program, the most intensive care the facility offers. Teens usually stay in that program for nine to 12 months before they can be returned to their family home or a foster home. The program has 10 beds; in 2019, it had 42 beds.
“We’ve changed the population of the youth we serve,” Morris said. “The need for that level has dissipated, and we’re able to keep kids in homes. … Kids need to live in homes, safe homes. That’s where they belong.”
Kids always come back, staff says
Hendren said the sheriff’s office has a good relationship with Casa Pacifica, and meets regularly with its staff to discuss runaways and other issues. In 2017, the agency set-up a reporting system that gives the nonprofit staff limited access to the law enforcement computer system.
“Instead of waiting for a deputy to respond and take a report on a runaway or walk-away child, they can call dispatch, let us know, and they can enter some basic information into the system themselves, and it automatically goes to the deputies on patrol,” Hendren said.
The deputies will keep an eye out for the missing child, he said. If the child is considered especially at risk — for example, if they’re believed to be suicidal or they have certain disabilities — a detective will take the case and lead a more intensive search.
Hendren said the sheriff’s office shares information with other local police agencies if there’s reason to believe a Casa Pacifica resident is in one of their cities. Once a child is reported missing, law enforcement can detain them and return them to Casa Pacifica or call Casa Pacifica staff to pick them up.
Most of the time, the kids are ready to come back, Hendren and Morris both said. After being away for a while, they’ll sometimes call Casa Pacifica or the police and ask to be picked up.
“They’re tired, they’re hungry, they’re cold, they want to come home,” Morris said.
Jessica Zetley, Casa Pacifica’s general counsel, said that in her 14 years with the organization, no child has ever left and not come back.
“They know this is a safe spot,” Zetley said.
When residents do leave, they’re “resourceful” about it, Morris said. Sometimes they have a friend who picks them up in a car. Sometimes they get an Uber.
Sometimes they walk the 2 miles north into Camarillo, or the quarter mile south to the nearest bus stop. Both routes take them along Lewis Road, a busy road with a 55 mph speed limit, no sidewalks and often no shoulder.
“There are no safe places to walk on that street,” Morris said.
Casa Pacifica gives its residents plenty of sanctioned, supervised opportunities to leave the campus, she said. There is a school at Casa Pacifica, but some of the residents attend schools elsewhere. Staff members take the kids to driving lessons or soccer practice, or to the movies or pizza on a weekend.
“We want them to be out and about in the community because they’re going to live there when they get out of here,” Morris said. “Our job is to teach them to live there.”
If a resident has a history of walking away without permission, she is still welcome on those trips to the movie theater or the pizza parlor, Morris said.
“We believe and we know that the youth are trying to solve their problems with behaviors, and we try to help them solve their problems with different behaviors,” she said.
Three girls from Casa Pacifica allegedly victimized
During one of Pipper’s absences from Casa Pacifica, authorities believe she was taken to Santa Barbara County and sexually assaulted by a 33-year-old man named Benito Najera.
Prosecutors in Santa Barbara filed 11 felony charges against the man on Oct. 13. The charges include rape of an unconscious person, rape of an intoxicated person, statutory rape, forcible oral copulation, assault with a deadly weapon, trafficking of a minor for a commercial sex act and possession of child pornography. Najera has pleaded not guilty to all charges and is being held without bail.
Megan Chandra, the Santa Barbara County Senior Deputy District Attorney who is prosecuting the case, said the alleged crimes happened in Santa Barbara County. Najera is a Santa Barbara resident.
His alleged victims were 14, 16 and 17 years old. According to the Bratts’ lawsuit, Pipper was the 14-year-old victim, and the other two victims were also Casa Pacifica residents.
“Najera supplied Pipper and the two other girls with drugs and alcohol before sexually assaulting them,” the lawsuit states.
The Bratt’s lawsuit says that Casa Pacifica did not respond appropriately to Pipper’s trauma. State licensing rules require facilities like Casa Pacifica to have a “runaway plan.” And any child with a history of leaving without permission, or being sexually exploited, has to have an individualized plan that includes “a plan to prevent and discourage children from running away,” according to the state licensing handbook.
Morris said Casa Pacifica does have individualized plans for its residents but could not comment on any specific resident’s plan.
Pipper’s death remains under investigation
Cindy Bratt said she got a call on Sept. 19 at about 11 p.m. from a Casa Pacifica staff member, who told her Pipper had been hit by a car. Twenty minutes later, she called Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks and a doctor told her Pipper had severe brain damage and was on life support.
Pipper was transferred a few hours later to Cedars-Sinai. When John and Cindy saw her in that hospital, she never woke up, couldn’t breathe on her own and never showed any brain activity, Cindy said. On Sept. 23, they decided to take her off of life support.
Pipper’s organs were donated, and Cindy said she’s gotten letters from three people who were helped by the transplants.
Casa Pacifica reported Pipper’s death to the California Department of Social Services Community Care Licensing Division, the state agency responsible for licensing and monitoring care facilities for children and adults.
A division representative has made two unannounced visits to Casa Pacifica to investigate, on Sept. 25 and again on Oct. 2, according to state records. The inspector interviewed staff members and residents and requested security camera footage and documents, including Pipper’s treatment plans and medication list and emergency intervention training for the staff.
“At this time, further investigation is required in order to the determine whether any violation had occurred,” the initial inspection report states.
Other state inspections this year didn’t result in any violations for Casa Pacifica, and all complaints submitted to the licensing division were found to be unsubstantiated. The most recent violations were in 2023 and 2024, when Casa Pacifica was cited twice and fined $250 for not administering a resident’s medication as scheduled, and in 2024, when a resident was determined to not have a valid tuberculosis screening. The facility was also late in submitting certain mandatory reports in 2025.
Morris said Pipper is the first resident who has died since she joined Casa Pacifica in 2020.
In 2008, a 15-year-old Casa Pacifica resident named Larry King was shot and killed by a classmate at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard. King lived at Casa Pacifica’s emergency shelter but went to school off campus, which is where he was murdered.
Pipper’s death, Morris said, was “tragic. It was heartbreaking.”
Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tbiasotti@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation’s Fund to Support Local Journalism.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Casa Pacifica sued after 14-year-old hit by car walking from facility
Reporting by Tony Biasotti, Ventura County Star / Ventura County Star
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