Exclusive | Creepy way California therapist pursued teen she allegedly raped after grooming him in juvenile hall

A California therapist allegedly groomed and raped a teenage boy she counseled at a juvenile hall — then posed as his teenage girlfriend and used a burner phone to secretly stay in contact with him after his release, the victim’s attorney said.

Former behavioral health clinician Sofia Drotts, 26, of San Francisco, was hit Monday with a slew of felony charges, including unlawful sexual intercourse, as Bay Area prosecutors accused her of pursuing the underage victim, whose identity has not been released.

Attorney John Burris, who represents the boy’s family, said Drotts began grooming the teen in 2024 when he was just 14 or 15 years old. At the time, she was working as a therapist at a Contra Costa County juvenile hall and had been assigned to treat the boy as one of her clients.

According to Burris, Drotts later masqueraded as the teen’s girlfriend and used a burner phone to maintain contact with him after he was released from custody.

After the boy’s release, Drotts began raping the boy, Burris said. She did this in order to conceal her contact with the boy from his mother, he said.

“The duplicitous nature of it is really outrageous,” said Burris, who represents the victim’s family in a civil suit against the county. “She’s engaged in this nefarious conduct, and she’s covering her tracks with different kinds of lies.”

Drotts was employed at John Davis Juvenile Detention Center in Martinez, where she was assigned the 17-year-old victim as her client, according to investigators. After the boy was released, he was raped by Drotts between April 1 and July 14, prosecutors charge.

Drotts was arrested by Concord Police on July 14, after cops received a tip from a supervisor at the probation department, prosecutors said. She has since been released, according to the Contra Costa Sheriff’s office.

During the two years in which the boy was incarcerated at the juvenile Hall, Drotts abused her position as his therapist to build an inappropriate emotional connection with the boy and groom him with the objective of sexual abuse, said Burris.

Drotts also schemed to build the trust of the victim’s mother over the course of long phone calls, by assuring her that her son was making excellent progress while he was incarcerated, Burris said.  

After the boy’ s release, Drotts continued seeing the boy and his mother as a county therapist, while also meeting him illicitly in her car and in her San Francisco apartment, where the boy had begun to spend the night, Burris said.  

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“Drotts would participate in these meetings with the mother, and she would speak in glorious details about how well he was doing, and at the same time she was having secret meetings with him,” the attorney said.

Drotts also encouraged the boy to skip school and violate his curfew, Burris said.

When it finally got to the point where the boy was spending the night away, Burris said, his mother didn’t know where he was going.

“Turns out he was spending the night with this woman,” said Burris. “The mother was duped.”

Those violations contributed to Drotts arrest, court papers say, after authorities searched the boy’s home and found evidence of the inappropriate relationship Drotts initiated.

It was then that the boy’s mother found out what was happening, Burris said.

Drotts is from Chicago and holds a degree in psychology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, according to posts made on social media and content published to a college publication website.

The college singled Drotts out for praise in a 2022 Instagram post. “After graduation, she’s off to the Golden State to pursue a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Palo Alto University,” it said. “Way to go, Sofia!”

The mother of the victim, who has not been identified, said Drotts betrayed her family.

“We trusted this professional with our son’s healing and well-being, and that trust was fundamentally shattered,” said the teen’s mother.

Drotts faces other charges including sexual penetration by a foreign object, sending harmful matter to a minor, oral copulation of a person under 18 years of age and possessing child pornography. 

The Contra Superior Court will set an arraignment date for Drotts, where she will hear the charges against her, the District Attorney’s office said in a statement.