Vindicated: San Francisco Charges a County Jail Deputy in a Case Our Clients Refused to Stay Quiet About

This morning, a San Francisco Sheriff’s deputy is being arraigned on criminal charges for touching a woman in custody at County Jail No. 2. For our client, it is a moment more than a year in the making. For everyone who told these women to stay quiet, it is an answer.

On July 13, 2026, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced charges against Deputy Nanette Musto (51). According to the District Attorney, on July 12, 2025, while on duty at County Jail No. 2, Musto asked a female inmate whether she had surgically augmented her body and then, without permission or lawful necessity, reached out and touched the inmate’s breast. The incident was captured on jail surveillance footage and left the woman humiliated and embarrassed. Musto is charged with battery under Penal Code section 242 and one misdemeanor count of assault by a public officer under Penal Code section 149. She is scheduled to be arraigned today at 9:00 a.m. in Department 17 at the Hall of Justice.

The complaining witness in that criminal case is one of our clients: a plaintiff in the federal civil rights class action The Veen Firm filed with co-counsel Bertolino Law in May, on behalf of 20 women held at County Jail No. 2.

The Lawsuit that Made Today Possible

The criminal charges did not appear out of nowhere. They arrived one year after the conduct, and only after these women went to court.

Our complaint, filed May 22, 2026 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, describes a coordinated, supervisor-authorized pattern of suspicionless and degrading searches of women at County Jail No. 2. It centers on a mass strip search on May 22, 2025, in which roughly a dozen deputies, including male deputies, ordered women in the jail’s women’s housing unit to remove their clothing and submit to searches within view of male staff. Body-worn cameras were activated during the searches in violation of the Sheriff’s own written policy. The complaint also alleges that women who were menstruating were denied hygiene products, that additional invasive searches followed in the months afterward, and that women who complained were placed in segregation or stripped of work assignments.

These are the conditions our clients described when almost no one was listening. Today, a prosecutor has looked at the same facts and filed criminal charges.

What Our Attorneys are Saying

“For a year, these women were told to stay quiet. This week the District Attorney confirmed what our client has said all along: a deputy criminally violated a woman inside that jail,” said Elizabeth Bertolino of Bertolino Law, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs. “This is vindication, and it is also just the beginning. Criminal charges against one deputy do not erase an institutional policy that put male deputies and body cameras inside a women’s strip search.”

“It took a lawsuit and a full year for anyone in power to take these women seriously,” said Anthony Label, a partner at The Veen Firm and co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs. “This was never one woman making it up, and it was never rogue conduct nobody could have seen. It happened inside a jail that broke its own rules and then punished the women who spoke up. The City still has to answer for the pattern.”

Why This Matters

A criminal charge against a single deputy is accountability for one act. It is not accountability for the system that allowed it. Our civil case continues, and it seeks what a single prosecution cannot: answers about who authorized these searches, changes to the policies that enabled them, and justice for every woman who was made to feel that her dignity ended at the jailhouse door.

We are proud of our clients. They came forward while still in custody, at real personal risk, because they believed the truth mattered. Today shows they were right.

If This Happened to You

If you or someone you love experienced sexual misconduct, unlawful searches, or retaliation while in custody, you have rights, and you do not have to face it alone. The Veen Firm and Bertolino Law represent people whom institutions tried to silence.

To speak with our team confidentially, contact The Veen Firm at [email protected] or Phone: (888) 504-0157, or learn more at veenfirm.com.

This post concerns pending litigation and criminal proceedings. All charges are allegations, and every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.