Victims of sexual abuse at juvenile detention centers are increasingly sounding the alarm, exposing lax management and security practices that have placed vulnerable young people in danger.
Lawsuits in states including Oregon, Illinois, Washington, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Hampshire, California and New York detail sexual abuse in state- and county-run juvenile detention centers that include allegations of rape, forced oral sex and beatings by corrections officers, nurses, kitchen staff, chaplains and others.
In Illinois, 667 people have alleged they were sexually abused as children at youth facilities in Illinois through lawsuits filed since May. The most recent Illinois complaints detail alleged abuse from 1996 to 2021 from the accounts of 272 people who were in state-run youth juvenile detention facilities and a county-run Chicago center.
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Michael Moss said he felt shame and guilt for years after he was sexually abused by guards as a teenager. Moss, now 30, spoke at a press conference as one of hundreds of survivors who are suing over allegations of systemic sex abuse in youth detention facilities in Illinois.
“I wouldn’t wish my situation on anybody,” he said. “I hope that justice is granted for the pain and suffering we all went through as kids.”
Many plaintiffs said their abusers threatened them with beatings, transfers to harsher facilities and longer sentences if they reported the abuse. Others were given rewards like cigarettes and food for staying quiet.
“The State of Illinois has caused and permitted a culture of sexual abuse to flourish unabated in its Illinois Youth Center facilities,” one lawsuit said, adding that Illinois has “overwhelmingly failed to investigate complaints, report abusive staff and protect youth inmates.”
A U.S. Justice Department survey in 2018 found that hundreds of teens are raped or sexually assaulted in juvenile facilities each year in the United States Most are victimized by staff, with the perpetrators overwhelmingly male. Only 6% of teens in the facilities reported the abuse, according to the survey.
About 200,000 youths are placed in detention facilities each year with an average stay of 27 days, according to the Justice Department. There are about 1,300 juvenile detention facilities in the U.S., most of which are operated by state or local governments.
In 2021, Washington paid over $2 million to 10 plaintiffs who sued the state alleging sexual abuse while in the Green Hill School, the state’s largest juvenile detention center. Earlier that year, the state paid $805,000 to settle sexual abuse lawsuits brought by four people formerly detained at the now-closed Naselle Youth Camp who said they were assaulted by a counselor.
In Oregon, at least six youth inmates have filed lawsuits against the Oregon Youth Authority, alleging staff members provided them with drugs, manipulated them to gain their trust, engaged in coercive sexual relationships with youths and threatened them so they wouldn’t report the behavior.
According to the Sentencing Project, recurring abuse has been documented in state-funded juvenile detention facilities in 29 states and the District of Columbia in recent decades.
“You’re taking vulnerable kids and putting them with very powerful staff who have the ability to not only make their daily lives miserable or more comfortable, but also can affect their ability to get out of the facilities,” Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, told NPR. “You’ve got to start by acknowledging that there are so many kids who should never be in these settings at all.”
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Our Hawai’i sexual abuse lawyers work one-on-one with survivors, offering a direct, personal level of care and discretion. We use our decades of experience battling big organizations to fight on behalf of survivors, aggressively taking on those responsible for the pain and suffering they’ve caused. Our results obtaining justice for victims speak for themselves. If you are a survivor of childhood or adult sexual abuse, we can help.
