Former juvenile inmates sue NYC for alleged sexual abuse

Source: Spencer Platt / Getty

NThe City of New York is now the defendant in over 250 lawsuits filed by former juvenile detainees who allege they were sexually abused by guards, counselors and other adult staff at four current and former juvenile correctional facilities.

The facilities at issue in the lawsuits include two that still operate as youth correctional facilities: Crossroads in Brooklyn and the Horizon Juvenile Center in the Bronx. Also accused of facilitating child abuse are the Spofford Juvenile Detention Center, which finally closed its doors in 2011, and one of the city’s most notorious prisons, Riker’s Island, which no longer holds minors after the state passed a law called “Raise the Age” in 2019. The law took effect nine years after Kalief Browder, then 16, was incarcerated there and ruthlessly abused, and four years after he committed suicide due to the trauma caused by his experiences at Riker’s.

Source: Pacific Press / Getty

Most of the plaintiffs who filed lawsuits were younger than 16 at the time of their incarceration. Often, the offenses were minor and should not have resulted in the traumatic experiences that often leave victims with lifelong trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Some cases of terrorized boys were dropped

“Many of our clients were incarcerated for minor offenses,” said Jerome Block, a partner at Levy Konigsberg LLP, a law firm that specializes in child sexual abuse and exploitation cases. “Sometimes these charges against juveniles were even later dropped. Some were in these juvenile detention centers for weeks or months and were sexually abused during that short period of time.”

Speaking of Kalief, the obvious is that the overwhelming majority of plaintiffs in these cases are likely black and Latino boys, given the discrimination that has led to the vulgar racial disparities in the juvenile justice system. The number of black and Latino boys incarcerated has increased even as the overall number of youth incarcerated in the United States, and particularly in New York, has declined.

Two plaintiffs, both black men who were incarcerated at the Crossroads prison, joined attorneys to tell their stories during a recent press conference about the lawsuits.

From the Daily News:

Nijere Stewart, 14, served less than half a year at the Crossroads in Brooklyn in 2018. He was arrested for a nearby weapon. The charges were later dropped, his lawyer said. But before that, he was sexually abused.

“I was an innocent boy with straight A’s who loved playing with his brothers and walking on stilts in Crown Heights,” Stewart said, “and as a teenager I was too traumatized and ashamed of the nightmare I had to live through every night in front of the adults who were supposed to protect me.”

Stewart claims that when he first arrived at the youth center, a male staff member grabbed his buttocks as he passed him in the hallway, his complaint states. From there, the allegations escalated. The staff member fondled his genitals about three times a week, sometimes under his clothing, and forced him to perform oral sex and raped him in two separate incidents, according to court documents.

Stewart reported the employee to a counselor and his mother, who reported the incident to Crossroads. But even after the report, the abuse continued, the complaint says.

Just a few years earlier, Clyde Wiggins served more than a year in the same prison after his lawyer and the then 16-year-old testified that he was in a car with adults who robbed a convenience store and took the blame as a minor. For more than half of his sentence, Crossroads hired a tutor who performed oral sex on him during sessions in the dorm area, according to a separate complaint.

Wiggins was bribed with alcohol and food from outside Crossroads, the filing says, but he later reported the employee and was transferred to Horizon. Since his release nearly two decades ago, he has tried to get back into music, which he said was his passion before his arrest. But it hasn’t been easy.

“After that, when I came home and stuff, that passion was gone,” Wiggins said. “I’m trying to find it again as an adult through my kid, but you know, it’s hard.”

A temporary measure can help … but only a little

The lawsuits, which have been coming in since April, were “filed under a city law against gender-based violence that extended the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits by two years in 2022, according to the Daily News. While the measure is temporary, it at least gives victims a little more time to fight for their own justice. Far too often, victims of sexual abuse, adults and children alike, are denied the opportunity to even try to seek justice because there is typically a period of healing between the day of the assault and the day the person feels emotionally or otherwise ready to disclose.

“The trauma of sexual abuse and the loss of bodily sovereignty – especially for young people who are just learning about themselves – takes years to process before many can even think about coming forward and reporting,” said Emily Miles, executive director of the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault. “For those who suffer the combined trauma of abuse while incarcerated, the process of reporting can take even longer.”

Regardless of an inmate’s criminal offenses—Child or adult—committed (or allegedly committed) a crime, once they are placed in a detention facility, they must receive protection and care from that facility. And they have the right to humane treatment. Hopefully, some semblance of justice will be achieved through these hundreds of lawsuits.

SEE MORE:

Everything you need to know about the 15-year-old black girl who was jailed for not completing her online homework

New York City finally decides to pay for Kalief Browder’s life

13 photos