37 men alleging systemic rape at detention center
Staff at a youth detention center in Baltimore County systemically raped boys incarcerated at the facility, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
The civil complaint and request for a jury trial center on the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School near Loch Raven, where 37 victims, now men between 30 and 66 years old, allege sexual abuse from the 1970s through 2009.
The lawsuit was filed by attorneys from law firms Levy Konigsberg and Brown Kiely on Wednesday morning in Baltimore City Circuit Court against the State of Maryland and the Department of Juvenile Services under the Child Victims Act.
“The Maryland Department of Juvenile Services has been made aware of these allegations,” spokesperson Eric Solomon said. “The department takes allegations of sexual abuse of children in our care very seriously, and we are working hard to provide decent, humane and rehabilitative environments for youth placed in the department’s custody.
“The department is currently reviewing the most recent lawsuits with the office of the attorney general.”
The plaintiffs filed anonymously under state law that protects court and law enforcement records pertaining to children from disclosure. Twenty-six of the alleged victims are now Baltimore City residents, according to the complaint.
According to the lawsuit, the Department of Juvenile Services has closed four youth detention facilities since 2020 while 10, including the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School, are still open.
The alleged victims often had multiple abusers and say staff members entered their cells or cornered them in offices, kitchens, stairwells and solitary confinement to assault, threaten, bribe and rape them, according to the lawsuit. Some of the victims were abused at multiple facilities including the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center; Meadow Mountain Youth Center in Garrett County, which closed in 2020; the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center; and Thomas J.S. Waxter Children’s Center in Laurel, which closed in 2022.
The lawsuit says that for each alleged victim the sexual acts perpetrated by staff members were nonconsensual, and that the plaintiffs were minors in the legal and physical custody of the state who could not legally consent. The lawsuit also says the state and department knew, or should have known, that these staff members were sexually abusing children at the Hickey School.
“Our clients arrived at the Charles Hickey School when they were young boys in need of the rehabilitation and care the juvenile justice system is supposed to provide,” Jerry Block, an attorney from Levy Konigsberg, said in a news release. “Instead, they were victims of a pattern of sexual abuse that goes back decades at the Hickey School.
“The sexual abuse inflicted on children in Maryland juvenile detention facilities was severe and widespread. The complaints filed so far are only the tip of the iceberg.”
Under the Child Victims Act, the state law passed by the Maryland General Assembly this year, these men and women, mostly in their 30s and 40s, now have the ability to pursue justice in the civil courts, and in many cases, try to learn for the first time the identities of the staff they say abused them as children.
The complaint doesn’t list a specific dollar amount plaintiffs seek but does specify each will seek a minimum of $75,000. Judgments in civil cases against public entities in Maryland are capped at $890,000.