Devereux sued over teen sex assault

PHILADELPHIA >> T.S. was worried. The 13-year-old was becoming nervous about one of his acquaintances at Devereux Brandywine, the facility where he had been placed in August 2016. The youth, C.P., was older than he was, by two years, and physically stronger.

More importantly, C.P. wold frequently talk about sexual behavior in T.S.’s presence, things he had done in the past. The talk was aggressive, and it made T.S. scared.

So he did what he thought was best, and went to the personnel at Devereux and told them of his fears. Then, later, when the staff

decided that they would put the two together in a single room at th facility in Glenmoore, Wallace, T.S. again told them about his fears and how he did not want to be C.P..’s roommate.

According to a lawsuit file last week in Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia, however, the staff at Devereux did not heed T.S.’s concerns and went ahead with the room assignment.

On three successive nights the month after they began sharing a bedroom, C.P. attacked T.S., sexually

assaulting him by forcing him to perform oral sex on him in a walk-in closet in their room.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of T.S. and his parents, all of whom live in York County, was filed against the Devereux Foundation by attorney Chad Maloney of the West Chester law firm of Goldberg, Goldberg & Maloney. The suit, which asks for unspecified monetary damages both compensatory and punitive, accuses Devereux — a nationally known behavioral treatment organization centered in Villanova, Delaware County, and Philadelphia, of gross negligence in not handling T.S.’s case with better case.

Devereux, Maloney said in the 16-page lawsuit, owed T.S. a “duty of care” in protecting him against assaults by others at the facility, located off Brandywine Creek Road in rural northern Chester County.

It’s personnel should have known that the teenage residents of the facility were, by their past behavior, “at high risk for violent behavior and that criminal acts and attacks, such as the sexual assault by C.P. … and that these criminal acts and attacks were reasonably likely to be perpetrated by its juvenile residents unless it took steps to provide reasonable security.”

Attorneys for Devereux could not be contacted last week for comment on the complaint.

The Daily Local News

does not report the victims of sexual assaults unless granted permission by the person assaulted. It does not, generally, report the names of juvenile offenders.

According to the suit, following the last attack on Oct. 23, the victim reported the three assaults to the staff at Devereux, who then contacted police. C.P. was arrested and charged with indecent assault as a juvenile.

In July last year, C.P. admitted to assaulting T.S. during their stay at Devereux. he was ordered to undergo treatment as part of the Juvenile Court in Franklin County, where his family lives.

In the complaint, Maloney stated that the attack was made possible by the failure of the nighttime supervisory

staff on the wing of the hall where T.S. and C.P. were housed to adequately check on the room where the two lived, but also because of the presence of a large walk-in closet in the room.

The closets, according to the suit, were positioned in a way that staff could not see into them from the hallway even though the doors to the room are open. The only way they could see inside

the closets would be to come into the room, which the suit states they did not do.

Other such closets in similar rooms had been “blocked off” so that they could not be used. It was inside that closet that the assault occurred, according to the suit.