More allege abuse at juvenile facilities
After a guard repeatedly raped a teenage girl incarcerated in the 1980s at a since-closed Reisterstown juvenile detention facility, she had to be hospitalized after contracting multiple sexually transmitted infections.
Decades later, around 2005 or 2006, a correctional officer searched a different teenage girl at a Salisbury detention center, then raped her. She suffered bleeding and was diagnosed with chlamydia. The second time she returned to the Lower Eastern Shore Youth Center, the same guard searched and raped her again.
The two women are among 63 plaintiffs in the latest sex abuse lawsuit brought against the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services by the New York law firm Levy Konigsberg and Maryland-based Brown Kiely. The complaint, which identifies the men and women by their initials, said the department ignored the sexual abuse by failing to investigate or discipline staff members and had ineffective prevention policies in place.
“A child who is sent to any juvenile facility should be provided with a safe environment. Instead, our clients were sexually abused as children by state employees that were supposed to keep them safe,” Levy Konigbserg attorney Jerome Block said in a statement. “The sexual abuse inflicted on our clients was horrific and occurred at juvenile detention facilities throughout the State of Maryland going back many decades.”
The most recent complaint, filed Thursday morning in Baltimore City Circuit Court, alleges abuse spanning from 1969 to 2017 at 15 different juvenile facilities in Maryland, some of which have since closed.
Staff threatened children into remaining quiet about the abuse and offered them rewards in exchange for their silence, the complaint said. One staff member threatened to harm the family of a teenager, who was incarcerated seven times between 2012 and 2016, if he reported the abuse. Some victims were assaulted by multiple staff members and some children’s attempts to report the abuse were met with inaction, the filing said.
A total of 200 people, including the new plaintiffs, have sued the department since the Child Victims Act lifted the statute of limitations on child sex abuse lawsuits in Maryland. At least 10 lawsuits against the department have been filed since the new state law went into effect in October.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown is defending the law from a constitutional challenge from the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.
Those bringing lawsuits against the agency for abuse they allegedly endured while incarcerated as children include 20 women who were at the former Thomas J.S. Waxter Children’s Center in Laurel, 37 men at the at the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore County; five men at the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center and 25 adults at the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center in Prince George’s County.
State lawmakers recently unveiled new legislation that would make changes to juvenile justice laws, including rolling back some reforms passed in recent years, in response to an uptick in certain categories of youth crime.
Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dartigue has said the bill will lead to the incarceration of more children in juvenile facilities.
A spokesperson for the Maryland Department of JuvenileServicessaidthe department had not yet been served with the latest lawsuit on Thursday afternoon.
“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,” spokesperson Eric Solomon said in December in response to other lawsuits.