Lawsuit claims girl was raped at shelter
Woman says her granddaughter, 14, was attacked by an employee at scandal-plagued DCF facility
A woman is suing the Bridge Family Center, claiming her teenage granddaughter was raped by an employee at the scandal-rocked residential shelter for girls that it operated in Harwinton until last fall.
The West Hartford-based agency failed to protect the girl and didn’t properly train or supervise its staff at the shelter, according to the lawsuit filed Friday in Hartford Superior Court.
A then-14-year-old girl was raped by a worker in February 2023, when she was placed in the home for five days, the suit contends.
A spokesman on Friday said the Bridge Family Center will not comment because the lawsuit is pending.
State police documented a long series of fights and emergency calls at the home starting three years ago, and the shelter was shut down in November.
Bridge Family Center operated the Harwinton home for more than a decade through a contract with the state Department of Children and Families, temporarily housing up to six troubled adolescent girls at a time.
The Bridge Center labeled the Harwinton center and three similar facilities across the state as “STAR homes” providing ShortTerm Assessment & Respite for at-risk youth ages 11 to 18.
State troopers and EMTs in Harwinton, a small Litchfield County, reported a spike in emergency calls from the home starting in 2021, and town officials complained that the mayhem simply grew worse through early 2023.
Some calls were for minor disputes, but there were also allegations of physical beatings, vandalism, thefts, sexual assaults, abuse complaints, reports of runaways and a case where one teenage resident was evidently being trafficked.
The troubles became public in
September through the Connecticut Inside Investigator, which describes itself as a nonprofit newsroom. The Harwinton shelter was already on a heightened schedule for unannounced inspections, DCF said at the time, and was no longer accepting new residents.
Then-Commissioner Vannessa Dorantes assured legislators at a hearing in October that the Harwinton incidents had been fully investigated and that staff who’d molested or assaulted girls had been fired. She maintained the
shelter would have to comply with stricter protocols in the future, but instead the operation was shut down altogether the next month.
Some legislators appeared frustrated at the hearing when they pressed Dorantes for an explanation of why the center wasn’t closed after the two-year-long pattern of dysfunction began. Ultimately, Dorantes acknowledged that the major incidents spurred special investigations, but said the more routine troubles — arguments or incidents where girls simply walked away from the unlocked shelter — were not uncommon at other STAR homes.
The Bridge Family Center’s website now lists just three STAR homes: One in West Hartford serves girls, and facilities in Hartford and Wolcott house boys.
In September, the mother of a 14-year-old girl sued the Bridge Family Center, saying her daughter was neglected, physically attacked and exposed to sexual assault at the Harwinton shelter. The suit claims the nonprofit operation didn’t provide adequate security and failed to supervise its staff or its residents.
During a two-month stay last spring, the girl was able to walk away from the shelter on her own, “and this caused her to be exposed to various dangers and other illegal activities,” according to the suit, which was filed by Tim O’Keefe of the Hartford firm of Kenny, O’Keefe & Usseglio, P.C.
On Friday, O’Keefe filed a second suit representing a different girl and her grandmother.
“It is now clear from our investigation that the serious problems at this facility go back several years. And while public statements of contrition have been made in the press and at the legislature by representatives of this business, their actions and the actions of their liability insurance carriers have made it clear that they place the blame for these events squarely on these minor children,” O’Keefe said. “It is really incredible.”
The rape aggravated the girl’s existing emotional and psychological condition, and caused her guilt, shame and humiliation, according to the suit.
“The plaintiff will never enjoy the health and wellbeing she did prior to becoming a resident at the defendant’s facility, and her ability to enjoy the full spectrum of life’s activities has been impaired,” the suit contends.
“We intend to seek full justice for the grievous harm that this 14-year-old girl suffered as a result of the serious neglect shown by the operators of this facility,” O’Keefe said in a statement.