A group of nearly 70 people claimed Wednesday that they were sexually abused as children in Pennsylvania detention centers, joining earlier lawsuits that plaintiffs’ attorneys said targeted the state’s broken juvenile justice system.
The latest group of plaintiffs has filed suit in state or federal court against 10 different juvenile facilities across Pennsylvania, three of them state-run. Some of the plaintiffs said they were repeatedly raped by staff and threatened with violence if they reported it. Others said their reports of sexual abuse were ignored. None of the facilities protected the children in their care, attorneys said.
The facility operators “put profits above the safety of children,” attorney Jerome Block told the Associated Press. “Many of these juvenile facilities where the sexual abuse occurred remain open, and we have seen no evidence that the inadequate procedures and policies that enabled the sexual abuse have been remedied.”
Twenty-two of the plaintiffs were housed at Merakey USA’s Northwestern Academy outside Shamokin, which closed in 2016. One man said he was raped by two male Northwestern staff members in 2004 when he was 13 years elderly and was told he could not go home if he reported it.
Merakey, a major provider of developmental, behavioral health and educational services with more than 8,000 employees in a dozen states, “allowed the culture of sexual abuse and brutality at Northwestern Academy to continue unabated until the facility closed in 2016,” the lawyers wrote.
The Lafayette Hills, Pennsylvania-based company said Wednesday it could not comment on the allegations in the lawsuit until it had a chance to review them. “Merakey closed Northwestern Academy … because our organization firmly believes that children are better off in family and community settings than in institutional settings,” the company said in a statement.
Twenty of the plaintiffs were placed at the state-run Loysville Youth Development Center, the South Mountain Secure Treatment Unit near Gettysburg and the North Central Secure Treatment Unit in Danville.
The state Department of Human Services said it could not comment on pending litigation. Spokesman Brandon Cwalina said the department has “zero tolerance for abuse and harassment and we take our responsibility to protect the health and safety of children in licensed facilities seriously.” He said all of the department’s youth correctional facilities must be inspected every three years.
Other lawsuits named a facility operated by Villanova-based Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health; the Delaware County Juvenile Detention Center; the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s Saint Gabriel’s Hall in Audubon, which closed in 2020; Carson Valley Children’s Aid in Flourtown, which ended its residential care program last month; Presbyterian Children’s Village in Rosemont, which closed after a 2019 merger; and a now-closed facility in Franklin, Pennsylvania, operated by Tucson, Arizona-based VisionQuest National Ltd.
Delaware County said it had not yet been officially served and that it would not discuss pending court cases. Spokesman Ryan Herlinger said a 10-member oversight board was established in 2021 to work on implementing reforms to the juvenile justice system, including expanding services and alternatives to incarceration. “The county remains committed to its commitment to justice and accountability,” he said.
Gemma Services, the successor organization to Presbyterian Children’s Village, is facing allegations that Presbyterian Church staff engaged in “abusive and predatory behavior.”
Gemma said she had not seen the lawsuit but was determined to do the right thing for the children in her care.
“This organization exists to help children and families who are going through difficult times in life,” said Joan Plump, Gemma’s chief of staff. “Our top priority has been and always will be protecting the health, safety and well-being of all the youth and families we work with.”
The archdiocese, which faces allegations from seven accusers who lived at Saint Gabriel’s, declined to comment on the ongoing litigation. Messages were sent to the remaining defendants seeking comment.
The same New York firm, Levy Konigsberg, filed lawsuits on behalf of 66 people in Pennsylvania in May and has brought similar cases in Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey and Michigan.
All of the Pennsylvania plaintiffs were born after Nov. 26, 1989, and met their state’s standards for making claims of childhood sexual abuse, the attorneys said.
“Due to Pennsylvania’s policy of locking up children for relatively minor offenses or behavioral problems, many children who simply needed help ended up coming from difficult family backgrounds directly into a traumatizing prison environment where they were regularly sexually abused,” the lawyers wrote in one of the complaints filed Wednesday.
A task force set up to address problems in Pennsylvania’s juvenile justice system concluded in 2021 that too many juvenile first-time offenders and lesser-offenders were being incarcerated and that black offenders were disproportionately prosecuted as adults.
A Democratic-backed bill to adopt some of the task force’s recommendations is before the House of Representatives. It passed the House Judiciary Committee in September on a vote along party lines, with all Republicans voting against.
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Associated Press writer Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this article.
