HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Dozens of children housed in juvenile detention centers and similar facilities in Pennsylvania suffered physical and sexual abuse, including stern rape, according to four related lawsuits filed Wednesday.
The lawsuits describe how 66 people, now adults, say they were victimized by guards, nurses, supervisors and others. Some attacks were reported to other employees and were either ignored or met with disbelief, the lawsuits say.
Their claims point to a broken juvenile justice system in Pennsylvania, said Jerome Block, a New York attorney whose firm filed the novel cases and is helping bring similar lawsuits in Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey and Michigan.
“The purpose of the juvenile justice system is to rehabilitate, educate and reform those affected to equip them for healthy, productive lives,” Block said in a telephone interview before filing the lawsuits. “Instead, these men and women were sexually traumatized as children. They came to these facilities because they needed help. Instead, trauma was inflicted on them.”
The lawsuits involve the Loysville Youth Development Center, the South Mountain Secure Treatment Unit and the North Central Secure Treatment Unit in Danville, which are operated by the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services; Merakey USA’s Northwestern Academy outside Shamokin, which closed in 2016; and facilities operated by VisionQuest National Ltd., based in Tucson, (*66*), and Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health, based in Villanova.
State Department of Human Services spokesman Brandon Cwalina declined to comment on the lawsuits but urged anyone who suspects children are being sexually abused or molested in a facility to call Pennsylvania’s ChildLine at 1-800- Call 932-0313.
The agency “does not tolerate abuse or harassment of any kind, and we take seriously our responsibility to protect the health and safety of children in licensed facilities,” he said in an email.
Copies of the lawsuit were also emailed to Devereux and Merakey’s spokespeople on Wednesday morning seeking comment. Several messages have been left for VisionQuest in the last few days.
All of the plaintiffs were born after November 26, 1989, and meet the state’s legal standards for filing claims of child sexual abuse.
Block said the legal team also represents more than 100 people who suffered similar abuse but whose victims occurred too long ago and who can no longer file a civil lawsuit. Proposals to create a two-year window for such obsolete lawsuits were blocked by Senate Republicans in the General Assembly.
Eighteen of the recent plaintiffs describe rape and other sexual abuse in Devereux facilities. A man says that at the age of 14 he was sexually abused by a staff member while he was tied up “so he couldn’t defend himself” during “big temper tantrums” while under sedation.
Other claims from 15 people held in the state facilities say children there have long been subjected to a “culture of exploitation, violence and rampant sexual abuse” by guards, counselors and other staff.
“Sexual abuse in the Commonwealth’s juvenile correctional facilities ranged from inappropriate strip searches to forcible physical rape,” says her lawsuit, which alleges negligence and a lack of supervision.
One of the plaintiffs says she became pregnant as a teenager as a result of a violent rape by a counselor at North Central about 20 years ago, and that another staff member did not believe her when she reported the rape. The lawsuit does not describe what happened related to her pregnancy.
Merakey USA, which operated Northwestern Academy before it closed in 2016, is accused of a “culture of sexual abuse and brutality,” including “inappropriate and criminal sexual relationships with children” who were granted or denied privileges to induce them to have sex to urge.
This lawsuit alleges that a sexually inactive 14-year-old girl was forced into sexual acts by two employees at Northwestern Academy. When she complained, she was accused of lying and her home leave was revoked.
A male therapist then had her write about her sexual experiences twice a week for five months, telling her it was treatment for sex addiction and for a book he was writing. When she asked about the book as she left the facility, the director told her the book didn’t exist and that her experience “would not be considered psychiatric treatment,” the lawsuit says.
A task force to address problems in Pennsylvania’s approach to juvenile justice – established by leaders in the Legislature, the court system and then-Gov. Tom Wolf concluded in 2021 that too many first-time and minor offenders were incarcerated and black offenders were disproportionately prosecuted as adults.
A Democratic-backed bill to adopt some of the changes recommended by the task force is pending in the House after passing the Judiciary Committee in September on a party-line vote opposed by all Republicans. There is also a decades-long effort to create an independent Office of Children’s Advocates. Advocates say talks about such legislation are currently underway.
Malik Pickett, a senior attorney at the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, said the lawsuits “sound far too familiar compared to what we know in our nearly 50 years of practicing law.”
The state’s juvenile detention centers are threatening places for children, he said in his emailed statement.
“We have seen one youth incarceration crisis after another,” Pickett said, without passing any meaningful changes.
