Lawsuit: Maryland Juvenile Justice System

“Fifty people allege they were sexually abused as children while incarcerated in Maryland’s juvenile justice system, one as young as 7, in a suite of lawsuits filed the day a new state law took effect.

The claims allege rampant sexual abuse of young people in six of Maryland’s juvenile justice facilities over five decades, making Maryland’s government the latest defendant in a reckoning over decades-old allegations sparked by legislative change.

The lawsuits allege repeated rape or molestation of children in state custody, neglect by the state in failing to prevent the abuse, and a lack of effective procedures to monitor staffers with patterns or histories of illegal behavior. Some children were abused in their bedrooms with the doors locked from the outside, the lawsuits allege.

“Unfortunately, due to the Department’s abysmal lack of management and oversight, thousands of youngsters have been harmed rather than helped as they became the prey of sadistic staff whom they could not escape,” lawyers wrote in a lawsuit alleging abuses against 11 people at the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore.

“Having taken these children’s liberty, the State then paid the personnel who relentlessly raped, sodomized, beat, threatened, and tortured them in nightmarish ways. All while turning a blind eye for decades,” the lawsuit said.

The state of Maryland and its Department of Juvenile Services, as well as its predecessor agencies, are the defendants. Lawyers said they have several hundred additional clients, most of whom they expect to add as plaintiffs.

The Department of Juvenile Services released a statement saying that the agency was reviewing the lawsuit. “DJS 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 committed to the Department,” it said.”

“McLain said when she was 13, in 1987, she was put in state custody for stealing a bicycle. She said she was raped by state employees at least 15 times over the ensuing months.

One of her rapists stood over her shoulder while her mother came to visit, McLain said, delaying her opportunity to reveal the abuse. When her mother was able to raise concerns, she said, nothing happened.

“I’m not sitting here to gain nothing. My lawyer didn’t offer me nothing,” she said. “They need to be exposed. The world needs to know what is going on behind these juvenile facilities. Period.”

The six juvenile facilities named in six different but coordinated lawsuits filed Sunday have well-documented histories of mistreating youth in other ways, including scandals that at times prompted probes by the U.S. Justice Department and others.”

“One plaintiff said she was 15 years old when she was sexually abused inside the Montrose School in 1975. She alleges a caretaker, who the lawsuit does not identify, got her alone in the infirmary and raped her. She said he would give her commissary money for sexual favors and “if she did not comply, he forced himself onto her regardless,” one of the lawsuits said.”
Lawsuits allege dozens were sexually abused in Md. juvenile facilities
[The Washington Post 10/2/23 by Erin Cox and Steve Thompson]

REFORM Puzzle Piece