Dozens of former juvenile inmates filed lawsuits seeking millions of dollars in damages for sexual abuse they allegedly suffered in Illinois detention centers dating back to the late 1990s.
Thirteen women and 95 men filed two separate lawsuits Friday in the Illinois Court of Claims against the state Department of Corrections and the state Department of Juvenile Justice. Each plaintiff is seeking $2 million in damages, the highest amount allowed under the law.
The files are filled with disturbing allegations that guards, teachers and counselors at multiple juvenile detention centers in the state sexually abused inmates between 1997 and 2013. Often the same perpetrators attacked the same children for months, sometimes offering to shorten their sentences or punish them. snacks or extra time off in exchange for their silence, the lawsuits show.
There was no immediate response Monday morning to an email seeking comment from two government agencies.
One female plaintiff claimed she was 15 years old when she was booked into a Warrenville detention center in 2012. A guard groped her under her clothing and on another occasion attempted to rape her in a shower room. The guard said he would put her in solitary confinement if she told anyone. The woman further alleged that another security guard sexually assaulted her in a bathroom and then gave her a Butterfinger bar.
A male plaintiff claimed he was 13 years old when he was housed in a St. Charles detention center in 1997. Two guards gave him food, extra time out of his cell and extra television time as a reward for having sex with them. so-called. When he reported the crime, guards locked him in his cell as punishment, he said. The plaintiff said he was transferred to two other detention centers in Warrenville and Valley View. Guards in those centers also groped him.
The lawsuits note that a 2013 U.S. Department of Justice survey of incarcerated youth found that Illinois was one of the four worst states nationwide for sexual abuse in detention centers.
Lawyers for the former juvenile detainees have filed similar lawsuits across the country.
Last month, they filed a lawsuit on behalf of 95 other former juvenile inmates who allege they were sexually abused in Illinois juvenile detention centers between 1997 and 2017. Each of these plaintiffs is also seeking $2 million. The Justice Department said in a statement in response to that lawsuit that those alleged incidents occurred among former department leaders. The current administration takes the safety of youth seriously and all allegations of staff misconduct are investigated by other agencies, including the state police, the department said.
The three lawsuits in Illinois bring the total number of plaintiffs to more than 200.
“It is time for the state of Illinois to accept responsibility for the systematic sexual abuse of children at the Illinois Youth Centers,” said Jerome Block, one of the attorneys for the former inmates.
The prisoners’ lawyers also filed proceedings Pennsylvania in May it was alleged that 66 people, now adults, were victimized by guards, nurses and supervisors in that state’s juvenile detention system. The lawsuits in Illinois and Pennsylvania follow other actions Maryland, Michigan and New York City.
Some cases have gone to trial or resulted in a settlement, but arrests are rare.
In New Hampshire, more than 1,100 former residents of the state’s juvenile detention center have filed lawsuits since 2020 alleging physical or sexual abuse over six decades. The first lawsuit went to trial last month, and a The jury awarded the plaintiff $38 million, although the amount remains disputed. Eleven former state workers have been arrested, and more than a hundred more are named in the lawsuits.