LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Two teenage girls held at a troubled juvenile detention center in Kentucky were kept in isolation cells for weeks under unsanitary conditions, including a padded cell with no toilet, a federal class action lawsuit filed this week alleges.
The teens were held at the Adair County Juvenile Detention Center in late 2022, around the same time state police reported a riot at the facility that began when a juvenile attacked a staff member. That and other violent incidents at juvenile facilities prompted Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration to implement new policies that placed male juveniles accused of serious crimes in separate facilities and established a women-only detention center in northern Kentucky.
The lawsuit filed Monday also details alleged incidents involving other youth at the center, including one who it says was held in solitary confinement while “a Spanish version of ‘Baby Shark’ played continuously” and another who it claims “spent days to have”. soaked in menstrual blood,” while employees insulted her about her hygiene.
The lawsuit targets other plaintiffs who were “kept in isolation” and subjected to “abuse and neglect” at the Adair County facility. An official with Kentucky’s Justice and Public Safety Cabinet said Wednesday that the lawsuit has not yet been served on state officials, but that they have reviewed a copy of the filing.
“We deny the allegations in the lawsuit and will defend accordingly,” Morgan Hall, director of communications for the cabinet, said in an emailed response. “Corrective action will be taken for any staff member who violates policy and procedure.”
A similar legal action was filed Wednesday in New Jersey against one of that state’s juvenile detention centers. The lawsuit alleges that the center had a “culture of abuse,” in which employees sexually abused boys for decades.
Both teenage girls who filed the lawsuit in Kentucky said they were kept in isolation during their entire stay at the Adair facility, with few opportunities to shower. One of the teens, who was 17 and seven months pregnant at the time, said she was only allowed out of her cell for a walk five times in one month, the lawsuit said. The other teen said she was kept in isolation for the entire four months she was there, including two in a padded cell with no toilet.
The lawsuit names several state officials, including the head of the state’s Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, Kerry Harvey, and former state Juvenile Justice Commissioner Vicki Reed, who retired Jan. 1. Harvey will retire at the end of this month.
The lawsuit alleges that the civil rights of juvenile detainees were violated at the south-central Kentucky facility and that the center failed to properly train staff. It seeks unspecified actual damages and punitive damages.
The 2022 disturbance at the Adair County facility began when a juvenile attacked an employee, took the employee’s keys and freed other juveniles from their cells. One staff member was taken to hospital with injuries. Order was restored after law enforcement officers entered the facility.
The state’s new juvenile offender policy went into effect in 2023 and places male juveniles accused of serious crimes in a high-security facility. It replaced a decades-old regional system that placed youth in detention centers based on where they live. The governor said at the time that the old model could result in a minor accused of murder being housed next to someone being held for truancy.