Eleven adults filed lawsuits Tuesday claiming they were sexually assaulted as youths while detained at a county juvenile detention facility in New Jersey decades ago.
In suits filed in state Superior Court, the plaintiffs say they were assaulted by officers and other staff at the
Camden County Juvenile Detention Center
and nothing was done to stop the mistreatment.
The allegations go back as far as the 1980s and include claims that children as young as 12 were raped, forced to perform sex acts, groped and beaten by officers and other staff members at the facility.
The lawsuits are being evaluated, according to a Camden County spokesman.
“The complaints are being reviewed by our attorneys and we take these allegations very seriously,” county spokesman Dan Keashen said. “We will be commenting once we have done a thorough analysis of each individual suit and allegation that spans the course of more than 26 years starting in 1983.”
In addition to seeking compensation for her clients, the plaintiffs’ attorney, Madeleine Skaller, said they want to see changes to the youth detention center.
“We don’t want to see this happen to anybody else,” Skaller said. “We have no reason to believe that the County of Camden has undertaken any efforts to change their juvenile detention facilities since these cases arose. So we have absolutely no reason to suspect that sexual abuse of children is not happening right now.”
The detention center, located in Gloucester Township, houses juveniles charged with crimes who are awaiting trial in family court.
In an interview with NJ Advance Media, one of the plaintiffs who said she was raped at the center 30 years ago described how she still struggles with trauma from her experience.
“It makes me nervous still to talk about it right now,” she said. “I’m still not healed from this. I felt like it was a terrible thing that happened to me and I wouldn’t wish this on no one else.”
Alleged victims, identified by their initials in the suits, were threatened with beatings, solitary confinement, told they would never be allowed to leave or warned they would lose privileges if they reported the abuse, the suits say.
Nine of the plaintiffs are men and two are women. The claims cover a timespan of 1983 through 2009.
In many of the cases, staff members rewarded the alleged victims with snacks and extra privileges, according to the suits.
The plaintiffs reported suffering significant consequences as a result of the abuse, including lifelong mental health problems, drug addiction, issues trusting others, and, in some cases, multiple trips to jail.
Children detained at the center rarely filed complaints because they feared retaliation and assumed their claims would not be believed, according to the suits.
Among the claims in the lawsuits:
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A Pennsylvania man said he was raped in a shower when he was 15 or 16 years old by a staff member who held him down and covered his mouth when he tried to scream.
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A Camden County woman who was 12 or 13 when she was detained at the facility in the 1980s claimed a staff member sexually assaulted her on three occasions, according to her suit. She said she reported the abuse to a sheriff, a judge and child welfare workers, but no action was taken.
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Another plaintiff, now 47 and living in North Carolina, said he wrote a letter that reported a corrections officer for sexually assaulting him and left it in the center’s suggestion box. But no action was taken and the assaults continued, he claims.
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A former detainee now living in Maine said a staff member sexually assaulted him in the early 1990s and then ordered other detainees to beat the victim while the staff member watched.
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A Middlesex County man held in the facility around 2005 said a male staff member grabbed the teen’s penis and declared, “You belong to us now.” The alleged victim said the abuse ended one night when the teen began crying.
In some cases, the plaintiffs described being groomed by their alleged abusers, who were friendly to the teens at first and allowed them time out of their cells to watch TV or to receive food from outside of the facility.
None of the alleged abusers are identified by their full names in the lawsuits, but plaintiffs hope to identify them as the cases progress, the filings say.
A Gloucester County plaintiff said she was 15 years old when she was detained at the center in the 1990s and sexually assaulted by a woman and two men who worked as officers in the facility.
The woman, now 45, said she was anally raped by the two men and forced to perform sex acts on them.
In addition, her abusers “beat her, put her in a straightjacket, and locked her in a room by herself,” her suit stated.
In return for the abuse, she received extra food and snacks, she said.
In an interview with NJ Advance Media, the alleged victim said she never talked about the abuse with anyone until she decided to file the lawsuit.
She recalled feeling fear over what was happening when she was detained at the center.
“I wanted to get out. I was afraid to go to sleep. I was scared,” she said.
The Gloucester County woman remains haunted by the assaults.
She said she’s suffered psychological issues and has nightmares.
The lawsuits describe a recorded history of physical abuse at the Camden County facility, including a 2002 case in which an officer pleaded guilty to kicking a shackled 14-year-old and a 2004 case in which an officer was fired for splitting open the side of another teen’s mouth after kicking him in the face.
The new lawsuits were brought under the state’s
Child Sexual Abuse Act
, a 2019 law expanding the statute of limitations for civil claims made by sexual assault survivors. It allows child victims to sue within seven years of first realizing that the abuse caused them harm, or until they turn 55.
The plaintiffs in the new cases accuse Camden County of violating the Child Sex Abuse Act, and claim the county was negligent in hiring, training, supervising and retaining center staff who abused detainees.
The suits seek damages for physical and emotional pain and suffering, and punitive damages.
The cases were filed by Levy Konigsberg, a New York-based law firm
that filed similar cases last November
on behalf of 11 people who claimed they were sexually abused at juvenile detention centers in Cumberland, Passaic, Mercer and Hudson counties.
Last year,
the firm also sued on behalf of 50 men
who claimed they were abused at the New Jersey Training School for Boys, a youth detention center in Middlesex County.
The Gloucester County plaintiff in the suits filed against Camden County said the experience at the detention center made her wary of allowing her children to be around others. She doesn’t let them sleep over at friends’ houses, she said.
She wants to see her abusers held accountable and fears other victims are facing similar mistreatment today.
“Something needs to be done because it could still be going on right now,” she said.
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