Over 200 men and women have reported experiencing sexual abuse as children while in custody at juvenile detention centers in Illinois, according to lawsuits filed on Monday. These lawsuits are the latest in a series of claims alleging decades of widespread systemic emotional abuse of children, the Associated Press reported, via The Guardian.
Three lawsuits filed on Monday describe sexual abuse spanning from 1996 to 2021, perpetrated by corrections officers, nurses, kitchen staff, chaplains, and other facility personnel.
One lawsuit claims that “The State of Illinois has allowed a culture of sexual abuse to thrive unchecked within its Illinois Youth Center facilities,” further stating that Illinois has “consistently failed to investigate complaints, hold abusive staff accountable, and protect the youth in its care.”
Since May, a total of 667 individuals have come forward, alleging they were sexually abused as children in state and Cook County-run youth facilities.
These lawsuits are part of a broader wave of disturbing allegations involving abuse at juvenile facilities across the U.S., including in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, New Hampshire, California, and New York. Few of these cases have gone to trial or resulted in settlements, and arrests remain rare.
Illinois stands out for the severity and scale of the issue.
“In all the states where we’ve been litigating, Illinois has some of the worst and highest numbers of staff perpetrating sexual abuse, compared to anywhere else in the country,” said Jerome Block, a New York-based attorney whose office filed the lawsuits in Illinois and several other states.
Based on the testimony of 272 individuals, the complaints filed on Monday name several repeat offenders. While a few have been convicted of crimes, none of those convictions are related to the current lawsuits. According to state records, the state still employs at least one employee accused in the new lawsuits.
The largest lawsuit, representing 222 men and women—most of whom reside in Illinois—details abuse at nine state-run youth detention centers, five of which have since closed. The more than 400 pages of the complaint reveal chillingly similar stories of abuse.
Many survivors reported that their abusers threatened them with beatings, solitary confinement, transfers to more severe facilities, and longer sentences if they spoke up. Others were bribed with extra food, cigarettes, and privileges like playing video games in exchange for their silence.
Most abusers were identified only by how the survivors remembered them—through physical descriptions, first names, or nicknames.
The lawsuit covering state-run facilities names both the state of Illinois and the Illinois Department of Corrections and Department of Juvenile Justice as defendants. State agency officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.
The lawsuit, filed in the Illinois Court of Claims, seeks approximately $2 million in damages per plaintiff, the maximum allowed by law.
Another lawsuit, targeting a troubled Chicago youth detention center, was filed in Cook County Court and names the county as a defendant.
This lawsuit involves allegations from 50 men and women who were held at the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, many of whom claim they were abused during unlawful strip searches. Some victims were as young as 11 years old when the abuse occurred. The lawsuit seeks $100,000 in damages per plaintiff, while some of the 50 individuals are also pursuing further compensation in a third lawsuit filed in the Illinois Court of Claims.
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