Dozens more lawsuits filed over sex abuse in NJ youth jails

Thirty people who say they endured sexual abuse while incarcerated as minors sued the state Tuesday for negligence, accusing officials of hiring, training, and supervision failures that created a decades-long “culture of abuse” in New Jersey’s youth prisons.

The new lawsuits accuse officers and others who worked in youth justice facilities from the 1980s through the 2010s of inappropriate strip searches, coercive sexual contact, and rape. Abusers sometimes bribed those in their custody with cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, or privileges in exchange for sexual favors, and staff who witnessed the abuse failed to intervene or report it, the lawsuits say.

Jerome Block is an attorney whose New York City-based firm filed the lawsuits.

Most arise from the New Jersey Training School in Monroe, a boys’ lockup that is the largest and oldest and that remains open today despite repeated promises by multiple administrations since 2018 to close it, Block noted. The gang assault of an incarcerated teen earlier this month — a beating that was recorded and posted online — proves problems persist there, he added. A handful of the lawsuits involve smaller, community-based residential lockups and the Female Secure Care & Intake Facility, a girls’ jail in Bordentown.

“These cases reflect a juvenile justice system in New Jersey that is broken,” Block said. “We’ve seen no evidence that the systemic problems that have resulted in the sexual and physical abuse of children in these facilities have been fixed, and therefore we are very concerned that children in these facilities today are still at risk of abuse.”

Tara Oliver is a spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s Office, which oversees the Youth Justice Commission. She said all commission staff, volunteers, interns, and contractors must pass background checks, and the system has policies and protocols in place designed to prevent abuse and respond to and investigate abuse allegations.

Protecting youth in the care of the Youth Justice Commission is “extremely important,” Oliver said.

The new complaints come seven years after state lawmakers expanded the statute of limitations for sex crimes to give victims a longer timeline to file civil lawsuits.

Since then, nearly 500 lawsuits alleging sex abuse of children in state custody have been filed, with more than 300 involving claims against the juvenile justice system and the rest stemming from youth placed in psychiatric and developmental centers. They do not include sexual abuse claims related to the foster care system.

State budget documents released last spring show the state already has paid millions to resolve such lawsuits, with the median cost of settlements at $975,000 as of March.

With almost 500 cases now in the courts, that means taxpayers could end up on the hook for a half-billion dollars or more, as new cases are filed.

Block expects that will happen.

He noted that the incidence of childhood sexual abuse tends to be far higher than reported, especially among youth in state custody whose fears of retaliation and distrust of staff keep them silent.

The New Jersey Training School already has been flagged for a history of abuse, Block added. Federal authorities identified the jail in 2010 as one of the nation’s 13 worst for sexual misconduct and use of force by staff, with as many as 35% of boys who were surveyed there reporting sexual victimization by staff. A follow-up study in 2012 found that abuse at the facility had declined but persisted, with up to 15% of boys surveyed reporting sexual victimization by staff.

Thousands of youth, though, have also spent time in county juvenile lockups, Block added. More than 100 of the pending lawsuits stem from those placements, he said.

“It’s a growing liability, not only for the state, but for various counties,” he said. “What we’re seeing here is a growing amount of awareness among victims of sexual abuse in New Jersey juvenile detention centers, and survivors are continuing to step forward.”