Three people say they were abused as teens at a Delaware County juvenile facility

Three people have filed a lawsuit saying they were sexually abused by staff at a juvenile detention center in Delaware County, the latest in a string of suits against similar facilities across Pennsylvania.

The complaint, filed late Wednesday in Delaware County court, accuses employees at the now-closed Delaware County Juvenile Detention Center in Lima of perpetuating a culture of abuse, saying children there were assaulted by adults, and threatened to stay silent.

The facility was shut down by a judge in 2021 after the county’s public defenders alleged widespread physical, psychological, and sexual abuse against children housed there, and a grand jury in 2022 found a “dangerous absence of oversight” that failed to protect those living at the facility.

The new complaint comes a week after attorneys from the same New York-based law firm filed similar suits against six other juvenile facilities in Pennsylvania on behalf of 66 people who said they were abused while in custody. The attorneys in the latest case, led by Jerome Block and Anna Kull, said in their complaint that their clients suffered “emotional and psychological trauma” while at the Delaware County facility, abuse that “has haunted them for their entire lives.”

Adrienne Marofsky, a spokesperson for Delaware County, which operated the center, said Thursday that she could not comment on allegations in pending litigation. But she said the county was “proud of the changes being made to the juvenile justice system” since 2021, when a board of managers was created to oversee juvenile justice and custody issues.

“As part of the overall vision for reform that begins with the safety and security of those in detention, the board is working to expand the needed services provided and the development of a new county-owned facility, as well as considering alternatives to detention,” she said.

Two of the three people alleging abuse in the suit said staff members fondled them while they were in custody. (The Inquirer does not identify without permission people who say they were sexually assaulted.) One of those complainants said she was about 14 when a male staff member began singling her out while she used the gym before eventually groping her in his office. The other accuser said he was about 17 when a male staffer groped him on two different occasions.

The third complainant said he was forced into sex or sex acts with a male staffer about 25 times as he cycled in and out of custody over two years, starting when he was about 15 years old. The alleged abuser, who is not identified, also “bribed” the teen “with food, gifts, money, and special privileges,” the suit says, and warned him not to tell anyone about the abuse. The suit says that the teen did tell two other staffers, but that the abuse continued.

The allegations in the suit echo those filed last week against three state-run juvenile facilities and three others that are or were privately operated. The law firm that brought the suits, Levy Konigsberg, has also recently filed similar complaints against juvenile facilities in other states.

The Delaware County suit is not the first against the juvenile facility there. At least 10 suits have been filed against it in federal court, including complaints in which people said they were raped by staff and, in one instance, taken to private parties to be given alcohol and drugs before being sexually abused.