Dozens of people sue Pa. juvenile facilities, saying they were sexually abused by staff

More than 60 people who spent time in juvenile placement facilities in Pennsylvania in recent years have filed lawsuits saying they were sexually abused by staffers, with accusations ranging from forcible groping to violent and repeated rapes.

The suits include allegations of abuse at three state-run facilities — Loysville Youth Development Center and the North Central and South Mountain Secure Treatment Units — as well as three that are or were privately operated: VisionQuest, Devereux, and Northwestern Academy. In some instances, accusers say they reported the abuse to supervisors at the facilities, but were either disbelieved or ignored.

Jerome Block, a New York-based lawyer who filed the suits, said his clients’ accounts show “a juvenile justice system that was broken.”

“The purpose of the juvenile justice system is to educate, rehabilitate and set children on the right path,” he said. “Instead, they had the worst type of trauma inflicted on them.”

The civil suits, filed Wednesday in federal and county courts, represent another bleak development for juvenile justice in Pennsylvania. For years, advocates have decried physical and sexual abuse at placement facilities, which typically house children who have been adjudicated delinquent, the juvenile equivalent of being convicted of a crime.

» READ MORE: Inquirer 2020 Report: Devereux staff abused children in their care for years — while red flags were dismissed.

Over the last several years, the city and state have been mired in an ongoing battle over how and where to house children in placement. Last July, as part of a lawsuit the city filed against the state, a Commonwealth Court judge ordered Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services to take steps to help alleviate significant overcrowding at the city’s juvenile jail. Dozens of children were being held there while awaiting placement at a state Youth Development Center to serve out their sentences — and, because the jail was over capacity, some children were being forced to sleep on floors and benches in filthy conditions.

The situation reached that dire point even as Philadelphia over the last decade has slashed the number of young people it sends to placement each year. Part of the issue is that staffing shortages and facility closures across the state — some in the wake of scandal — have simultaneously reduced the number of places where young people can be sent. Earlier this year, Gov. Josh Shapiro proposed spending $18.1 million to open a new Youth Development Center near an adult prison in Montgomery County to address the statewide shortage of juvenile beds.

A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services said the agency could not comment on the lawsuits, but “has zero-tolerance toward abuse and harassment, and we take seriously our responsibility to protect the health and safety of children at licensed facilities.”

The spokesperson said anyone who suspects the abuse of a child at any facility should report it to the state’s ChildLine hotline. He said the agency is in compliance with a 2003 federal law on how to handle suspected sexual assaults in custody and said all of its facilities are audited quarterly, and the results of those audits posted online.

Attempts to reach VisionQuest for comment Wednesday were unsuccessful.

Leah S. Yaw, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Devereux, said in a statement that the organization “has zero tolerance for abuse and, most importantly, strong systems aimed at prevention.” She said Devereux last year “voluntarily undertook and subsequently successfully achieved accreditation by the gold standard organization working to prevent institutional sexual abuse,” and that Devereux is “committed to protecting those in our care. This is our priority. Nothing less is acceptable.”

Northwestern Academy closed in 2016, but a spokesperson for a parent company, Merakey, said the organization had “found no evidence in our records that corroborates any of the conduct alleged in the lawsuit, and in our initial conversations with staff members whose tenure with our organization dates back to this period, they have no knowledge that such conduct occurred or was ever reported by anyone during the years in question.”

» READ MORE: Inquirer 2021 Report: Twenty Chester County Devereux staffers allegedly harmed children — or kept quiet about the abuse — since 2018.

The spokesperson said the allegations were “appalling and intolerable,” and that it would conduct a full review. “Merakey is prepared to acknowledge its obligations to help [victims] heal if the allegations prove to be credible,” he said.

The lawsuits contain accounts of abuse from 66 people, a mix of men and women, who say they were assaulted in years ranging from 2000 to 2023. Most said they were teens at the time they were abused, but a few said they were molested at as young as 11.

Some described single attacks by individual employees, while others said they were abused repeatedly by multiple staffers. Some accusers were able to identify their alleged attackers, while others provided only a description. The alleged perpetrators were a mix of men and women, some of whom were also accused of attempting to shame or intimidate children to remain silent. (The Inquirer does not identify without permission people who say they were sexually abused.)

» READ MORE: Philly to remove 53 kids from Devereux’s live-in facilities after it finds lax supervision

The abuse also varied significantly in scope. One woman said that in 2014 or 2015, when she was either 16 or 17 years old, a male staff member at the state-run North Central Secure Treatment Unit cornered her in her room and groped her beneath her clothes. The next day, the woman said, the staffer caller her to his office and gave her candy “as a bribe.”

Elsewhere, at the state-run South Mountain Secure Treatment Unit, a man said that in 2009 or 2010, when he was either 16 or 17, a female case manager engaged in an ongoing sexual relationship with him.

And another man said that in 2008 or 2009, when he was about 15, he was raped at least three times inside a disciplinary room at VisionQuest South Mountain, in Franklin County, by a staffer who referred to himself as the “commander in chief.”

The lawsuits say that operators of each of the facilities enabled such abuse and “turned a blind eye” to it, even after children attempted to report it. The result, the suits say, is that children left the facilities “traumatized, injured, and far worse psychologically and otherwise than they were when they arrived.”

Loysville Youth Development Center is in Perry County; North Central Secure Treatment Unit is in Danville, Montour County; South Mountain Secure Treatment Unit is in South Mountain, Franklin County; and Northwestern Academy was in Coal Township, Northumberland County. VisionQuest and Devereux each had multiple locations across Pennsylvania listed in the suits.

Block said he believes the suits in Pennsylvania are part of a broader national pattern. His firm has filed similar complaints alleging widespread abuse at youth placement facilities in states including New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Michigan.

“We’re seeing the same sorts of threatening conduct, where children were forced to engage in sexual acts,” he said.

Block compared the situation to the evolution of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic church. Reports of abuse that were initially regarded as isolated incidents eventually became known as a widespread problem as complaints were reported across the nation and the world.

Still, Block said, he believed abuse at juvenile placement facilities has one key distinction when compared with that at the church.

“These children were detained,” Block said. “They were living with the sexual predators, and they all were trying to get their lives on track. And so they were particularly vulnerable to these types of threats and manipulation.”