One female counselor in the 1990s would enter a specific girl’s cell in a juvenile detention center in Maryland when she knew her roommate was away, then sexually abuse her, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.
The counselor would threaten the girl with solitary confinement, blocking her release and a loss of phone call privileges if she tried to stop the abuse or told anyone about it, the lawsuit alleges. After the abuse, it says, she would at times offer the girl rewards — a cigarette, medication or extra snacks.
Around the same time period, a sergeant would take girls out of their cells at night, under the “pretext” of cleaning the facility, and force them to touch her sexually or to kiss and touch one another while she watched, the lawsuit adds. If the girls resisted, the court filing says, the sergeant would throw scalding water on them or threaten loss of food and solitary confinement. Afterward, she might reward them with homemade desserts and personal hygiene products.
Twenty women once incarcerated as children at the Thomas J.S. Waxter Children’s Center, a former juvenile detention facility for girls in Laurel, have alleged sexual abuse at the center operated by the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services until its closure in 2022. Their claims are laid out in the latest lawsuit filed under Maryland’s Child Victims Act, which took effect in October and allows survivors of child sex abuse to sue their alleged perpetrators, no matter how much time has passed.
Complaints under the law have stacked up in recent months, though it also is facing legal challenges. Lawmakers anticipating that type of constitutional challenge built into the law an opportunity for a mid-lawsuit appeal; legal experts expect the Supreme Court of Maryland to ultimately decide whether the Child Victims Act is constitutional.
The women’s lawsuit, brought by New York firm Levy Konigsberg and Maryland-based co-counsel Brown Kiely, joins a similar complaint filed by the same attorneys last month on behalf of more than two dozen men and women who alleged sexual abuse at the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center in Prince George’s County.
The latest lawsuit is filed against the state and its Department of Juvenile Services. It accuses the agency of negligence, including in hiring, training and supervision; of failure to enact and enforce policies to prevent sexual abuse; and violation of the then-girls’ rights to substantive due process and against cruel and unusual punishment.
Eric Solomon, a spokesman for the Department of Juvenile Services, said in a statement that the agency “has been made aware of these allegations from decades ago.”
“DJS takes allegations of sexual abuse of children in our care very seriously and we are working hard to provide decent, humane and rehabilitative environments for youth placed in the Department’s custody,” Solomon said. “The Department is currently reviewing the most recent lawsuits with the Office of the Attorney General.”
The women are identified in the suit by their initials. The Baltimore Sun does not identify victims of sexual assault without their consent. Most are now in their 30s or 40s and several still live in the region, in Baltimore City and Baltimore and Harford counties.
Jerome Block, one of the attorneys representing the women, previously told The Sun that his team is representing more than 125 people abused at different DJS facilities, including some within the past five years.
“The women we represent have courageously stepped forward to seek justice for these horrific acts of sexual abuse,” Block said in an email about the latest filing. “All of them were once young girls who entered the Waxter facility needing help. Instead, they were scarred for life by acts of sexual abuse enabled by a broken Maryland juvenile justice system.”
The Waxter facility faced criticisms prior to its closure, including by the attorney general’s Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit, which reported in 2007 that it had “outlived its usefulness” and that it would be “virtually impossible” to make it suitable. It also detailed issues with chronic staffing shortages and inadequate training, leading to the overuse of seclusion.
In 2010, the ACLU of Maryland released a report detailing the experiences of girls housed in Waxter’s “A Unit.” The facility was described as a “cage” with too few staff, cramped medical space and inadequate schooling. At the time of its closure, it was a girls-only detention facility with roughly 42 beds.
In the lawsuit filed Thursday, the 20 plaintiffs’ claims each detail the alleged sexual abuse they endured at Waxter as children.
They vary from case to case: three male guards in the early 2000s accused of demanding sexual acts in exchange for avoiding punishment for fights, a male guard accused of bribing a girl with food or the prospect of a shortened stay, a female staff member accused of paying another detained girl to attack a plaintiff after she resisted abuse by the staff member.
Many of the accounts do not include the identity of abusers, identifying them only by physical descriptions or, in some cases, nicknames used by residents. The lawsuit notes that plaintiffs expect to learn the full names of their alleged abusers through the discovery process.
Each of the circumstances, according to the lawsuit, were the result of DJS’ “culture, custom and practice” of ignoring sexual abuse through failures such as not investigating or disciplining staff members who knew of instances of sexual abuse, harassment or assault, and ineffective policies and practices to guard against such abuse.
DJS staff, the suit said, had “frequent, unmonitored, solo access” to children and were allowed to choose their assignments, regardless of any allegations made against them. The agency lacked adequate procedures for children to report abuse, it added, and failed to ensure fair investigations or proper supervision of staff.
The plaintiffs are individually seeking compensatory damages of more than $75,000, the lawsuit said. It says that the women have suffered shock, distress, discomfort, loss of self-esteem, humiliation, loss of earnings and earning capacity, and incurred expenses for medical treatment, therapy and counseling, among other consequences.
The state juvenile services department also faces, in addition to the Cheltenham and Waxter facility lawsuits, claims brought by 50 individuals alleging sexual abuse at several juvenile facilities at locations such as the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore County and the shuttered Montrose School in Baltimore County.
In the ongoing legal challenge to the Child Victims Act, plaintiffs in Montgomery County and Prince George’s County lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington have until Friday to file responses defending the constitutionality of the law. The archdiocese in November argued the new law was unconstitutional, as part of a move to throw out the suits alleging sexual abuse by clergy. Judges are expected to schedule oral argument for the legal question after Friday’s deadline.
Whichever way the trial courts rule, whether the judges decide the law is constitutional or not, the losing side is expected to promptly appeal. Courts across the state are likely to freeze other lawsuits brought under the Child Victims Act until the state supreme court decides the forthcoming appeal.
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