NEW YORK — Rashawn Jones learned early that in order to stay safe at a Bronx juvenile jail, he could make a key ally: a female counselor with outsized influence over daily operations at the facility.
So when Jones, then 16, was called into Natalie Medford’s office at Horizon Juvenile Center — where he was locked up in 2012 for snatching another kid’s cellphone — he said she offered him a deal that could make or break his time in detention.
“If I look out for her, she’ll look out for me,” Jones recalled being told, an episode outlined in an interview with the Daily News and in court documents.
Medford, more than double Jones’ age, then pulled down his pants and performed oral sex, according to Jones and a lawsuit filed this spring in Bronx Supreme Court.
“After that first exchange, I knew exactly what it meant,” he said. Jones estimates he was sexually abused by Medford five times while he was detained.
Jones was one of a dozen plaintiffs who claim the staffer sexually abused them at Horizon. They are among 250 former detainees who have filed a blockbuster legal claim, currently suing New York City over sexual abuse in juvenile jails. Their civil lawsuits are being brought under a local law that has temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on gender-based violence.
Misconduct dating back decades
Medford made headlines in the late 2010s for three federal lawsuits against the city that named her and accused her of sexual abuse. She filed counter claims against the city and the victims, saying the allegations were false and malicious, and demanded they pay up for the harm they allegedly caused. The suits were all eventually settled.
The latest complaint claims her alleged misconduct dates back further than publicly known, to at least 2005.
The Administration for Children’s Services, which operates juvenile jails, confirmed Medford was employed by the city from 2005 to 2015. She continued to receive government checks until 2016, payroll data show.
A spokesperson for the agency would not say if Medford was terminated or if they referred the matter for prosecution, but ACS has a “zero-tolerance policy” on sex abuse that after a thorough investigation could result in termination.
Medford could not be reached for comment and is not a named defendant in the lawsuit, which takes aim at the city’s policies and procedures that the plaintiffs’ lawyer said are inadequate, and a “culture of secrecy” in its juvenile jails.
“As bad as Natalie Medford’s misconduct was, this is not a case of a single bad actor in the system,” said Jerome Block, a partner at Levy Konigsberg LLP. “Her misconduct is very much consistent with a pattern and practice of sexual abuse that we’ve seen among many of these adult juvenile detention staff members that has affected hundreds of our clients.”
Another plaintiff, Gamel McFarland, was in Horizon a few years earlier than Jones. He had just moved back to New York from Ohio — where he lived with his mom after fleeing domestic violence — and was fighting with his dad, who had spent most of his life in and out of prison. He says he turned to a family friend he considered a cousin, and was roped into assaulting and stealing a few hundred dollars from an older man they knew.
At Horizon, McFarland, then 16, received special treatment from Medford, according to interviews and the lawsuit. As he remembers it, she smuggled in Burger King from next door or marijuana between two buns, and let him use her phone. She passed letters between McFarland and a female detainee, he said, dressing her in male uniforms and sneaking her to the boy’s side of the facility.
Medford started visiting McFarland’s room before her shift ended, telling him stories about her ex-husband and kissing him on the lips, according to the lawsuit and interviews. Sometimes during those stories, he alleged she would fondle his genitals over his clothes or while he was naked.
“She’s talking to me while she’s doing this,” he said. “She took advantage of emotions and feelings … so you kind of like got no choice but to either say I do not care at all or you feed into it.”
Medford had promised McFarland a birthday party, which he said they celebrated together after he was released by having sexual intercourse, according to the lawsuit and interviews. She later coerced him into living with her in her home, he and court documents said.
“I feel like it changed me in ways that I honestly didn’t start realizing until recently,” he said. “Even trusting people, I was putting a lot of trust in her with stuff, I was feeling like she was going to have my back … That still effects me with people, as far as me thinking that they really have my back or they really mean what they say or they really care.”
Warning signs
According to the lawsuit, a Horizon employee contacted the city Department of Investigation about Medford, saying she was found “naked on top of the detainee inside of the detainee’s cell,” The News reported in 2017. The Bronx district attorney’s office confirmed at the time its child abuse and sex crimes unit was investigating but did not return requests for comment last week on the result.
Manhattan federal prosecutors also launched a probe into allegations of sexual abuse at Horizon Juvenile Center in the Bronx, according to a 2018 media report. As lawsuits were filed, a Horizon supervisor ordered records related to the case to be shredded. There is no indication arrests were made.
While the case is under review by the Law Department, ACS spokeswoman Marisa Kaufman said the current administration has taken steps to prevent sex abuse from occurring in its facilities.
There is a compliance manager with the law at each facility, and other staff have to conduct at least one unannounced inspection during each shift, according to the agency. All uniformed staff who work with detainees have to complete an initial sexual misconduct training and biannual “refreshers.”
“Sexual abuse and harassment is abhorrent and unacceptable, and we take these allegations against a former employee very seriously,” Kaufman said. “It is our mission to provide the highest quality care to youth.”
But for Jones, the reforms are too late. A Bronx resident, now 26 and living a stone’s throw away from Horizon, Jones said he used to struggle with suicidal thoughts and learning that men can be victims of sexual abuse.
Today, he’s hoping to apply to law school and represent young kids who were lost like him.
“I didn’t have the perspective to understand that I was being taken advantage of. I just saw what I was getting out of the deal,” Jones said. “Speaking to my therapist, she broke it down to me in a way that was so profound. She told me like I was a child. My brain wasn’t even fully developed yet. And I was in a place where we are all taught to survive off the meanest of our instincts.”
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