PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Four related lawsuits were filed Wednesday on behalf of dozens of people who say they suffered physical and sexual abuse, including violent rapes, as children in the care of juvenile detention centers and similar facilities in Pennsylvania.
“We are seeing multiple facilities across the state of Pennsylvania — which serve children and adults with emotional, behavioral and developmental disabilities — are rife with systemic sexual abuse issues,” said Anna Kull, an attorney with the New York firm that filed the suits.
The lawsuits describe how 66 people, now adults, say they were victimized by guards, nurses, supervisors and others. Some attacks were reported to other staffers and were ignored or met with disbelief, the lawsuits allege.
All the plaintiffs were born after Nov. 26, 1989, and meet Pennsylvania's standards for filing claims of sexual abuse when they were children.
Among the agencies targeted by the lawsuits is Villanova-based Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health.
“One of the claims is that the Deveraux Foundation, through their facilities, did not have the proper policies and procedures in place to, one, prevent sexual violence against children and to report it, and, two, to investigate it,” Kull said. “That in and of itself creates a very dangerous situation for a vulnerable child.”
The complaint against Deveraux lists 18 people, now in their 20s and 30s, who say they were residents of Deveraux facilities in Pennsylvania. One says she was raped multiple times by a staff member in her bed when she was 13. The complaint says she reported the abuse but was told she was lying.
One says that when he was 14 and dealing with anger management issues, a staff member sexually abused him while he was sedated and restrained “so he could not fight back.”
Devereux vice president Leah Yaw declined to address specific allegations, but said it has worked to prevent abuse and improve safety by including training and outside accreditation on sexual abuse prevention, improving the pipeline for people to work in nonprofit behavioral health and spending millions to improve its facilities and technology.
“There is no setting in which people work with other people that is entirely immune from the risk of abuse,” Yaw said, but Devereux is trying “to create a comprehensive culture which prevents abuse before it can happen and ensures safety and quality.”
Other claims say children at the state-run facilities “have long been subjected to a culture of exploitation, violence and rampant sexual abuse" committed by guards, counselors and other staff. The sexual abuse "has ranged from inappropriate strip searches to rape using violent physical force,” according to their lawsuit, which alleges negligence and failed oversight.
Kull says while these accusers will get their day in court, many others are barred by statutes of limitations. While there have been bills to extend those statutes, none has passed.
Deveraux did not respond to a request for comment.
Similar lawsuits also name the state-run Loysville Youth Development Center, South Mountain Secure Treatment Unit and North Central Secure Treatment Unit in Danville; Merakey USA’s Northwestern Academy outside Shamokin, which closed in 2016; and facilities run by Tucson, Arizona-based VisionQuest National Ltd.
The same legal team also represents more than 100 people who were abused too long ago to file civil claims. Proposals to open a two-year filing window have been blocked by Senate Republicans in the General Assembly.
A task force to address Pennsylvania's juvenile justice problems — established by legislative leaders, the court system and then-Gov. Tom Wolf — concluded in 2021 that too many first-time and lower level juvenile offenders were being locked up, and Black offenders were disproportionately prosecuted as adults.
A Democratic-sponsored bill to adopt some of the task force recommendations is pending in the House after passing the Judiciary Committee in September on a party-line vote with all Republicans opposed. Supporters say talks also continue about legislation to establish an independent Office of Child Advocate.
Malik Pickett, a senior attorney at Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, said the lawsuits "ring far too familiar for what we know from our nearly 50 years of advocacy.”
"We have experienced one crisis for youth in detention after another," Pickett said, while failing to pass meaningful changes.