Lawsuit alleges juvenile inmates in Tulsa County were raped

The 39-page complaint, filed Friday in federal court in Muskogee, seeks unspecified compensatory damages in excess of $75,000 and an unspecified amount in excess of $75,000 in punitive damages.

“As prison guards and other employees, it was the defendants’ duty to protect plaintiffs from harm,” the lawsuit states. “However, instead of protecting them, these defendants exploited plaintiffs.”

The lawsuit further alleges that staff exploited known vulnerabilities in security camera surveillance and persistently inadequate staffing levels to “rape and sexually abuse defenseless minor children.”

The lawsuit names former warden Anthony Taylor, deputy warden Alondo Edwards, former prison guard Jonathan Hines, 12 other former and current juvenile detention center employees, the state Office of Juvenile Affairs, three OJA employees and the Tulsa County District Commission as defendants.

Hines, 26, is already charged in Tulsa County District Court with three serious crimes: child trafficking, carrying or possession of a cell phone in a prison, and destruction of evidence.

Prosecutors filed charges on April 26 after a 17-year-old inmate accused him of paying the teenagers for sex.

The Broken Arrow man remains in jail because he cannot post $200,000 bail.

Earlier this month, Tulsa County officials confirmed that Taylor was fired as director of the facility on May 8. No reason was given at the time.

The lawsuit alleges that multiple rapes and sexual assaults occurred at the facility in 2023 and 2024.

The lawsuit alleges that “Juvenile Victim 1” was raped and sexually abused multiple times by a former youth center employee from June 2023 to March 2024. According to the lawsuit, the employee gave the juvenile e-cigarettes in exchange for sex.

The complaint alleges that an adult female victim and another unnamed woman were repeatedly sexually assaulted and harassed by another former employee, who also supplied them with marijuana-based products between June and August 2023.

The lawsuit alleges that two minors held at the youth center were raped by Hines. One minor, who was detained there from November to May, claimed that on at least one occasion she watched Hines rape the other.

The lawsuit also alleges that Hines showed at least three inmate videos on his Apple Watch and cellphone of himself raping other juvenile inmates at the center.

No specific allegations have been made in the lawsuit against 16 of the plaintiffs, referred to as “Kind Doe.”

It alleges that staff at the youth home failed to protect another juvenile inmate from sexual assault and harassment by other juvenile residents, even though these incidents allegedly occurred in their presence.

“Defendants Juvenile Bureau and OJA have demonstrated a clear culture of exploiting a disciplinary system not only to retaliate against juvenile inmates who refuse the sexual advances of prison guards and other juvenile prison staff, but also to deny these juvenile inmates any opportunity to report sexual abuse or even rape to their families in a timely manner. Instead, they are entirely dependent on the reporting system of the same administration that allowed this abuse to occur in the first place,” the lawsuit states.

Edwards could not be reached for comment late Friday. A Tulsa County attorney who normally represents the county in civil litigation also could not be reached for comment.

In a joint statement released earlier this month, Tulsa County’s three county commissioners said the allegations against Hines were serious.

“As the matter is under investigation, we are unable to comment further at this time,” the commissioners said.

The lawsuit came after the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice criticized conditions at the youth center on social media and called for an independent investigation into the organization.

The juvenile court issued a statement noting that the Office of Juvenile Affairs had been at the Tulsa County facility every week for the past year to document what was happening.

“Recently, a number of incidents have come to light that occurred at the Tulsa County Family Center for Juvenile Justice detention facility. … In accordance with our licensing policies, FCJJ has reported each incident of which we were aware to both the OJA and law enforcement. In each case, the employee involved was immediately terminated,” the youth center said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the lawsuit alleges that while the OJA placed the center on probation in 2023 for violations, the Justice Center has done nothing to change the facility’s “policies, procedures or culture.”

“To date, no publicly available remedial action has been taken by either defendant Juvenile Bureau or defendant OJA to protect the children detained in the juvenile detention center,” the lawsuit states.