“I could die there”: Lawsuits describe allegations of sexual abuse in youth prisons in New York

Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions of allegations of sexual abuse.

Nijere Stewart is still haunted by the five months he spent in a Brooklyn youth prison as a 15-year-old. During those months, he says he was sexually abused so often that he would sit up all night jamming his foot against the door to keep anyone from coming in. Now, at age 30, Stewart has filed a lawsuit demanding damages from the city for the abuse he says he suffered while incarcerated in a criminal case that was later dismissed.

He is one of more than 250 former juvenile inmates who filed a lawsuit against the city on Tuesday, alleging that they were sexually abused as children by staff and other inmates at the city’s juvenile prisons.

The abuses described in the lawsuits, all filed by the Levy Konigsberg law firm, date back to the 1970s. They were filed under a 2022 city law that sets a two-year deadline for lawsuits over violent crimes from many years ago. The deadline is March 1, 2025.

“The way I was treated, I thought I would never get out,” Stewart said. “Honestly, I thought I might die there.”

A city hall spokesman said in a statement that the mayor’s administration takes the allegations seriously.

“Sexual abuse and sexual harassment are abhorrent and unacceptable,” the spokesman said, adding that “the vast majority of these cases occurred before this administration.”

A spokesperson for the city’s Department of Corrections, which oversaw juvenile detention before 2018, noted that there have been no juveniles there for years. Marisa Kaufman, a spokeswoman for the Administration for Children’s Services, which now oversees the prisons, said the agency investigates cases of sexual misconduct and responds accordingly.

The agency conducts unannounced inspections and trains its staff under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which is designed to provide training, data collection and resources to prevent sexual abuse in prisons across the country, Kaufman said.

Plaintiffs in the civil suits say both staff and other inmates committed the abuse. Allegations of sexual abuse, mismanagement and corruption are widespread at the city’s two youth prisons. The lawsuits filed against the city follow a wave of similar cases across the country, including a federal investigation into Kentucky’s youth prisons.

The Federal Office of Justice Statistics reported in 2018 that 7% of juvenile prisoners reported being sexually abused while incarcerated. But experts say sexual abuse of minors in prison is largely underreported. According to a 2016 national survey of prisoners conducted by the Ministry of Justice, less than 10% of minors who are sexually abused actually report it.

Levy Konigsberg, the law firm representing Stewart, also filed a lawsuit on behalf of 50 men alleging sexual abuse at a New Jersey youth prison and about 250 lawsuits on behalf of women alleging abuse at Rikers Island under the Adult Survivors Act.

The charges allege abuse at several youth prisons, including Crossroads, where Stewart was incarcerated, Horizon, the city’s youth prison in the Bronx, Spofford, a now-closed youth prison, and Rikers, where the city incarcerated 16- and 17-year-olds before the practice was banned.

“The same people who keep children safe in juvenile detention centers are committing the abuse,” said Jerome Block, a lawyer with the Levy Konigsberg law firm, adding that the plaintiffs were, on average, 14 years old at the time of the alleged abuse.

“The sexual abuse of children is a consequence of treating children as inferior human beings,” said Block.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuits made allegations against staff at every level: correctional officers, counselors, nurses and even supervisors. Block said the sites have long been plagued by a culture of secrecy in which staff evade accountability even when inmates repeatedly report abuse. Gothamist previously reported on a network of staff smuggling in contraband such as Percocet, promethazine, alcohol, cannabis, cash and razor blades stuffed into gum, according to current and former staff. Last spring, a Bronx jail guard was arrested and fired for sexually abusing an 18-year-old inmate. Last July, federal prosecutors charged two supervisors at the same prison with brutally dragging, beating and kicking a 16-year-old inmate. In recent months, overcrowding has led to classrooms being converted into cells where teens sleep on the floor.

More than 200 inmates are held in the city’s two current youth prisons: the Crossroads Juvenile Detention Center in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and the Horizon Juvenile Detention Center in the South Bronx.

Mike Abrams, a clinical psychiatrist and professor of psychology at NYU, has worked with men who were sexually abused as boys in juvenile prisons.

Early sexual abuse, according to Abrams, impairs their ability to form bonds with others and develop sexual, social and normal relationships. “Many of the symptoms are related to post-traumatic stress disorder.”

In 2008, police arrested 15-year-old Stewart and his friends in Crown Heights after they claimed to have found a gun nearby. Stewart’s mother brought her family friend, a longtime local NYPD detective, to the station that same evening to defend the arrest, which Stewart and his family believed was wrongful, he said. But Stewart was locked up at Crossroads.

“It was the most horrific thing I’ve ever experienced in my life,” Stewart said. “I was attacked the first night.”

The charges against Stewart were later dropped, he said, but before that he spent five months in prison, where a correctional officer and several inmates sexually abused, raped and beat him every night, the lawsuit says.

Stewart described hiding in his cell and reading Batman and Superman comics when inmates had time to talk. Stewart also told Gothamist that the correctional officer assigned to his floor – who repeatedly abused him – left his cell every night while delivering food.

“They feel like they can feed whoever they want,” Stewart said.

Stewart now has three sons, ages 3, 6 and 12. He teaches Moko Jumbie, traditional Caribbean stilt walking, and performs at carnivals, parades and bat mitzvahs.

But he says he still thinks about what happened in that cell every day.

“I’m not the same guy who walked through that door,” Stewart said.