An article in Stateline today, entitled “Thousands are suing states over sexual abuse in juvenile detention facilities,” covers the efforts of adults all over the U.S. as they seek justice for the sexual abuse they endured while in the care of state-run juvenile detention centers. The article reports that lawsuits alleging sexual or physical abuse by juvenile correctional officers and other detention center staff have emerged in more than a dozen states, including California, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Washington.
Anapol Weiss is among the law firms standing up for adults who were sexually abused as children while in the care of state-run juvenile detention centers in Illinois and Maryland. In February, Anapol Weiss shareholder Kristen Gibbons Feden stood side by side with survivors at a press conference in Chicago, bringing attention to the need for the State of Illinois to address the lawsuits filed by more than 800 adults who survived abuse at the state’s facilities when they were children. Read: Breaking the Silence: 800 Survivors Reveal Decades of Abuse In Illinois Juvenile Detention Centers. Additional details about the press conference were reported by The Associated Press: Survivors of child abuse at Illinois youth detention centers file more lawsuits in hopes of change.
Today, March 19, Feden is standing before the press in Baltimore, surrounded by hundreds of survivors of sexual abuse in Maryland juvenile detention centers. Earlier in March, the Maryland Attorney General asked the courts to delay proceedings for the lawsuits of thousands of survivors, many of which were filed in 2023 after the state passed the Child Victims Act.
“These kids were subjected to just horrific, horrific sexual violence,” Anapol Weiss shareholder Alexandra Walsh, co-leader of the firm’s Institutional Abuse practice, told the Stateline reporter in an interview.“This has been dragging on too long, and it’s not fair to the people who were so grievously harmed.”