Editor’s Note: This story contains descriptions of sexual abuse allegations.
Nijere Stewart is still haunted by the five months he spent at a Brooklyn juvenile jail at age 15 — months during which he says he was sexually abused so often that he sat awake all night with his foot jammed against his door to keep people from coming in. Now, at age 30, Stewart has filed a lawsuit seeking damages from the city for the abuse he says he endured while in custody for a criminal case that was later thrown out.
He is one of more than 250 former juvenile detainees who filed lawsuits against the city on Tuesday claiming they were sexually abused as children by staffers and other detainees at the city’s juvenile jails.
The abuse described in the lawsuits, which were all filed by the firm Levy Konigsberg, date back to the 1970s. They were filed under a 2022 city law that created a two-year window for people to sue over acts of violence from many years ago. The window is open until March 1, 2025.
“The way I was treated, I thought I would never get out,” Stewart said. “Honestly, I thought I might die there.”
In a statement, a City Hall spokesperson said the mayor’s administration is taking the allegations seriously.
“Sexual abuse and harassment is abhorrent and unacceptable,” the spokesperson said, adding that the “overwhelming majority of these cases predate this administration.”
A spokesperson for the city’s Department of Correction, which oversaw juvenile detainees before 2018, noted that it has been years since it housed juveniles. Marisa Kaufman, a spokesperson for the Administration for Children’s Services, which now oversees the jails, 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, a 2003 law set to provide training, data collection and resources to help deter sexual abuse in prisons nationally, Kaufman said.
Plaintiffs in the civil lawsuits say that both staff members and other detainees perpetrated the abuse. Allegations of sexual abuse, mismanagement and corruption have been rampant within the city’s two juvenile jails. The lawsuits filed against the city follow a wave of similar cases across the country, including a federal investigation into Kentucky’s youth jails.
The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in 2018 that 7% of juvenile detainees reported being sexually abused while in custody. But the sexual assault of minors in jail is considered to be widely underreported, according to experts. Less than 10% of minors who are sexually abused actually report it, according to a 2016 National Inmate Survey conducted by the Department of Justice.
The firm representing Stewart, Levy Konigsberg, also filed a lawsuit on behalf of 50 men alleging sexual abuse at a New Jersey juvenile jail and about 250 lawsuits on behalf of women alleging abuse at Rikers Island under the Adult Survivors Act.
The lawsuits allege abuse at multiple juvenile jails, including Crossroads, where Stewart was jailed; Horizon, the city’s juvenile jail in the Bronx; Spofford, a now-shuttered juvenile jail; and Rikers, where the city used to jail 16- and 17-year-olds before outlawing the practice.
“The very people entrusted with keeping children safe in the juvenile facilities are the ones perpetrating the abuse,” said Jerome Block, an attorney with Levy Konigsberg, adding that the plaintiffs were on average 14 years old at the time of their alleged abuse.
“The sexual abuse of children is an outgrowth of treating children as less than human,” Block said.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuits made allegations about staffers at all levels: correction officers, counselors, nurses and even supervisors. The sites have long been plagued by a culture of secrecy where staffers dodge accountability even after detainees repeatedly reported abuse, according to Block. Gothamist previously reported on a network of staffers who smuggle in contraband like Percocet, promethazine, liquor, cannabis, cash and razor blades tucked into wads of chewed gum, according to current and former employees. Last spring, a guard at the Bronx jail was arrested and fired for sexually abusing an 18-year-old detainee. Last July, federal prosecutors charged two supervisors at the same jail for violently dragging, punching and stomping a 16-year-old detainee. In recent months, classrooms have been repurposed as cells with teens sleeping on the ground due to overcrowding.
There are more than 200 detainees in custody at the city’s two current juvenile jails: Crossroads Juvenile Detention Center in Brownsville, Brooklyn; and 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 jails.
Early sexual abuse impairs their ability to bond with others and develop sexual, social and normal relationships, according to Abrams. “Many of the symptoms are associated with post-traumatic stress disorder.”
In 2008, police arrested 15-year-old Stewart and his friends in Crown Heights after claiming they found a gun nearby. Stewart’s mom brought their family friend, a longtime local NYPD detective, to the precinct that night to defend what Stewart and his family said was a wrongful arrest, he said. But Stewart was locked up at Crossroads.
“It was the scariest thing I’ve ever been through in my life,” Stewart said. “I got jumped that first night.”
Criminal charges against Stewart were later thrown out, he said. But not before he spent five months in a jail where a correction officer and several detainees sexually assaulted, raped and beat him every night, according to the suit.
Stewart described hiding in his cell reading Batman and Superman comics when detainees were given time to socialize. Stewart also told Gothamist that the correction officer assigned to his floor — who repeatedly abused him — would skip his cell while delivering meals each night.
“They feel like they can feed who they wanna feed,” Stewart said.
Stewart now has three sons, who are 3, 6 and 12 years old. 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.