A Bronx judge has tossed more than 450 lawsuits filed by people who claim city officials failed to protect them from sexual abuse while they were held in juvenile detention centers between the 1960s and 2010s, saying the plaintiffs did not have the legal right to sue.
Hundreds of New Yorkers who were detained as kids and teens have accused jail staff of groping them, raping them, forcing them to perform oral sex or otherwise sexually abusing them while they were held at Rikers Island jails, Horizon Juvenile Center or the now-shuttered Spofford Juvenile Detention Center in the Bronx. Their allegations span decades and accuse the city of ignoring a widespread culture of abuse within its facilities. Their cases were focused on holding the institutions accountable for their alleged abuse, rather than the specific perpetrators.
A bill is pending in the City Council that would provide a legal path forward for the juvenile detention cases and other allegations of gender-based violence. If it passes, people whose lawsuits have been tossed would need to either appeal their dismissals or refile their lawsuits.
“We want to make sure that no judge will continue to dismiss these cases,” said City Councilmember Selvena Brooks-Powers, the bill’s sponsor.
The hundreds of plaintiffs filed their cases under a recent update to a city law that opened a two-year window for alleged victims of gender-motivated violence to seek justice in civil court, even if the statute of limitations had passed. The measure also added new language to the law allowing plaintiffs to sue not just the people they say perpetrated the abuse, but also the individuals, institutions and government agencies they say enabled gender-motivated violence.
Between March 2023 and 2025, hundreds of people filed lawsuits against the city government, hospitals and other powerful institutions, including hospitals, which they said had failed to protect them from gender-motivated violence. But an appellate court recently ruled that people or institutions accused of enabling abuse before the updated law took effect should not be held accountable, because the language in the legislation wasn’t clear enough. The appellate judges agreed with a lower court’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit six men had brought against a hospital they said had enabled a pediatric endocrinologist to sexually abuse them when they were children.
Now, the same reasoning is being used to upend the hundreds of juvenile detention lawsuits — and could threaten claims against other alleged enablers.
Brooks-Powers’ bill would update the law yet again to allow old allegations against alleged enablers to stand. But Speaker Adrienne Adams has yet to schedule a vote on the bill, despite support from more than half the Council. Affected plaintiffs and advocates for sexual assault survivors plan to rally outside City Hall on Tuesday to urge the City Council to approve the measure.
“The court system is looking for clarity and leadership from the Council, and that’s what we’re pushing for,” Brooks-Powers said. “ It's so importantly critical that we convene a hearing on this and have a vote as soon as possible.”
A spokesperson for the speaker said the bill is going through the legislative process, which includes getting input from stakeholders. A spokesperson for the city's law department declined to comment.
The City Council initially passed the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act in 2000, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that victims of gender-motivated violence should not be allowed to sue their perpetrators in federal court under the Violence Against Women Act. The New York City law provided a new path for people to sue individuals who they claimed had committed a violent crime against them because of their gender. The measure gave alleged victims a handful of years after the alleged abuse to file a lawsuit — and extra time if they were a child when the violence allegedly occurred.
The more recent legislation provided a new opportunity to file lawsuits for people who weren’t aware of the law before their deadline passed or hadn’t felt ready to pursue legal action at the time. It also offered a way to hold broader systems accountable for allowing abuse to persist.
“If you can’t hold the institutions accountable, then the system cannot be fixed,” said Jerome Block, an attorney representing many plaintiffs in juvenile detention cases.
The city has denied the allegations of former juvenile detainees in court papers. A spokesperson for the Administration for Children’s Services, which now oversees New York City’s juvenile detention centers, said allegations of sexual misconduct are thoroughly investigated and employees can face discipline, including possible termination, for violating sexual harassment and abuse policies.
“Sexual abuse and harassment is abhorrent and unacceptable, and although many of the incidents predated this administration or ACS’s involvement with juvenile justice, we take any allegation very seriously,” spokesperson Marisa Kaufman said in a statement. “We have implemented a robust prevention strategy and have zero tolerance for misconduct.”
While the City Council waits to vote on the proposed update to the gender-motivated violence act, Block said, his clients are struggling to trust a justice system they feel already failed them when they were children.
“We see New Yorkers who put their faith in the legal system, who overcame real barriers to coming forward because of the trauma they experienced,” he said. “Many of the survivors really just feel like the rug was pulled out from under them.”
