Hundreds claim they were sexually abused at NYC juvenile detention centers: They want justice

Dozens of sexual assault complaints were filed against the city’s troubled juvenile detention facilities this week, bringing the total number of claims to a shocking 539.The 115 new alleged victims, who each brought suit on Monday, joined hundreds of other survivors who have filed cases since last spring — based on claims they were sexually abused at youth lockups in Brooklyn and The Bronx.“The system should be a place of rehabilitation, not harm,” Angel Sanchez, who says he was abused by a male staff member at the Crossroads Juvenile Facility in Brooklyn when he was 16, recalled on Tuesday.“We cannot let the cycle of abuse continue,” he said.Sanchez, speaking at a press conference announcing the suits, said that the sicko staffer molested and masturbated him several times over the three months he spent at Crossroads.“The staff member threatened me, telling me that if I reported what happened, I would place more time in detention,” Sanchez said.Some of the lawsuits’ allegations date back decades, when the city Department of Correction operated the facilities.Since 2018, the city’s Administration for Children’s Services has overseen the jails.Kendra Monsanto, claimed in her suit that she was repeatedly raped when she was at the Spofford Juvenile Detention Center in The Bronx — where roughly 42% of the allegations took place — for four months in 1998.“I was supposed to be safer there than in my own home, but what I encountered was far from safety,” said Monsanto, who was 13 when the alleged attacks happened.“At the facility, I was coerced, manipulated, and exploited by staff members,” she said. At first, a pair of guards at first were “kind to her and took an interest in her personal problems to gain her trust,” her suit states.But soon, the depraved employees began raping her five times a week, leaving her to “scream in pain until she passed out,” according to the lawsuit.One of the guards would “force the female inmates,...