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NYC facing 425 lawsuits over claims of child sexual abuse in juvenile jails
By
Bahar Ostadan
Published Oct 1, 2024
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Bahar Ostadan/Gothamist
By
Bahar Ostadan
Published Oct 1, 2024
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Editor's Note: This story contains descriptions of sexual abuse.
Amina Carter says a staff member at a Bronx juvenile jail sexually abused her when she was jailed on false personation charges at age 15. Now, more than two decades later, Carter has a new opportunity to hold accountable the man she says hurt her.
Carter is one of 425 former New York City juvenile jail detainees suing the city over sexual abuse they say took place at the hands of staffers. The most recent batch of 168 lawsuits was filed on Tuesday.
The former detainees are suing under a law called the Gender-Motivated Violence Act, which created a two-year window for people to sue over certain violent acts from many years ago. The window is open until March 1, 2025.
Carter and six other former detainees say a former juvenile counselor named Tony “Tyson” Simmons sexually abused them, according to lawsuits filed this year.
Simmons worked at several of the city’s juvenile jails as a staffer responsible for transporting detainees to and from court for 16 years, beginning in the late 1990s. In 2008, Simmons was charged with forcing a 16-year-old to perform sexual acts, groping a 15-year-old and raping another 15-year-old. He was initially offered a plea deal of 10 years probation with no prison time. But after the same judge saw that Simmons showed no remorse for what he’d done — even blaming a young girl for “flirting” with him — she sentenced Simmons to four years in prison.
The new allegations against Simmons are not connected to those crimes, and he has not been criminally charged in relation to allegations put forth in recent lawsuits.
Simmons did not respond to several attempts to reach him by phone. An attempt to reach an attorney from his past cases was not successful. A spokesperson for City Hall did not respond to an email.
Other lawsuits filed against the city under the law allege abuse at juvenile jails, including Crossroads in Brownsville, Brooklyn; Horizon, the city’s juvenile jail in the Bronx; Spofford, a now-shuttered juvenile jail in the Bronx; and Rikers, where the city used to jail 16- and 17-year-olds before outlawing the practice. The accusations range from the 1960s to the 2020s.
Allegations of sexual abuse at the jails persist. A guard at a Bronx jail was arrested and fired for sexually abusing an 18-year-old detainee in April 2023.
“We’re seeing a pattern and practice of institutional sexual abuse,” said Jerome Block, an attorney with Levy Konigsberg, the firm that filed nearly 170 lawsuits alleging abuse at the city’s juvenile jails.
The Gender-Motivated Violence Act is not the only recent law that reopened the window for reporting claims of sexual assault once the statute of limitations had closed.
A similar law, the Adult Survivors Act, generated a flood of more than 700 women suing the city, saying they were sexually abused while held on Rikers Island. A Gothamist investigation found 24 women accused a single correction officer, who went by the nickname “Champagne,” of sexual assault and rape. Three currently employed guards who were identified in lawsuits were transferred from Rikers after Gothamist first questioned city officials about them.
Block said he’s disappointed that prosecutors who investigated Simmons at the time of his arrest did not uncover the scope of his abuse.
“It’s very concerning that the city and local prosecutors had investigated Tony Simmons, had charged him with sexually abusing several victims, and that they did not uncover the full scope of his sexual abuse,” he said. Block noted that he defers to prosecutors on the question of whether Simmons can be criminally prosecuted based on these new allegations.
Stephanie Gendell, a spokesperson for the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, which now oversees the jails, said these allegations predate the agency’s involvement in the juvenile justice system.
“Sexual abuse and harassment is abhorrent and unacceptable,” Gendell wrote in a statement to Gothamist. “While these incidents predate this administration and ACS’s involvement with juvenile justice, we take these allegations very seriously.”
City jails now detain more than 200 young New Yorkers at two facilities. Advocates and attorneys describe a culture of secrecy allowing staffers to dodge accountability for reported abuse. Employees at all levels smuggle in contraband like Percocet, promethazine, liquor, cannabis, cash and razor blades tucked into wads of chewed gum, Gothamist previously reported.
Two supervisors last year were charged for violently dragging, punching and stomping a 16-year-old detainee. Officials repurposed classrooms as jail cells with teens sleeping on the ground due to overcrowding.
Former detainees say Simmons sexually assaulted them in transport vans to and from court, parking garages in various courthouses and courthouse elevators.
“I used to go to sleep crying every night,” said Jose Matias, 39, another plaintiff accusing Simmons of sexual abuse.
Matias said he was about 14 years old when police arrested him for having weed and ditching school. Simmons was driving Matias back to jail from court one afternoon when he forced him to remove his clothes and assaulted him, according to Matias’ suit.
Matias said his memories of the abuse resurfaced when his father took his own life a few years ago.
Amina Carter first began thinking about reporting what happened to her when she saw Simmons had been arrested on child sexual abuse charges on the evening news. Her mind traveled back more than two decades, when she was a 15-year-old girl in jail on false personation charges after running away from home.
“It was so rampant,” Carter said. “You knew who he was touching because he brought them snacks.”
Simmons sexually abused her every time he drove her to court, she said. At times, he abused young girls who were handcuffed together as they waited in the court gallery, according to the lawsuit.
“When you’re a Black or Spanish prostitute runaway, nobody cares about you,” Carter said.
“You don’t care about you. So why would they care about you?" she added. "That’s the culture there.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated the crime Amina Carter was jailed on. The charge was false personation.
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new york city
public safety
bronx
brooklyn
Bahar Ostadan
Bahar Ostadan covers the NYPD and public safety. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or message Bahar on Signal at 646-740-7335.
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