If a staff member sexually abused you while you were held as a child in an Illinois youth center or a county detention center, you may be able to bring a civil claim against the institution that was responsible for your safety. You did not need to report it at the time, and nobody needs to have been charged.
Almost no one in custody reported. Doing so meant telling the abuser's coworkers and then returning to the same wing. These cases turn on what the facility knew and what it did with that knowledge. That information sits in records the facility still holds.
Ervin Nevitt, a partner at Coplan + Crane, reviews these claims. He holds Illinois bar registration 6319808 and was admitted in 2014.
Illinois locked children up and then failed to protect them
If this happened to you, you are not the only one, and you are not remembering it wrong. Hundreds of people have now come forward about the same facilities, the same shifts, and in some cases the same staff members.
Nearly everyone who contacts us starts with some version of the same thought. Nobody believed me then, so why would anyone believe me now? The honest answer is that you have not changed. What has changed is that the pattern is documented, other survivors have spoken up, and the institutions involved now have to answer for it in a way they never did back then.
Many young people were placed in these facilities because something had already gone wrong in their lives, something adults were supposed to handle. Being harmed again by the very people paid to protect you is a particular kind of betrayal. Under the law, it is the institution's failure, not yours.
How custody claims differ from other abuse cases
A claim that comes out of state custody is not the same as a claim against a private organization. The differences are real, and they affect how a case is built from the start.
The State is the defendant. The Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice (IDJJ) runs the state youth centers. Claims against the State are filed in the Illinois Court of Claims, which has its own filing requirements and limits on damages. This is the first thing to examine, and it is a common place for a general personal injury practice to go wrong.
County detention centers are separate. IDJJ states clearly that county juvenile detention centers in Illinois are outside its jurisdiction. Since 2008, the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center has been run by the Office of the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County. A claim may involve Cook County, the State, or both, depending on when and how the abuse happened.
The records are the case. Custodial facilities produce paperwork constantly: shift rosters, incident reports, grievance forms, transfer records, movement logs, and personnel files. That evidence exists whether or not anyone believed you, and whether or not a report was ever taken seriously.
You were a child in custody. You could not leave, could not choose who supervised you, and had no safe way to report. Courts understand that context.
The facilities involved
The claims we review come from Illinois youth centers and from county detention centers. Some of these facilities have closed or changed names. Neither fact ends a claim. What matters is where you were held and when.
IYC St. Charles, at 3825 Campton Hills Road in St. Charles (Kane County), was historically the main intake facility for youth committed from the Chicago area. The site now runs the PEACE Center, a separate program that launched in January 2024 for ages 17 to 20. Claims concern the earlier facility.
IYC Warrenville sits at 30W200 Ferry Road. Despite its name, the address is in Naperville, in DuPage County. It opened in 1973, has a capacity of 70, and is the only IDJJ facility that holds girls as well as boys.
IYC Harrisburg, at 1201 West Poplar in Harrisburg (Saline County), opened in July 1983 and has a rated capacity of 319.
IYC Pere Marquette, at 17808 State Highway 100W in Grafton (Jersey County), opened in March 1963. It is the oldest facility still operating as a youth center and the smallest, with a capacity of 40. It is an open-campus, step-down facility.
IYC Kewanee, in Henry County, closed as a youth facility in 2016 and was transferred to the Department of Corrections, reopening as an adult center. Its closure does not erase claims from the years it operated.
The Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center in Chicago, long known as the Audy Home, is a county facility outside IDJJ's jurisdiction. It is a separate defendant with a separate analysis.
If your facility is not listed here, that does not mean you have no claim. Tell us where you were held, and we will look into it.
What the facility was required to do
These cases come down to what the facility knew and how it responded. In practice, the failure usually takes one of these forms:
- Negligent hiring: someone was put in charge of children without checks that would have revealed their history.
- Negligent supervision: a staff member was left alone with a child in circumstances the facility should never have allowed. In custody, where staff control movement, meals, showers, and sleep, this is the most common failure.
- Negligent retention: a complaint was made, and the staff member stayed.
- Failure to report: staff who were legally required to report a suspicion did not.
When a facility logged a grievance and filed it away, moved a staff member to another wing, or transferred a child to a different site instead of investigating, it left a record of that choice. That record is often what a case depends on.
Common Questions Around Juvenile Detention Abuse Claims
I never reported it. Does that end my claim? No. Very few people in custody reported, for reasons that are obvious to anyone who has been there. You would have been reporting to the abuser's colleagues and then going back to the same wing. Not reporting is nearly universal in these cases and is understood that way.
Nobody was ever charged. Does that matter? No. A criminal conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. A civil claim uses a lower standard and is usually brought against the institution, not the individual. Claims move forward regularly where no charge was ever filed.
I do not remember dates or the person's full name. That is normal and not a barrier. Records build these cases. The facility knows who was on shift, which wing you were on, and when you were moved. You are not expected to show up with evidence.
The facility closed or changed its name. That does not affect whether a claim can be brought. The responsible body still exists. IYC Kewanee closed in 2016, and St. Charles now runs a different program. Neither changes a claim about what happened while they operated.
Is it too late? That depends on your age at the time, which body was responsible, and the specific facts. Claims against a public body carry their own requirements, which is exactly why it is worth asking instead of assuming. People often think they are out of time and turn out not to be. Asking costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Will my family find out? Not from us. What you share is confidential from the first conversation, whether or not you go forward. If you do file, steps can be taken to protect your identity in the court record, and we explain them before anything is filed.
I am asking for someone else. That is fine, and it happens often. We can explain how this works so you can pass it along. The person involved is under no obligation to do anything.
What happens when you contact us
Asking a question does not set anything in motion. You speak with a person, not a form or an intake script, and you do not have to describe what happened to have that conversation.
We then look into which institution was responsible, what it knew, what records exist, and whether a claim can still be brought. That work costs you nothing. We tell you plainly what is possible. If you decide not to go ahead, that is the end of it, and what you told us stays confidential.
If you do go ahead, we carry the case: the filings, the deadlines, the records, and the institution's insurers. Steps can be taken to protect your identity in the court record.
Call (708) 671-6858 for a free, confidential case review.
