NY Detention Center Allegedly Tried To Cover Up Sexual Abuse Of Teens

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Two Lawsuits Call Out Staff Members By Name

Some horrible and shady things seem to be coming to light for a juvenile detention center in New York.

According to New York Daily News, supervisors and staff at the Horizon Juvenile Center were accused in a lawsuit of coercing teens to perform sex acts with them. The suit was filed on behalf of Franklyn Malonado, a teen who spent 2010 through 2014 in and out of Horizon. At the detention center, which holds 10 to 15-year-olds in Mott Haven, supervisors allegedly participated in “grooming” teen boys and girls to have sex with Horizon employees in exchange for things like smuggled booze, cigarettes and food.

Former administrative director of residential child care, Tahia Dennis, was one of the supervisor named in the suit. Weeks after being named, Dennis ordered the shredding of internal documents. The content of the documents is unknown, but they could possibly link staff to the alleged abuse.

Fortunately, the documents didn’t get destroyed and according to City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), they were seized by management and sent to a locked warehouse. The situation was then referred to the city Department of Investigation.

The lawsuit described graphic details of the alleged abuse. In one instance, a female counselor was found naked on top of a teenager in his cell. Malonado says that same counselor told him she would make sure he didn’t face disciplinary actions if he “took care of her needs.”

Initially, Malonado’s suit was filed in August of 2017 and it didn’t include names. However, in September of that year, Maldonado’s lawyer, Vik Pawar, filed an updated lawsuit that listed the names of supervisors, including Dennis.

Twelve days later, Dennis sent out an email to the detention center’s tour commander and overseer of counselors, writing, “Please begin immediately to shred old paperwork and files that you might have since the building opened. Thank You.”

A former employee at Horizon said the documents were shredded soon after the email was sent out, however a spokeswoman for the ACS, Chanel Caraway, told Daily News that none of the records were shredded.

“This was part of a routine shredding of duplicate documents, but these documents were never actually shredded and have been stored in a secure location the entire time,” Caraway said. “However, the matter was referred to DOI upon learning of it.”

A second lawsuit was filed in May of 2018 accusing certain Horizon staff members of sexual abuse. Miguel Smith, a teen who was at Horizon between 2013 and 2015, said that Dennis and another supervisor would “stand guard” while a female counselor had sex with him.

Pawar is representing Smith as well, and he questions the claim that the email shredding order was apart of a routine task.

“It says ‘from the beginning’ so they’ll be hard-pressed to explain that they’ve been doing this (shredding) going back,” Pawar said. “I think they’re hiding stuff. I think they got caught with their pants down and they were destroying evidence.”

A new ACS commissioner had been appointed since all the alleged abused took place and he said he “ordered a top-to-bottom overhaul of leadership and practices at Horizon.”

Meanwhile, the investigation of the staff in the lawsuits continues.