A woman who was 15 years old and pregnant in 2000 says a staff member at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center covered her cell window, threatened her, used isolation and starvation against her, and then raped her — an assault she believes caused the stillbirth she suffered weeks later, in her third trimester and close to her due date. She spent two days at the facility and was released the day after the assault. She is one of hundreds of former detainees now suing the West Side facility over decades of alleged sexual abuse.
The woman shared her account exclusively with CBS News Chicago, which reported that a second survivor, placed in juvenile detention for a misdemeanor at age 15 in 1999, said a male employee groped her and then raped her for weeks. Both women withheld their names to protect their safety and privacy, according to the outlet's investigation by reporters Dave Savini and Samah Assad. The survivors said they came forward to try to prevent the abuse from continuing.
Their accounts land amid a wave of litigation. People have filed roughly 400 sex-abuse lawsuits against the detention center, Cook County and the Cook County Chief Judge's Office, with the litigation led by the firm Gould Grieco & Hensley. That number builds on earlier reporting, including a February 2025 account from FOX 32 Chicago that found a coalition of firms had grown to represent 800 survivors statewide after initially filing suit in July 2024 on behalf of 193 former detainees alleging abuse between 1995 and 2022. The lawsuits described in the CBS Chicago investigation allege abuse occurred at the Cook County facility as recently as 2023.
A Facility Built for Hundreds, With a History of Crowding
The detention center is intended to house convicted youth or youth awaiting trial, and it sits inside a 600,000-square-foot building. In 1996 it held as many as 800 children despite having only 498 beds; today it houses about 150 youth. Former residents have reported sexual abuse at the facility dating back to the 1990s, and the center has faced a long history of overcrowding, mismanagement and staff abuse of youth, per the CBS Chicago investigation.
State child-welfare records add another layer to the picture. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services investigated 519 allegations of physical or sexual abuse at the facility from May 1995 to May 2026, including 52 sexual abuse allegations over that same span. Separately, per federal Prison Rape Elimination Act reports, the facility has recorded 61 allegations of staff sexual misconduct or abuse against youth since 2015, of which two were substantiated. Sexual abuse allegations were deemed unfounded in 77 percent of cases, the outlet's report notes.
Federal Oversight Once Forced Reform, Then Faded
The facility has been down this road before. Following a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, a federal judge appointed Earl Dunlap as transitional administrator from 2007 to 2015, after the ACLU won an eight-year battle for a consent decree that required major reforms to living conditions and treatment of youth. Before Dunlap arrived, the facility had no security cameras, and Cook County workers held an unknown number of master keys. Dunlap has said that under those conditions, staff could get away with anything.
Dunlap's tenure forced the installation of the facility's first security cameras and restricted staff access to master keys, changes that outside legal context helps explain: under a 1983 Illinois statutory precedent covered by the USC Center for Health Journalism, the state's Freedom of Information Act does not explicitly include the judicial branch, letting Cook County circuit judges maintain that county-run juvenile facilities are exempt from public records requests covering staff disciplinary files and internal logs. Attorney Elizabeth Monkus has said the Chief Judge's Office is not required by law to release records and is not subject to the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, and that public oversight and access to records are needed.
New Leadership Faces Old Questions
The detention center's oversight recently changed hands. Charles Beach was elected Chief Judge, taking office December 1, 2025, ending Timothy Evans's nearly two-decade tenure overseeing the facility; Evans has since been appointed to the First District Appellate Court and declined to comment on pending or impending legal cases. Beach has hired a new director of juvenile services and said he is working to find a new superintendent and director of juvenile probation, following longtime superintendent Leonard Dixon's resignation.
Beach denied CBS News Chicago's request for abuse records and an interview, citing ongoing litigation, and his office did not disclose whether terminated staff were criminally prosecuted, though it said staff in both substantiated cases were terminated. Beach has said he has prioritized improving the experience of youth in the detention center and that the county is building a more accountable, transparent and effective juvenile justice system.
Hoodline previously reported on the surge in abuse allegations at Illinois youth detention centers statewide, and on Chicago teens held there after a Morton Grove crash arrest. The gap between state inspection power and county enforcement remains central to the ongoing dispute: while the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice is required under state law to inspect county juvenile centers annually, it has no statutory power to issue fines, mandate corrective action, or close facilities that fail to comply — leaving that authority entirely with circuit court chief judges.
