By Tandy Lau, published June 20, 2024
Nijere Stewart lights up when describing the literal and figurative heights he reached as a young Mocko Jumbie—a traditional stilt-walker. He recounts joining the UniverSoul Circus at an early age with unfettered enthusiasm.
For Clyde Wiggins, music was his passion growing up in Brownsville. The studio was his haven.
But then they both ran into the city jail system as teens, where they say such youth and spirit were stolen.
The Brooklynites are two of more than 250 people suing the city and its relevant agencies over alleged sexual abuse while detained at a juvenile detention center. On Thursday, June 13, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, Councilmember Alexa Avíles, and law firm Levy Konigsberg announced the lawsuit at a press conference, alongside Stewart and Wiggins.
“Today, I’m here not as a victim but as a survivor, advocate, [and] a community leader, shedding a bright light on injustice: the sexual, physical, and emotional abuse I and hundreds of Black and Brown brothers endured at the hands of the City of New York,” said Stewart during the presser.
While the claims piled in as early as this April, more than 100 new lawsuits were filed recently, including those of Stewart and Wiggins last week on June 11.
“We have exposed a systematic institutional scandal of sexual abuse at the city’s juvenile detention facilities,” said Jerome Block, a partner at Levy Konigsberg. “These are serious cases. Many of our clients were raped. Many of our clients were forced to perform oral sex or other sexual acts. Our clients were threatened, manipulated—they were children.
“The perpetrators of the abuse in these cases are the very adult staff members at these juvenile facilities that were entrusted with keeping our clients safe. Most of our clients were under 16 years old when they were sexually abused.”
It is not known how many accused staff members still work at the city’s juvenile detention centers, which include Brownsville’s Crossroads Juvenile Center, where both Stewart and Wiggins were held. The alleged abusers were not named in the suit, although their roles were identified—the perpetrator in Stewart’s case was a staff member and in Wiggins’s, a tutor.
Other facilities where sexual abuse against detained minors allegedly occurred include the Spofford and Horizon Juvenile Centers in the Bronx, as well as Rikers Island.
Administration of Children’s Services (ACS), which oversees the facilities now, will review all filed lawsuits and investigate all instances of misconduct, according to an agency spokesperson. Staff members found to engage in sexual abuse face “law enforcement referral, arrest, and prosecution” as well as in-house displine, including termination.
The NYC Department of Corrections was also named in the suit. The agency relinquished custody over remaining youth detainees to ACS in 2018, when the Raise the Age Law went into effect. Underaged teens held on Rikers back then were moved to Horizon Juvenile Center.
Throughout the announcement, the speakers reiterated that they believed such conditions continue to exist. Block called it “an urgent problem of the present,” with the most recent allegation dated just two years ago.
“I’m glad that I’m actually spreading the word and trying to put an end to all of this,” said Wiggins. “To know that there’s still kids in there and there’s still staff around [who haven’t been held] accountable is crazy.”
Then there’s the matter of detaining minors. At the presser, Block said most clients were arrested and held on low-level charges, which led directly to their alleged abuse. Others, like Stewart, were never convicted of the crime they were held for.
Reynoso told the Amsterdam News that he believes the city has to move away from incarcerating young people and instead “over-resource” them with programs and services, but he said such initiatives get cut first in the budget while police and jails maintain funding.
“The problem we have is that the city has moved to incarceration, policing, and enforcement to solve our problems,” said Reynoso. “The way we believe problems should be solved here in Borough Hall is by opportunities: opening up opportunities for young people, through education, through jobs, through extracurricular activities. This young man [Nijere Stewart] was a stilt-walker here in Central Brooklyn—we want to encourage that…we’re hoping that these stories can help us lead to more reforms and move us away from thinking that we need to jail any 13- or 14-year-old here in the City of New York.”
Wiggins says the only resources available to him in Brownsville after incarceration were “older people in the ’hood” who serve as make-do therapists. Yet Crossroads, the same facility that allegedly subjected him to sexual abuse, is just a few blocks away.
“They definitely stripped me of my childhood,” said Wiggins. “Coming home [at] 18 years old and then you’ve already been incarcerated, so I’m already three years behind [on] what’s going on…[then] having to walk past that building—it hurts and brings back trauma every time I pass it.”
The lawsuits are possible through a local law extending the statute of limitations to pursue civil action for gender-motivated violence from seven to nine years from when the act transpired. For incidents beyond that span, a two-year “look back” window opened in 2023 and will close on March 1, 2025, for any sexual assault survivor to seek relief.
The legislation’s author, Councilwoman Carlina Rivera, told the Amsterdam News over the phone that the local law stems from fallout of the sweeping sexual abuse charges against former Columbia University gynecologist Robert Hadden. By last October, more than 300 people filed lawsuits against the disgraced doctor.
“This law is important because we have to consider the deeply complex process of processing gender-motivated and sexual assault trauma,” said Rivera. “There is no timeline on processing trauma, so we want to ensure that any survivor who feels that they need more time [to] process their trauma and push through civil action [has that time]—if they choose, they deserve a fair pathway to justice.”
Today, both Wiggins and Stewart are fathers, and they’re balancing parenthood with reclaiming their own childhoods. Wiggins said his son has inherited his musical passion, which has rekindled his own artistic ambitions. He currently performs under the name Canary Daboss. For Stewart, ushering in the next generation of Mocko Jumbies in his native Crown Heights not only serves as cultural preservation, but is a diversion from the same institutions that he hopes the lawsuit brings accountability to.
“I teach kids how to walk stilts in my community, try to lead them straight so they don’t fall victim to what I was in,” said Stewart. “They won’t be on the street, so police won’t pick them up for no reason. I just want to get more programs so I can get kids to walk on stilts.”