What happened to you at the Audy Home was not okay.

The Audy Home. Ask anyone who did time there and that's the name you'll get, not the one on the sign at 1100 South Hamilton, which since 1973 has read Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, JTDC for short. Same building either way. If you were locked up there as a kid, mid-1990s or any year after, and someone on staff did something to you that you've never told a soul about, this page is for you. Even the complaints filed in Cook County since July 2024 say it their own way: the detention center, formerly the Arthur J. Audy Home.

WatchingSeptember 2026: roughly 400 complaints naming the detention center, Cook County and the Chief Judge's office are pending in the Circuit Court of Cook County, with no ruling on any of them that we have read and no docket number printed in any source. The questions work now.

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6 questions. Your answers are private and go to one person.

Looking for the page on the current name? Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center survivors: the same building on Hamilton Avenue, the full record on the county and the state cases, one set of questions for both names.

This applies to you no matter what

You call it the Audy Home and the paperwork calls it the JTDC. Same building, same county, same case.
You were in for a weekend, or months, or in and out for years. (The average stay in 2019 ran 34 days for boys and 22 for girls, for what it's worth.) Why you were there, how long: nobody here is going to ask.
You went on to prison as an adult. That changes nothing here. Every one of the roughly 400 people who has sued was, by definition, a kid who had been arrested.
It started as a strip search. The July 2024 complaint pleads the strip-search practice itself as the way this happened, and a state inspection had found the place still strip-searching every incoming kid in 2023: 1,203 searches in seven months, contraband found, zero.
You told a staff member and got put in your room for it, or you never told anyone. The complaints say the silence was part of the system. Say which on the call; it matters.
You're a mother, an older brother, a partner asking for someone who isn't ready. Reach out anyway. A lot of the calls we get start that way.

What the public record says about the Audy Home, and when

None of this is ours. Lawyers filed it, a court appointed the administrator, reporters at CBS, Capitol News Illinois and Courthouse News read the complaints, and every line links to where it came from. One thing first. The Audy Home and the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center are one institution at one address; the formal name changed in 1973 and the old name never left. So the record here is short: the name, the notice history, and the complaints that name the Audy Home themselves. The full county and state record lives on the JTDC page, linked below, and we don't re-tell it. Everything filed since 2024 is an allegation until a court says otherwise. Cook County, the Office of the Chief Judge and the State of Illinois have not admitted any of it. We name no staff member.

1963

The formal name, on the record. The National Council on Crime and Delinquency's appraisal for the county's Citizens Committee on the Family Court was titled 'The Cook County Family (Juvenile) Court and Arthur J. Audy Home.' That was the detention home's official name before the Hamilton Avenue building, named for a superintendent of the old home. A catalogue entry, not an allegation; it's here so nobody can tell you the Audy Home is a nickname with no paper behind it. HathiTrust catalogue, NCCD appraisal (1963).

1973

A five-story building was completed and named the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center: 30 living units, an estimated capacity of 498. That's when the name on paper changed. The name in people's mouths didn't, and there's paper for that as well: the Encyclopedia of Chicago's 2005 entry sits under 'Audy Home' and says the center is 'popularly still known as the Audy Home,' and the complaints of 2024 use it too. One building, two names, no gap between them. Roush, Journal of Applied Juvenile Justice Services (2015).

June 1999 to May 20, 2015

The notice history. In June 1999 the ACLU of Illinois sued Cook County in federal court over the building, Doe v. Cook County, No. 99 C 3945: inadequate medical and mental-health care, not enough schooling, kids 'subjected to violence, abuse, neglect, and unfair discipline,' and a population that had at one point hit 800 in a place built for 498. In July 2007 the court put an outside administrator, Earl Dunlap, in charge; a state law effective January 2008 moved the JTDC from the County Board to the Chief Judge; not until May 20, 2015 did the court hand the building back. That case was about conditions and violence, not what this page is about. It's here because the 2024 complaints say the county had notice for decades, and this is the notice they mean. ACLU of Illinois, May 18, 2015.

July 22, 2024

The complaints that name the Audy Home. Two of them, filed that Monday in the Circuit Court of Cook County by 193 people, 156 men and 37 women, against Cook County and the State of Illinois. Each plaintiff says someone on staff at the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center abused them somewhere in the years 1995 to 2022, when they were between 9 and 17. CBS Chicago put the name the way the complaints do: the facility 'was formerly known as the Arthur J. Audy Home and is still colloquially called the Audy Home.' The same lawyers had 395 people filed across Illinois youth facilities by that day; the rest are the state's cases, on the JTDC page. CBS Chicago, July 23, 2024.

July 24, 2024

The mechanism, as pleaded. Capitol News Illinois read the complaints: officials 'implemented systematic and unconstitutional strip searches' that 'provided the opportunity' for the abuse, and a state inspection covering October 2022 to April 2023 had found every incoming kid still strip-searched, 1,203 times, contraband found, zero. The same story names the place the county's way, the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, 'formerly known as the Arthur J. Audy Home.' NBC Chicago, the day before, quoted the sentence the county case turns on: 'Cook County has had notice of such abuse for decades.' Pleaded, not proven. The county and the state said they don't comment on pending litigation. Capitol News Illinois.

September 23, 2024

Fifty more people filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, a 124-page complaint, accounts from 1996 to 2019, bringing the county's plaintiffs to 242. Both county complaints plead eight counts, assault and battery, sexual abuse, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence among them, and say that 'Cook County gave plaintiffs' abusers regular, direct, unsupervised, ongoing access to plaintiffs.' The filings keep coming after this, February 2025, July 2025 and since; the JTDC page keeps that count. Courthouse News.

August 30, 2026

Where it stands. CBS Chicago counted 400 people who have sued the detention center, Cook County and the Chief Judge's office, some alleging abuse as late as 2023. Records CBS obtained show 61 reports of sexual misconduct or abuse by staff since 2015 under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act; two substantiated, both staff fired, and the Chief Judge's office would not say whether either was prosecuted. DCFS, separately, had investigated 519 abuse allegations at the building from May 1995 to May 2026, 52 of them sexual. No ruling on any complaint yet. CBS Chicago, August 30, 2026.

We checked this on September 15, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from August 30, 2026. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible for what happened at the Audy Home

Cook County. Not the building, and not only the man or woman on the unit. The Audy Home was never a company; it's the county's detention center, run since January 2008 by the Office of the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court, and a claim runs against the county and (the way the 2024 complaints are drawn) against that office and the State of Illinois too. The JTDC page carries the whole of that record, and one set of questions works for both names. This page exists so someone who only ever knew the place as the Audy Home can find it.

The theory, in plain words. A jail that takes in ten-year-olds owes them something basic: don't let the grown-ups you hire be alone with a kid where no one can see, and when a kid says something, listen. The complaints say the county did neither: staff had regular, unsupervised access, every child was strip-searched as a matter of routine, and the county knew, because a federal court had been over the building since 1999. That is what is pleaded. A court decides whether it holds on your facts.

What a case can't do. Illinois does not let a jury punish a county with extra damages the way it can a private hospital; the county pays for the harm itself, and that is the claim. Claims against the State go to a different room, the Court of Claims, with its own limits; the JTDC page explains that leg. Nobody here will put a number on any of it. The cases are pending and the county has admitted nothing.

Your deadline: the Illinois statute of limitations for what happened at the Audy Home

Illinois took the deadline off in 2014. For childhood sexual abuse there is no statute of limitations here anymore, not since the 2014 amendment to 735 ILCS 5/13-202.2 that the 2024 complaints were filed under. The catch: the change didn't reach backward. A claim that had already run out by January 1, 2014 stayed run out, which is why we ask about your birth year. Born in 1983 or later, and that covers most people who were a kid at the Audy Home after 1995, then your claim was still alive the day the law changed. You can file on age alone. Born earlier, and a lawyer needs a few more facts: when you first understood what it did to you, and what the county said or didn't say over the years. Illinois keeps that second path open; a lawyer decides whether it fits you.

The county's usual one-year shield doesn't apply. A county in Illinois normally gets a one-year deadline on claims against it. An appellate court held in March 2009, in a case against a school district, that the childhood-sexual-abuse statute controls over that rule. The State, in its own Court of Claims cases, has argued something stricter; an argument in a pending case, not a ruling, and the JTDC page covers it.

Plainly, then. If you were held at the Audy Home in 1996 or 2006 or 2016 and you were born in 1983 or later, no clock is running on you today. If you were born before that, or you were there before 1995, there may still be a way, and it takes a conversation, not a guess.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You have never said it out loud. Not to a spouse, not to anyone.
You were in for something real and you figure that cancels it. It cancels nothing.
You couldn't say the person's name. The unit, maybe, and roughly the year. That's enough to start.
It was a nurse, a teacher, a woman on staff. The complaints describe all three.
You were there before 1995, in the years nobody has sued over yet. Answer the questions anyway and say so on the call.
You live in Indiana or Wisconsin now, or farther. The case stays in Cook County either way.

Facilities covered

The Arthur J. Audy Home, which is the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center at 1100 South Hamilton Avenue on the Near West Side, above the Juvenile Court; the sign changed in 1973 and the name didn't. Every unit, intake, the medical unit, the school floors, any year from 1995 through 2023. The full record on the current name, including the state's Court of Claims cases and every filing after September 2024, is on the JTDC page, cook-county-juvenile-detention-survivors; one form works for both. A state youth center instead, IYC Chicago, St. Charles, Harrisburg, Warrenville or Joliet? Different defendant, different court. The questions still work. Answer them and say which building on the call.

Questions people are asking

Audy Home, JTDC, Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center: are those all the same place?

Yes, all of them, one building at 1100 South Hamilton. It was formally the Arthur J. Audy Home, named for a superintendent of the old county detention home; in 1973 the new building on Hamilton opened as the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. People kept saying Audy Home, and the 2024 complaints say it too. One record for the building, not two.

Can I sue the Audy Home?

The Audy Home isn't a company, so a claim runs against Cook County, and against the Office of the Chief Judge, which has run the center since 2008. About 400 people have done exactly that in the Circuit Court of Cook County since July 2024. Whether you can depends mostly on when you were born, which the questions above sort out.

I was at the Audy Home in the 1980s, is it too late for me?

Maybe. Maybe not, honestly. The complaints filed so far start in 1995, and someone born before 1983 needs a lawyer to look at when they understood what happened and what the county said over the years. Nobody should tell you yes or no from a web page. Answer the questions, pick 'before 1995', and say so on the call.

What's the statute of limitations in Illinois for this?

There mostly isn't one anymore. Illinois took it off the books for childhood sexual abuse effective January 1, 2014, with one catch: a claim that had already expired before that date stayed expired, and those older claims need discovery or concealment facts. Which is why the questions above ask about 1983 and your birth year, and nothing fancier.

How much is an Audy Home lawsuit worth?

We won't put a number on this page, and you should be wary of anyone who does. Nothing has settled, no court has ruled, and Illinois does not let a jury add punishment damages against a county. A lawyer will tell you plainly after they have looked at your facts.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

You answer 6 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
You decide. You find out your options. If you want to stop there, you stop there.

How this works

ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed Illinois attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

You never pay a dollar

Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.