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

The Juvenile Temporary Detention Center at 1100 South Hamilton. The Audy Home, if you were there before they changed the sign. If you were locked up in that building as a kid, any year from the mid-1990s on, and a grown-up who worked there did something to you that you have never told anyone, then yes. This is about you. Nearly 400 people have already said it in a Cook County courtroom.

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

This applies to you no matter what

You were there for two days, or two months, or on and off for years. Length of stay is not the question. One of the women in the 2026 reporting was held for two days.
You had a case pending, or you went on to prison as an adult. None of that has any bearing here. Everyone suing now was, by definition, a kid who had been arrested.
You never told anyone, or you told a staff member and got put in your room for it. The complaints say that was the point. One of the men who sued says he did try to report it, and got leaned on until he stopped.
It started as a strip search. Then it wasn't one anymore. The July 2024 complaint pleads the strip-search practice itself as the way this happened, and a 2023 state inspection found the JTDC still strip-searching every kid who came in.
It was 1996 and you think that's too long ago. Illinois took the deadline off for childhood sexual abuse in 2014, and for most people held there after 1995 that reaches back. Details below.
You're a mother, a brother, a partner asking for someone who can't. Reach out anyway. A lot of the calls we get start that way.

The Cook County juvenile detention lawsuits: what the public record says, and when

We didn't write what's below. Lawyers filed it, judges ordered it, reporters at CBS, Capitol News Illinois, the AP and Courthouse News covered it, and we link to every one of them. We don't add to it. Everything filed since 2024 is an allegation until a court says otherwise, and Cook County, the Chief Judge's office and the State of Illinois have not admitted any of it. We name no staff member.

June 1999 to May 2015

The ACLU sued Cook County in federal court over conditions at the detention center, Jimmy Doe v. Cook County. Two agreed cleanup plans came and went. July 2007: the judge appointed an outside administrator, Earl Dunlap, and he ran the place for almost eight years. Not until May 20, 2015 did the court find the county in substantial compliance and hand it back, to the Chief Judge this time. Keep that in mind when the 2024 complaints say the county had notice for decades. This is the history they mean. ACLU of Illinois.

May 2024

A different case first, so nobody mixes them up. The state one. On May 6, 2024, 95 people sued the State of Illinois over what happened to them at the Illinois Youth Centers, which are the state's buildings, not the county's. The same lawyers came back on May 31 with two more suits, 95 men and 13 women, naming the State along with the Department of Juvenile Justice and the Department of Corrections. The buildings named are St. Charles, Harrisburg, Chicago, Joliet, Kewanee, Warrenville, Murphysboro and Valley View, eight IYCs in all, and the years run 1997 to 2019, with kids as young as 10 and none older than 17. Because the defendant is the State, those suits went to the Illinois Court of Claims; that's where a suit against the State has to go. Hamilton Avenue isn't a state youth center. Its cases start with the next entry. WTTW / AP.

July 22, 2024

The county record starts here, with the strip searches. The complaints allege officials 'implemented systematic and unconstitutional strip searches of juvenile inmates' that 'provided the opportunity' for the abuse, and a state inspection covering October 2022 to April 2023 had found the JTDC still strip-searched every incoming kid: 1,203 searches, contraband found, zero. Behind that are 193 people, 156 men and 37 women, in two complaints in the Circuit Court of Cook County. Each says someone on staff at the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, the old Arthur J. Audy Home, abused them, somewhere in the years 1995 to 2022, when they were between 9 and 17. Who they sued: Cook County and the State of Illinois, and also the Office of the Chief Judge, the office that has actually run the building since 2007. Capitol News Illinois.

July 23, 2024

At the news conference the next day, plaintiffs described detention officers, counselors, medical staff and supervisors, and a complaint of more than 400 pages that says 'Cook County has had notice of such abuse for decades' and pleads mismanagement, overcrowding, patronage hiring and a failure to supervise. Three plaintiffs spoke by name. The Chief Judge's office and the County Board President declined to comment. NBC Chicago.

September 23, 2024

Fifty more former JTDC detainees filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, bringing the county cases to 242 plaintiffs, with accounts running from 1996 to 2019. Each county suit pleads eight counts, among them assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence, and says Cook County 'gave plaintiffs' abusers regular, direct, unsupervised, ongoing access to plaintiffs.' The same day, 222 people sued the State in the Court of Claims over nine state facilities. That is the state case again, not this one. Courthouse News.

February 10, 2025

Another 133 people filed: 89 against the State in the Court of Claims, and 44 individual complaints in the Circuit Court of Cook County against Cook County and the JTDC. Eight hundred people had sued since May 2024. Governor Pritzker had called the allegations 'unacceptable' the previous October. WTTW / AP.

July 15, 2025

With 107 new filings the total reached 907 across both cases, and the lawyers put the JTDC's share at 31.4 percent, the rest at the state youth centers. The Attorney General, defending the State, had argued on June 9, 2025 that the claimants should have come forward before they turned 19. That is the State's position in the Court of Claims, not a ruling, and it is not Cook County's case. FOX 32 Chicago.

August 30, 2026

CBS Chicago counted roughly 400 lawsuits naming the detention center, Cook County and the Chief Judge's office, with allegations as late as April 2023. Records CBS obtained show 61 reports of sexual misconduct by staff under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act since 2015, two substantiated, both staff fired. DCFS, separately, had looked into 519 abuse allegations at the building going back to May 1995. Fifty-two of them were sexual. Earl Dunlap, the administrator from 2007 to 2015, told CBS two things worth sitting with: no cameras when he arrived, and no one able to say how many master keys were out there. The new Chief Judge, Charles Beach, declined an interview, citing the litigation. CBS Chicago.

We checked this on September 11, 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 in a Cook County juvenile detention lawsuit

Cook County, first. Not the man or woman on the unit. The county owns the building on Hamilton, and since a 2007 state law the Office of the Chief Judge has run it. A jail that takes in ten-year-olds owes them something pretty basic. Don't let the grown-ups it hires be alone with a kid where no one can see, and when a kid says something, listen. The complaints say the county did neither. They say staff had regular, unsupervised access, that every child was strip-searched as a matter of routine, and that the county knew, because it had been in federal court over the place since 1999. If that's what happened to you, the county answers for it, not only the person.

Then the State of Illinois, the other defendant in the county complaints and the only defendant in the youth-center cases. Claims against the State go to a different room, the Court of Claims, where the amount is capped by law and the State has argued the claims were filed after the deadline. The county leg is in the ordinary Circuit Court, where a jury decides and Illinois puts no ceiling on what a public body can be made to pay for this. A lawyer will tell you which of the two you are in, or both.

A word on 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. Nobody here will tell you a number. The cases are pending and no court has decided anything yet.

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

Illinois took the deadline off in 2014. For childhood sexual abuse there's 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, and it's the one that matters: that change didn't reach backward. A claim that had already run out by then stayed run out, which is why we ask about your birth year. Born in 1983 or later, and that covers nearly everyone who was a kid at the JTDC after 1995, then your claim was still alive on 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 where an institution kept quiet.

The State is arguing something different, and you should know it. In the Court of Claims the Attorney General has said the youth-center claimants had to file before turning 19. That is an argument in a pending case, not a ruling, and it is the State's case, not the county's. The Cook County suits sit in the Circuit Court, and the one-year rule that usually shields a county there? Already held not to apply to childhood sexual abuse.

Plainly, then. Most people who were locked up on Hamilton between 1995 and 2023 have no clock running on them at all. For the rest there may still be a way. Either one 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 if asked. 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 live in Indiana or Wisconsin or somewhere farther now. The case stays in Cook County either way.

Facilities covered

The Juvenile Temporary Detention Center at 1100 South Hamilton Avenue on the Near West Side, under both its names, the Arthur J. Audy Home and the JTDC · every unit, the intake area where the strip searches happened, the medical unit, the school floors · any year from 1995 through 2023. A state youth center instead, IYC Chicago, St. Charles, Harrisburg, Warrenville, Joliet, Kewanee, Murphysboro or Valley View? Different case, different court. The questions still work. Answer them and say which building on the call.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue the Cook County juvenile detention center?

Roughly 400 people already have, in the Circuit Court of Cook County, and their cases name the county and the Chief Judge's office, not only the staff. Whether you can depends mostly on when you were born and what happened, which is what the questions above sort out.

Is there a statute of limitations for child sexual abuse in Illinois?

Mostly, no. Since January 1, 2014, Illinois hasn't had one, as long as the claim was still alive that day. Claims that had already lapsed under the older rules are the exception, and those need discovery or concealment facts. That is the whole reason we ask whether you were born in 1983 or later.

Is the Audy Home the same as the JTDC?

Yes. Same building, same address, 1100 South Hamilton. It was the Arthur J. Audy Home for decades, and most people who were there still call it that. The county renamed it the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. The lawsuits cover it under both names.

I was at IYC Chicago or St. Charles, not the Audy Home. Is that the same case?

No. The state youth centers are run by the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, and those claims go against the State in the Court of Claims. The JTDC is Cook County's, and those claims go to the Circuit Court. Different defendants, different rules. If you were at both, say so; some people were.

How much is a Cook County juvenile detention settlement?

We won't put a number on this page, and you should be wary of anyone who does. Nothing has settled and no court has ruled. It depends on what happened, what the county knew, and when. 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.

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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.