What happened to you at Crossroads was not okay.
Crossroads Juvenile Center. Bristol Street in Brownsville, the low building behind the fence that was built to look like a school. If the City held you there as a kid, any year since it opened in August 1998, and an adult who worked there did something to you that you have never put down, this page is about you. 112 lawsuits already name the place. You would not be the first.
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6 questions. Your answers are private and go to one person.
This applies to you no matter what
- You were locked up. That is the whole reason you were there, and it is the reason the City owed you more, not less. A building that holds children on a judge's order has to watch the adults it puts on the halls at night.
- You never said a word. Not to a counselor, not to your mother at visiting. Most of the 250-odd people who sued in June 2024 carried it ten years first. Some, twenty.
- It was a staff member you liked, or one who brought you things. The complaints on file describe exactly that, and they say kids who talked were told they'd do more time.
- You have a record now, or you did a bid after. So what. It changes nothing about your right to ask.
- You told someone there and the report doesn't say what happened, or there is no report at all. The State Comptroller found 37 percent of incidents at Crossroads and Horizon over five years never reached the state. Details below.
- You're a mother, a partner, a grown child asking for someone who can't do this himself. Reach out anyway. Plenty of people do.
The Crossroads Juvenile Center lawsuits: what the public record says, and when
None of this is ours. Court dockets, a federal prosecutor, the State Comptroller and the reporters who covered it wrote what's below, and every line links to where it came from. We don't add to it. Every lawsuit here is an allegation; the City has admitted nothing in any of them, and the one set of convictions on this list is for bribery, not abuse.
June 11, 2024
Levy Konigsberg filed more than 250 lawsuits in a single day for people who say staff sexually abused them as children in the City's juvenile jails: Crossroads, Horizon, the old Spofford building and Rikers. The plaintiffs were 14 years old on average. One Crossroads plaintiff, held five months at 15, told Gothamist about a staff member who'd skip his cell when meals came around; he thought, he said, that he might die in there. Gothamist.
October 1, 2024
Four youth development specialists at Crossroads (that's the title for the staff who run the halls) pleaded guilty in federal court in Brooklyn. The charge was bribery: between March 2022 and May 2024 they'd taken money to smuggle razor blades, pills, alcohol and marijuana to the kids in their care, and one of them took more than $20,000 doing it. Not an abuse case, and we don't pretend it is. It is a record of who held the keys. U.S. Attorney, E.D.N.Y..
January 27, 2025
Twenty more complaints naming Crossroads were filed in Kings County Supreme Court on one day, Index 502805/2025 among them, part of a 115-case wave announced the next morning that brought the count across the four City facilities to 539. By then the City had already moved to dismiss the earlier suits, arguing the law reached only the person who did it, not the institution. Harlem World Magazine, via the Council.
April 10, 2025
State Comptroller DiNapoli's audit of Crossroads and Horizon, October 2018 through December 2023: 37 percent of 9,693 incidents were never reported to the state at all, and fourteen that had to be reported within 24 hours, sexual abuse among them, went in one to 22 days late. Crossroads took 3,234 of the admissions in that period. Office of the State Comptroller.
September 2025
A Bronx judge threw out more than 450 of the juvenile-detention suits after an appeals court read the 2022 city law as not reaching back far enough to hold the institutions to account. "Many of the survivors really just feel like the rug was pulled out from under them," the plaintiffs' lawyer said; ACS, for its part, said it takes every allegation seriously. Gothamist.
January 29, 2026
Local Law 50 of 2026, passed over Mayor Adams's Christmas Eve veto. It reopens the door the September ruling had shut. The suits thrown out in 2025 can be amended or refiled, and this time the law says in so many words that the institution can be sued alongside the person, for gender-motivated violence before January 9, 2022. Eighteen months. Closes July 29, 2027. Local Law 50 of 2026.
March 23, 2026
Then a complication, from a case that had nothing to do with the City. The Second Circuit asked New York's Court of Appeals whether the state's own Child Victims Act and Adult Survivors Act preempt the City's revival window; the defendant there was private, but the question isn't. It is still open, and a Manhattan judge who reinstated a survivor's claim against the City under the new law in August paused that case until it is answered. Parker v. Alexander, 2d Cir..
August 14, 2026
One plaintiff, a different firm, filed in Supreme Court, Bronx County, and pleaded as a gender-motivated violence claim under the new law. The caption reads Velez v. The City of New York, ACS, the Department of Correction and Crossroads Juvenile Detention Center; the index number is 816196/2026E. It's the newest case naming Crossroads, and by our count of the court's own index there are 112 of them, filed from November 2023 to August 2026. NYSCEF case search, Index 816196/2026E.
We checked this on September 12, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from August 14, 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 Crossroads Juvenile Center lawsuit
The City. Crossroads isn't a company; it is a City building, run by the Department of Juvenile Justice when it opened and by ACS since the two were merged at the end of 2010. Every case on file names the City of New York and ACS, the newer ones add the Department of Correction, and the facility itself sits in the caption next to them. The theory in plain words: a locked building that holds children has one job above all the others, which is to keep the adults it hires away from kids when nobody is watching, and to act the first time a kid says something. The complaints say it did neither, and that kids who did speak were told they'd stay longer.
What the City knew is the part a lawyer builds, and some of it is already on paper. The Comptroller's auditors found thousands of incidents that never left the building. Four of the people running the halls took cash to bring in razor blades and pills, and admitted it in federal court. None of that is an abuse finding. It is a picture of how closely anyone was looking.
One more thing about a City defendant. It doesn't go bankrupt and it doesn't get sold. Whatever the courts decide about the window, the party on the other side will still be there.
Your deadline: the New York rules for a childhood claim against Crossroads
Two clocks, and the second one is the one to watch. The first, the state's Child Victims Act (CPLR 208(b)), gives someone who was sexually abused before 18 until their 55th birthday to file, which for a Crossroads kid is a long way off, since the place didn't open until August 1998. That's what the born-in-1971-or-later question is doing on this page, and here it's almost always a yes. The catch is how far back that rule reaches. Courts have read it as covering claims that were still alive when the law took effect in 2019, and for a lot of Crossroads years the old deadline had already run. A lawyer works that out from your dates, not from a guess.
The City's own window: open now, closes July 29, 2027. This is Local Law 50 of 2026, and the difference it makes is who you can name: the institution that enabled gender-motivated violence, not only the individual, so long as it happened before January 9, 2022. Eighteen months, from January 29, 2026. Not a theory, either; the newest Crossroads case, filed August 14, 2026, is pleaded under it. If what happened to you was after January 9, 2022, the window isn't needed; the ordinary rules apply, and for a child they are the ones in the first paragraph.
Here is the honest part. The City did not want this law. The mayor vetoed it on December 24, 2025, the Council overrode him, and the City has fought these suits in court since the first ones were filed. Whether the state's own revival laws override the City's window is a question the Second Circuit sent to New York's highest court in March 2026, and it hasn't been answered; some cases against the City are paused while it is. Nobody, including us, can tell you how that comes out. What we can say is that the window is the route the courts are working with today, and a lawyer will tell you plainly whether your dates fit it.
Your situation still qualifies even if
- You never said it out loud. Not to a counselor then, not to anyone since.
- You don't have a word for it. It was "a relationship," or it was a trade, food or phone time for something. A locked-up kid is not a willing partner, whatever it felt like at the time.
- It was another kid on the hall, not staff. The building still had a duty to keep you safe from him.
- You were only there a couple of weeks. Most people were.
- You went upstate after, or to Rikers, and that place was worse. The Crossroads part counts on its own.
- You live in Jersey now, or Pennsylvania, or Connecticut. The case is in a New York court wherever you live.
Facilities covered
Crossroads Juvenile Center, 17 Bristol Street, Brownsville, Brooklyn, opened August 1, 1998, 124 beds, run by the Department of Juvenile Justice and then by ACS · the halls, the school, the clinic, the gym, the yard, all inside the same fence. Horizon Juvenile Center in the Bronx and the old Spofford building have their own pages, and so does Rikers, which held 16- and 17-year-olds until 2018. If it was one of those, or a non-secure group home ACS placed you in, the questions still work. Answer them and say where.
Questions people are asking
Can I sue Crossroads Juvenile Center?
112 people already have, by the court's own index, and their cases name the City of New York and ACS, not only the person who did it. Whether you can depends mostly on when you were there and when you were born, which is what the questions above sort out.
What is the New York City lookback window for gender-motivated violence?
Local Law 50 of 2026. From January 29, 2026 to July 29, 2027, a person can sue over gender-motivated violence that happened before January 9, 2022, and can sue the institution that enabled it, not just the individual; the law's own words are anyone who "commits, directs, enables, participates in, or conspires in" it. Whether state law overrides it is a question sitting with New York's highest court, still unanswered.
The City got the lawsuits thrown out. Is it over?
No. More than 450 were dismissed in September 2025 because the 2022 version of the city law didn't say clearly enough that it reached older conduct. The Council fixed that language in January 2026 and wrote in that the dismissed cases could be amended or refiled. And people kept filing: new Crossroads cases went in at the Bronx and Manhattan courthouses in July and August 2026.
How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?
Nothing, here. Every case is on contingency. The lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing, not for the call, not for the review, not for the case.
New York's statute of limitations for child sexual abuse: how long do I have?
For someone abused before 18, the Child Victims Act says the claim can be brought until they turn 55. (It doesn't plainly reach claims that had already expired before 2019, though, and that's where the City window comes in.) Which of the two fits you is a question of dates, and it is the first thing a lawyer looks at.
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 New York 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.