What happened to you at Horizon was not okay.

Horizon Juvenile Center, 560 Brook Avenue, Mott Haven. The City's secure lockup for kids in the Bronx since January 1998, and since October 1, 2018 the place the 16- and 17-year-olds went when they came off Rikers. In April 2024 twelve people who had been held there sued the City in Bronx Supreme Court; by this August 76 cases on the Bronx docket named Horizon. If you were locked up there as a kid and someone who worked there crossed a line, this is about you.

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

This applies to you no matter what

You were 16 or 17 and came over from Rikers on October 1, 2018, or landed at Horizon any time after. Those years count, and correction officers were still working the floors for about two years.
You never told a soul. The complaint on file says people didn't, because staff could make a stay longer and harder. That fear is part of the case as pleaded, not held against anybody.
You were there for something serious. A gun charge, a murder charge, whatever the docket said. Why you were held has no bearing on this. None.
It was a woman on staff. Twelve of the people who sued in April 2024 describe the same former Horizon staff member, and she is a woman. Nobody at the other end of this page is going to blink.
It was years ago, the 2000s, the 2010s. New York City reopened the door for older claims on January 29, 2026, and for anyone under 18 at the time the state's own clock runs to age 55. Details below.
You're a mother, a brother, a friend asking for someone who can't. Reach out anyway.

The Horizon Juvenile Center lawsuits, the audits and the criminal cases: what the public record says, and when

None of what's below is ours. The complaints were filed by former detainees and their lawyers, the findings by the State Comptroller and the City's own Department of Investigation, and reporters wrote it up. Every line links to where it came from. Where a civil complaint is the source it is an allegation, and we say so. The City has not admitted anything in the pending cases, and the one criminal charge here over sexual conduct is a charge, not a conviction.

August 30, 2017

The earliest suit we can find. A former detainee, who'd turned 18 by the time he filed, said in his complaint that a female guard had sexual contact with him at Horizon in 2013 and 2014 (the payment, as he described it, came as cellphone time, movies, extra food, and getting out of punishment), and told a reporter "I didn't have a choice." The Law Department said the suit would be reviewed. It is an allegation. The Bronx Daily.

October 1, 2018

Raise the Age took effect and 92 adolescents were moved from Rikers Island to Horizon, with 295 Department of Correction officers working the units because ACS didn't have the staff yet. Within two weeks the Mott Haven Herald counted at least 39 officers and 31 residents hurt in fights. Mott Haven Herald.

April 20, 2023

A 34-year-old Horizon employee was arraigned in Bronx Criminal Court on charges of sexual abuse, criminal sexual act, sexual misconduct and official misconduct over an encounter with an 18-year-old detainee a few days earlier. ACS said it called the police at once and fired her the same day. A charge, not a conviction; we found no public record of how the case ended. Gothamist.

April 29, 2024

The big one. Kenneth Edwards and eleven other former Horizon detainees sued the City of New York, ACS and the Department of Correction, Supreme Court, Bronx County, Index 807035/2024E, and they sued under the City's Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law. It's live today, one of 76 on the Bronx docket that name Horizon, but it's had a road. Horizon was served that May, the 20th. A dismissal followed on September 11, 2025. The twelve came back on March 20, 2026, re-pleading under the amended law, and the City put in its answer on June 12, 2026. NYSCEF case search, Bronx County.

April 30, 2024

Levy Konigsberg announced 154 suits against the City over Horizon, Spofford and Rikers, by people who were 11 to 17 at the time, over conduct from the 1970s to 2023. Twelve of the plaintiffs describe the same former Horizon staff member. City Hall: "While these cases predate this administration, the Law Department will review them once served and respond accordingly." Gothamist.

October 24, 2024

The City's Department of Investigation reported that Horizon's population went from 28 to 115 between April 2018 and May 2023, that the facility logged about 733 serious incidents in the thirteen months to April 2023, and that nearly a third of its youth development specialists were working 60-to-80-hour weeks. ACS, in the report's word, was "ill-prepared." NYC Department of Investigation.

April 10, 2025

State Comptroller DiNapoli's audit of Horizon and Crossroads, covering October 2018 to December 2023, found ACS never reported 37 percent of incidents at the two facilities to the state's oversight agency, 3,630 of them, and that 15 of the 62 serious incidents the auditors checked, child-abuse allegations among them, were reported one to 23 days late instead of within a day. Office of the State Comptroller.

April 16, 2026

The New York Court of Appeals agreed to answer the question the Second Circuit sent it on March 23: whether the City's revival window for gender-motivated violence claims is preempted by the state's Child Victims Act and Adult Survivors Act. The answer will reach every Horizon case brought under the City law. We'll update this line when it comes. New York Court of Appeals, Parker v. Alexander.

We checked this on September 12, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from April 16, 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 Horizon Juvenile Center lawsuit

The City of New York. Horizon isn't a company; it is a building the Administration for Children's Services runs, and before the 2010 merger the old Department of Juvenile Justice ran it. So the defendant in the Edwards case, and in the 75 others, is the City, with ACS and the Department of Correction beside it. The theory is plain. A staff member who abuses a kid in a locked unit answers for herself. A City that put her on that unit and kept her there, and that ran a place where, by its own Comptroller's count, more than a third of incidents never got reported to the state, answers for what it let happen. The complaints say the City "had knowledge of, and turned a blind eye to, this culture of abuse." Their sentence, quoted. No jury has weighed it yet.

The City's own law is what makes the institution reachable. Under the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law a person can sue anyone who "commits, directs, enables, participates in, or conspires in" the violence, and since January 29, 2026 that reaches conduct before January 9, 2022. That is the door for the City. There is a fight over the door: the Edwards case was dismissed in September 2025, the plaintiffs came back under the new law in March 2026, and the state's highest court now has the question of whether a city law can reopen claims the state's own windows closed. A lawyer explains what that means for your facts. We won't pretend it away.

One more thing, so nobody reads this page wrong. There's a Horizon supervisor who was sentenced in federal court, February 2025, and it wasn't over anything sexual. Nothing sexual was charged. On April 25, 2022 he dragged a 16-year-old across a floor and beat him, and the incident report he wrote afterward left that out. That false report is what he pleaded guilty to, and it's why he's on this page at all, because the case against the City comes down, at bottom, to what got written down at Horizon and what didn't.

Your deadline: the New York rules for sexual abuse at a city juvenile detention center

Start with the City's window, because it has a hard stop. The Council reopened it on January 29, 2026, over the mayor's veto, and it stays open until July 29, 2027, eighteen months, for anything that happened before January 9, 2022. Whether you were 12 or 19 at the time doesn't enter into it; the date does. Local Law 50 of 2026 is the statute (it amended the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law), and what it does is let a claim whose time had run be filed anyway, against the person and against the institution that "enabled" it too. The Edwards plaintiffs used it to bring their case back in March 2026. That date is real, and this page won't soften it.

If you were under 18 at the time, the state's own clock runs until you turn 55. That is CPLR 208(b), the Child Victims Act rule, and it is why we ask whether you were born in 1971 or later. Born in 1971 or after and you're under 55 this year, so the age route is open on its own. Born earlier and the City window above may still be your road; a lawyer sorts out which. Already 18 when it happened, which Horizon has held since Raise the Age? The age route isn't yours, but the City window may be.

The honest part. The City is contesting whether its own local law can revive these claims. It won a dismissal of the Edwards case in September 2025 before the plaintiffs re-pleaded it, and on April 16, 2026 the Court of Appeals agreed to decide whether the City's window is preempted by state law. Nobody knows the answer yet, and we won't guess at it here. The window is open today, the cases are live today, and which road is yours takes a conversation with a lawyer, not this page.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told a soul. Not a counselor, not your lawyer, not your mother at visiting.
You told someone at Horizon, once, and it went nowhere. Or it got worse. Or you were 18, 19, 20 by then and figure it doesn't count; Horizon has held that age since October 2018, and it's a different clock, same call.
It was another kid, and staff let it happen or set it up.
You have a record now. Most people who were ever held there do. It has no bearing.
You live in Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, anywhere. The case sits in the Bronx; you don't need to.

Facilities covered

Horizon Juvenile Center is at 560 Brook Avenue in Mott Haven, the Bronx. Open since January 18, 1998. The Department of Juvenile Justice ran it until the December 2010 merger, ACS has run it since, and on October 1, 2018 it became the receiving facility for the 16- and 17-year-olds moved off Rikers. Were you at Crossroads in Brownsville instead? Spofford in Hunts Point (later Bridges, closed in 2011)? Rikers itself? The questions still work. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue Horizon Juvenile Center?

You would sue the City of New York, which runs it through ACS. Twelve people did exactly that in one case in April 2024, and by August 2026 there were 76 cases on the Bronx docket naming Horizon. Whether you can depends on when it happened, how old you were and when you were born, which is what the questions above sort out.

What is the NYC Gender-Motivated Violence Act lookback window?

A New York City law, not a state one. The first window ran March 1, 2023 to March 1, 2025; that is when the Edwards case and most of the Horizon suits were filed. The City Council reopened it on January 29, 2026, over the mayor's veto, for conduct before January 9, 2022, and it closes July 29, 2027. The City is contesting whether a city law can do that, and the state's top court has the question now.

I was 16 and came from Rikers in 2018. Is that a Horizon case or a Rikers case?

Could be both, and say so on the call. Anything on the island before October 1, 2018 belongs with the Rikers cases; anything at Brook Avenue after that belongs here. Correction officers worked Horizon's units for about two years after the move, so "it was a CO" is a Horizon answer too.

I was over 18 at Horizon. Do I still have a claim?

Maybe. The age-55 rule is for people who were under 18. The City window doesn't ask your age, it asks when: before January 9, 2022 and it is open until July 29, 2027. That is the whole reason we ask the year.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Here, nothing. 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.

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.