What happened to you at the Youth Study Center, or the Juvenile Justice Services Center, was not okay.

The Youth Study Center. On the Parkway for fifty-six years, then the old EPPI building in East Falls, and since 2013 the new building on North 48th Street with a new name, the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center. Same place, really. The city's one locked door for kids waiting on a court date. If you were held there, any building, any year, and something happened that you've never said out loud, then yes. This is about you. You wouldn't be the first to say it, either. One person did, in a Philadelphia court in August 2023, naming the center and the City. In October 2024, more than 60 people filed over 15 Pennsylvania youth facilities, this one on the list.

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This applies to you no matter what

You were only there a few days, or a few weeks, waiting on a hearing. That is what the place is for. The length of the stay has no bearing on whether you can ask.
You were there in the bad years. The City said so itself, in a court filing in June 2023. Licensed for about 180, holding 230, and more than 30 of those kids sleeping on the floor of the gym or the admissions office. If your stay was in that stretch, the record below has the dates.
You have a record now, or you had one then. Everyone this page is for was locked up as a kid. It changes nothing.
It was another kid, not a staff member. The cases on file are against the institution for what it allowed, and a detention center has one job before every other job, which is watching.
You were 18, 19 or 20 there. The center holds young people up to 20, and Pennsylvania has a separate deadline for people who were 18 to 23 at the time. Details below.
You're a mother, a grandmother, an older brother asking for someone who can't yet. Reach out anyway. Plenty of people do.

The Youth Study Center and Juvenile Justice Services Center lawsuits: what the public record says, and when

We didn't write what's below. Courts did, and the City in its own filings, and the reporters who covered them, and we link to every one. We don't add to it. Where a line says a complaint alleges something, that is what it is, an allegation. The City of Philadelphia has not admitted liability in any of these matters, and the 2023 case ended in a settlement, not a ruling.

December 20, 2012

The City dedicated the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center at 48th Street and Haverford Avenue in West Philadelphia: $110 million, 150 beds, ten classrooms, for young people 13 to 20 waiting on a hearing or a placement. It replaced the Youth Study Center, on the Parkway until 2008, when it came down for the Barnes Foundation, and then four years in the former Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute in East Falls. Kids were expected to move in that January. Philadelphia Inquirer.

June 21, 2023

The City itself told Commonwealth Court that the center was "in crisis." Its filing put 230 young people in a building licensed for about 180, more than 30 of them sleeping on floors in the admissions office and the gymnasium, kids kept all day in windowless units with no school, more fights, makeshift weapons. Its own words: children "will continue to suffer serious harm and face the risk of even greater harm." And a judge had already, the November before, ordered the state to take 15 children off its hands. Philadelphia Inquirer.

July 18, 2023

Judge Ellen Ceisler of Commonwealth Court gave the state Department of Human Services 30 days to move 26 youths out, and told it to keep taking them until the center was back down to its licensed capacity, 184. That summer the count had hit 246, a record. Same Inquirer explainer, further down: a fall 2022 fight that left one juvenile severely injured and hurt dozens of staff. Philadelphia Inquirer.

August 15, 2023

This is the case the rest of the page leans on. Someone filed a complaint that day in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County, No. 230801536, captioned Jane Doe C.C. v. The Youth Study Center, Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center, City of Philadelphia and two individual staff defendants. It never went to trial. The docket has it settled and discontinued on January 3, 2025, with a judgment against one of the two individuals marked satisfied on May 5, 2025. Settled is not dismissed. What was paid, nobody outside the case knows; the terms aren't public. Philadelphia Courts civil docket.

October 29, 2023

The Inquirer published photographs out of a court filing. Kids asleep on benches, on floors, in crowded cells. Lights on around the clock. Three to a room built for two. About 211 young people against a license for 184. Youths quoted in the piece described staff "allowing or even encouraging fights." The City said it was making "great progress." Philadelphia Inquirer.

March 14, 2024

The Education Law Center filed a complaint with the state Department of Education saying some kids at the center got no schooling at all, some for up to a month during "processing," worksheets slid under doors. It described more than 20 students sleeping on rubber mats in dirty, overcrowded rooms for weeks. By late 2023 the building held 212 against its 184 license. Philadelphia Inquirer.

October 23, 2024

Levy Konigsberg and co-counsel announced claims for more than 60 men and women over sexual abuse at 15 Pennsylvania juvenile detention and residential treatment facilities, the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center named among them, with conduct alleged from the early 2000s through 2023. The firm put its Pennsylvania count at more than 200 people in five months. These are complaints. They allege; nothing in them has been decided. Levy Konigsberg release, PR Newswire.

January 14, 2025

An Inquirer investigation into why Philadelphia locks up kids at one of the highest rates anywhere. Inside the center, young people described staff putting food bounties on other kids, "a cheesesteak on a kid's head," to set off attacks; one staffer called it "like putting a hit out on a kid." Days-long room lockdowns. One staffer sometimes watching 12 to 24 teens. The City's associate deputy mayor said "the safety of youth in our custody is paramount" and that the City investigates every report of abuse. Philadelphia Inquirer.

We checked this on September 12, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from January 14, 2025. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center lawsuit

The City of Philadelphia. Not one staff member, the City. Its Department of Human Services runs the center, hires the people on the units and decides how many kids each of them watches. The 2023 complaint named the Youth Study Center, the Juvenile Justice Services Center and the City as defendants alongside two individuals, and that is the shape these cases take. A person who did something answers for himself, if he can be found and has anything. The institution that put him on the unit answers for the institution.

The theory in plain words. A detention center takes children who cannot leave and puts them behind locked doors with the adults it chose. If a child is hurt there, and the place had been told, by its own court filings in 2023 that it was 50 kids over capacity with too few staff, by a judge who had to order children moved out twice, by kids telling reporters that staff set them on each other, and it kept running the same way, the institution answers for the next child through the door. That is what complaints like the October 2024 filings plead. A court decides it.

One thing Pennsylvania did that most states haven't. Cities and counties here usually have immunity from negligence suits. In 2019 the legislature carved out an exception for exactly this: a local agency is liable when its negligence lets sexual abuse happen to someone in its care, 42 Pa.C.S. § 8542(b)(9), and the usual limit on what a local agency pays does not apply to those claims, § 8553(e). So the City cannot use immunity as a defence to these claims. That's the law, not a prediction about any case.

Your deadline: the Pennsylvania statute of limitations for abuse at the Youth Study Center or the Juvenile Justice Services Center

Under 18 when you were there, and born December 1989 or later? You have time. Until your 55th birthday, in fact. 37 years past 18 is how the statute counts it; Act 87 of 2019 wrote that into 42 Pa.C.S. § 5533(b)(2). Now the part people miss. Act 87 took effect on November 26, 2019, and a claim had to still be alive on that day for the new law to help it at all. Already run out under the old rule? Then it stayed run out. Nothing in the new law revives it. And under the old rule, anyone born before about December 1989 had already lost theirs. Which is why the question above asks when you were born, not what happened to you.

Born before December 1989? Be honest with yourself and with us: under the law as it stands today, your claim is probably barred. Probably. Not certainly, since a lawyer sometimes turns up a fact that changes the picture, and since Harrisburg has been arguing for years about a two-year window for older claims. In the summer of 2025 the House passed two bills, HB 462 and HB 464, that would open one, and as of April 2026 the Senate was still sitting on both. No window is open now. Finish the questions anyway, and say so on the call. If a window does open, someone will already know your name.

18, 19 or 20 when you were there? It happens; the center holds young people up to 20. For someone who was 18 to 23 at the time, the same statute gives until age 30, § 5533(b)(2)(i.1), and the same November 2019 cutoff applies. That one takes a phone call and a calendar, not a guess. One more plain note: the 2019 law stripped the City's immunity for these claims, but again only for claims that hadn't already expired when it passed. Same date, same line. A lawyer decides where you fall on it.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never reported it. Inside, reporting had a cost, and everyone knew it.
You did report it, to a counselor or a supervisor or your public defender, and nothing came of it.
You were there more than once and the years blur. Pick the closest bucket. The call sorts the rest.
It was in the old building on the Parkway, or in East Falls, not on 48th Street. Same institution, same City. The page covers all three.
You were sent upstate afterward, to Loysville or another state facility, and something happened there too. Say so. The October 2024 filings name several of them.
You live in Jersey now, or Delaware, or you're inside somewhere else. Most people who went through the center are somewhere else now.

Facilities covered

Every building the City's juvenile detention center has occupied counts, under whatever name it had when you were there. The Youth Study Center at 20th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, 1952 to 2008. The Youth Study Center in the former Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, 3232 Henry Avenue in East Falls, 2008 to 2012. And the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center, 91 North 48th Street at Haverford Avenue, January 2013 to today. People call it PJJSC, the JJSC, YSC or just the Study Center. If it was a different Pennsylvania youth facility instead, Delaware County's detention center, Loysville, St. Gabriel's Hall, VisionQuest, Devereux, the questions still work. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center?

The City of Philadelphia runs it, so the City is who you sue. One person already has. That 2023 case, Court of Common Pleas, named the Youth Study Center and the Juvenile Justice Services Center and the City, all three, and it settled in January 2025. Whether you can depends mostly on when you were born and what happened, which is what the questions above sort out.

The City has immunity. Doesn't that end it?

Not for this. Pennsylvania's 2019 law added sexual abuse to the short list of things a city or county can be sued over, 42 Pa.C.S. § 8542(b)(9), when its negligence let it happen, and took the usual cap off those claims. The City still fights the facts of any case, sure. What it can't do anymore is say it's untouchable.

Statute of limitations in Pennsylvania: has mine already run out?

Depends on your birthday, mostly. Under 18 at the time and born December 1989 or later, and the law since November 2019 says you have until you turn 55. Born earlier than that, and the same law almost certainly doesn't reach you, because it only kept alive claims that hadn't already expired when it passed. No lookback window is open for older claims right now. The House passed two bills for one in 2025; the Senate hasn't moved. The deadline section above walks through it.

How much is a Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center settlement?

We won't put a number on this page, and be careful with anyone who does. The one settlement in this record, the 2023 case, has no public figure. Yours are your facts. A lawyer will tell you plainly after they've looked.

I was only at the Youth Study Center, years before the new building. Does this page still apply?

Yes. Same institution under an older name, same City, and the 2023 complaint named both. The deadline is the hard part for the older years, and the honest answer is in the deadline section: born December 1989 or later, you have time; born before, it likely takes a change in the law.

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.

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 Pennsylvania 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.