What happened to you on Rikers Island was not okay.

Rikers Island. A cluster of jails in the East River, and for fifty years the place the City sent people who couldn't make bail. Maybe you were held there. Any building, any year before 2022. And maybe something happened that you've never said out loud. If so, then yes. This is about you. You wouldn't be the first to say it, either. About 150 people said it in one Bronx Supreme Court filing in April 2024, over what staff did to them while they were locked up, Rikers among the places named, and by the end of January 2025 there were 539 of them.

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

This applies to you no matter what

You were an adult, or you were 16 or 17. Most of the people this page is for were grown, but the City's law doesn't care how old you were. It cares where it happened, and whether it was before January 9, 2022, and that's the whole list. If you were a kid there (and for years the City put kids that age on the island with the adults; the record below has the day that stopped, and where the last 93 went), your years count, and there may be a second door for you.
It was another person in custody, not an officer. The cases on file are against the City for what it allowed, and a jail has one job before every other job, which is watching.
You already filed under the Adult Survivors Act, or meant to and missed it. That window shut in November 2023. This one is a different law, it's open now, and it names the City.
You have a record. Everyone this page is for was in a jail. It has no bearing on whether you can ask.
You're a mother, a partner, a grown son asking for someone who can't. Reach out anyway. Plenty of people do.

The Rikers Island lawsuits: what the public record says, and when

We didn't write what's below. Courts did, and the City Council, and federal investigators, 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 New York has not admitted liability in the pending cases, and nothing here decides them.

August 4, 2014

The U.S. Attorney for Manhattan finished a federal civil-rights investigation of the adolescent jails on Rikers, covering 2011 to 2013, and reported to the City that "a deep-seated culture of violence is pervasive throughout the adolescent facilities at Rikers," with 1,057 injuries to teenagers from staff use of force in one fiscal year. The first fix demanded: house adolescents somewhere not on Rikers Island. U.S. Attorney, S.D.N.Y..

May 2017

The City paid $1.2 million to settle a federal case brought by the Legal Aid Society for two women held at the Rose M. Singer Center, 1:15-cv-03849 in the Southern District of New York. The complaint had alleged a guard assaulted one of them as often as four times a week and threatened the other with solitary if she told, and called the Department's own review a "sham investigation." The guard was never criminally charged. Prison Legal News.

October 1, 2018

Under the state's Raise the Age law, the last 93 sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds were moved off Rikers to the Horizon Juvenile Center in the Bronx. Before that day, a teenager arrested in New York City went to the island with the adults. amNY.

November 9, 2023

THE CITY, the news site, counted at least 400 lawsuits against the Department of Correction over sexual abuse in custody. That was with roughly two weeks left in the state's Adult Survivors Act window. Most were women who'd been at Rosie's; some described stays going back to the 1990s. Same piece, the Department's own numbers for January through June 2023: 143 complaints. Two substantiated. THE CITY.

April 2024

About 150 people, one complaint: Talavera v. City of New York, Index No. 807051/2024E, Supreme Court, Bronx County, brought under the City's Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law. Named as defendants: the City, its Administration for Children's Services, its Department of Correction. Named as places: Horizon, Crossroads, Spofford, and the Rikers Island jails. The complaint alleges the City "had knowledge of, and turned a blind eye to, this culture of abuse." Prison Legal News.

January 28, 2025

Another 115 from the same firm. That put its count of these cases against the City at 539 since April 2024. By then the City had already moved to dismiss (October 2024), and its argument was narrow: the law reaches the individuals who did it, not the institutions that ran the places. Brooklyn Paper.

September 29, 2025

More than 450 of those suits, the Rikers cases among them, thrown out by a Bronx judge. Not on the facts, though. An appellate court had ruled that summer that the 2022 version of the City's law didn't reach institutions for older conduct, and the trial judge followed it. The plaintiffs' lawyer said his clients would appeal or refile once the Council fixed the law. Gothamist.

August 6, 2026

The Council had fixed it by then. Int. 1297-A became Local Law 50 of 2026 on January 29, 2026, over the mayor's veto: a claim against anyone who "commits, directs, enables, participates in, or conspires in" gender-motivated violence before January 9, 2022, filed within 18 months, and a line letting the dismissed cases be refiled. On this date a Manhattan judge used it to restore a claim against the City, then stayed it: the Second Circuit had sent the question of whether state law preempts the City's window to the New York Court of Appeals on March 23, 2026, in Parker v. Alexander, and the claim waits on that answer. A.G. v. City of New York, Sup. Ct. N.Y. Co..

We checked this on September 12, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from August 6, 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 Rikers Island lawsuit

The City of New York. Not one officer, the City. That is the whole point of the 2026 law, and the reason 450 cases were thrown out and then given a way back. An officer who did something answers for himself, if he can be found and has anything. The City ran the jail, hired him, kept him on the post, read the grievances, and it is the City that the Talavera complaint says "had knowledge of, and turned a blind eye to" what went on. Under Administrative Code 10-1104.1 a party that "enables" the violence is a defendant in its own right.

The theory in plain words: a jail takes people who cannot leave and puts them behind doors with the staff it chose. If the staff hurt them and the jail had been told, by a federal survey in 2013 that put Rosie's at 5.9 percent for staff sexual misconduct against a national 1.8, by a federal investigation in 2014, by its own Inspector General, by hundreds of filings in 2023, and kept running the place the same way, the jail answers for the next person through the door. That is what the complaints plead. A court decides it.

Two honest notes. In New York, punitive damages are not available against a city, so a claim against the City is for what you lost, plus fees; punitives stay on the table only against an individual officer. And the City is contesting the 2026 law itself, arguing that state law preempts it. That question is with the state's highest court now. We can't tell you how that comes out. Nobody honest can.

Your deadline: the New York City window for Rikers Island claims, and what's still being fought over

Open now: Local Law 50 of 2026. Closes July 29, 2027. The Council made it law on January 29, 2026, over the mayor's veto, and gave it 18 months. It reaches back with no floor, anything before January 9, 2022, anywhere in the five boroughs. And the part that matters here: you can name the institution that enabled it. For Rikers, that's the City. Your age at the time doesn't come into it, which is why the questions above ask what years you were there and not when you were born. Had a case in the first City window, March 2023 to March 2025, and saw it dismissed? The law says you can refile it, or amend it.

The other New York doors are shut for most people who were on the island. The Child Victims Act window closed in August 2021. The Adult Survivors Act window closed November 24, 2023. The first City window closed at the end of February 2025. One exception worth a sentence: if you were 16 or 17 on Rikers and were born in about August 1996 or later, the state's childhood rule, CPLR 208(b), may still run to your 55th birthday. A lawyer checks that on a phone call; it isn't something to guess at.

And the honest part. The City is arguing in court that the state's revival laws override the City's window. That question is sitting with the New York Court of Appeals right now, in a case called Parker v. Alexander; the last entry in the record above has the dates. And while it sits there, a Manhattan judge has already restored one claim against the City under the new law, then paused it to wait for the answer. Which tells you two things. The window is real, and open. And a case filed inside it holds its place while the high court decides; a case never filed has no place to hold.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never reported it. On Rikers, reporting had a cost, and everyone knew it. The complaints on file say so in so many words.
You did report it, and it came back "unsubstantiated." Of 143 complaints in the first half of 2023, the Department substantiated two. Their number, not ours.
You were sentenced, not just detained. Or you were there on a parole hold, or for a weekend. Same island, same law.
You were there more than once and the years blur. Pick the closest bucket. The call sorts the rest.
You live upstate now, or in Jersey, or Pennsylvania, or you're inside somewhere else. Most people who did time on Rikers are somewhere else now.

Rikers Island jails covered

Every building on the island counts, under whatever name it had when you were there. AMKC, the Anna M. Kross Center. GRVC, the George R. Vierno Center. OBCC, the Otis Bantum Correctional Center. EMTC, the Eric M. Taylor Center. RNDC, the Robert N. Davoren Complex, which was the adolescent jail. GMDC, the George Motchan Detention Center, closed in 2018. The North Infirmary Command and the West Facility. And the Rose M. Singer Center, the women's jail, which has a page of its own. So do the prison wards at Bellevue and at Elmhurst. If it was a City juvenile center instead, Horizon, Crossroads, Spofford, the questions still work. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue Rikers Island for sexual abuse?

You sue the City of New York, which runs it, and hundreds of people already have, in Bronx Supreme Court under the City's gender-motivated violence law. Whether you can depends on where it happened and whether it was before January 9, 2022, which is what the questions above sort out.

How much is a Rikers Island sexual abuse settlement?

We won't put a number on this page, and be careful with anyone who does. The one public figure in this record is the $1.2 million the City paid two women in 2017, and that was two people, one case, one set of facts. Yours are yours. A lawyer will tell you plainly after they've looked.

It was a long time ago. Is it too late?

Depends which law you mean. The state windows are gone: Adult Survivors Act, November 2023; Child Victims Act, August 2021. The City's is not. Local Law 50 is open now, and it stays open until July 29, 2027; it takes in anything before January 9, 2022 with no earliest date, so 1985 counts the same as 2019, and the deadline section above walks through all of it. One caution. The City is challenging its own Council's law in court, so the safe reading is: it's open now, and a filed case keeps its place.

I already filed under the Adult Survivors Act. Does this affect me?

Probably not, and ask the lawyer you have. That case is its own case under a state law. Who this page is mostly for: people who missed that window, or sat in a men's jail and never heard of it, or whose City-law case was one of the 450 thrown out in September 2025 and can now go back in.

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 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.