What happened to you at the Rose M. Singer Center was not okay.

Rosie's. The women's jail on Rikers Island, open since June 1988, the only place New York City has sent women in its custody for most of four decades. In 2013 the federal government put it on a short list of jails where staff sexual misconduct ran far above the national rate. The City has since paid to settle four cases. And on October 3, 2023 a complaint in Bronx Supreme Court asked $40 million over what a captain and guards allegedly did to one woman there between 2003 and 2005. If you were held at Rosie's, at any age, in any year before 2022, this is about you.

Free
Confidential
No obligation
You never pay a dollar

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

This applies to you no matter what

You were in jail. That is the whole point. The City took custody of you, and with custody comes the duty to keep its own officers off you. A conviction, a record, a warrant now, none of it changes that.
You never reported it, or you did and it went nowhere. In 2018 a federal judge in Manhattan looked at how the Department handled these complaints and ruled a jury could decide a case on exactly that.
You were 16 or 17. Girls that age were held at Rosie's until October 2018, when the state made the City move them off the island. If that was you, you are on this page too, and there may be a second route for you.
You took a plea, you did your time, you'd rather forget the place. Understood. Nobody on this page will ask you what you were in for.
It was another woman held there, not an officer. The 2013 federal survey counted that at Rosie's too, at three times the jail average. The jail is still answerable for who it let near you.
You're a daughter, a sister, a partner asking for someone who can't. Reach out anyway.

The Rose M. Singer Center lawsuits: what the public record says, and when

We didn't write what's below. The Justice Department did, and federal judges, and the lawyers who filed the complaints, and the reporters who read them. Every line links to where it came from, and we don't add to it. Where it says a complaint alleges something, that is all it is until a court says more. The City denied liability in the settled cases and has admitted nothing in the pending ones.

May 2013

The Bureau of Justice Statistics published its national inmate survey for 2011 and 2012 and printed the Rose M. Singer Center by name on two of its short lists: 5.9 percent of the women surveyed there reported sexual misconduct by staff, against a jail average of 1.8, and 5.0 percent reported victimization by another inmate, against 1.6. Twelve jails in the country made the staff list. BJS report, tables 3 and 4.

May 2017

The City paid $1.2 million to two women, Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2, to settle a federal case in the Southern District of New York (1:15-cv-03849) over a correction officer at Rosie's. Their lawyers said the Department's investigation had been a sham. The officer was never criminally charged. Prison Legal News.

December 2018

In another Rosie's case, U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan refused to throw out the claim against the City. A reasonable juror, she wrote, could conclude that the Department's failures to investigate and discipline officers accused of sexual assault led the two officers in that case to believe they would not be punished. She credited an expert who put reported sexual assault at the jail at double the national average. New York Law Journal, via Yahoo.

February 2019

Her complaint said the City had long been on notice that its staff exploited women in its custody, and this is the case with a conviction in it. Correction Officer Jose Cosme assaulted her at Rosie's in November 2015. The Bronx District Attorney indicted him in August 2016, and in June 2017 he pleaded guilty to a felony count of criminal sex act; ten years' probation and sex-offender registration. The City paid her $500,000. Prison Legal News.

April 12, 2023

Levy Konigsberg filed the first ten Adult Survivors Act suits by women held at Rosie's and said more than 100 were coming. The complaints allege that officers and staff knew in advance when assaults would happen and who would carry them out, and that reports were ignored or hidden. Firm release, PR Newswire.

October 3, 2023

A complaint filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Bronx County, asks $40 million from the City and the Department of Correction over what it says a captain, a guard and several employees did to one woman held at Rosie's between 2003 and 2005. It alleges an "accepted practice of officer-on-female-inmate sexual abuse at RMSC" and says the defendants concealed it and lied so she would not come forward. It was brought under the Adult Survivors Act. Filing counsel's announcement.

March 26, 2024

CBS New York counted 719 sexual-assault lawsuits over Rikers Island, most of them by women held at Rosie's, seeking $14 billion from the City. One firm alone represented 475 women, the Mayor said he was shocked, and the Department said it was trying to get better at handling sexual-misconduct cases. CBS New York.

January 29, 2026

Local Law 50 of 2026, the one this page's deadline rests on, and it took a veto override to get it. The Mayor had said no to Int 1297-A. The Council said yes over him: 18 months for anyone with conduct before January 9, 2022 to file under the Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, and that clock runs out July 29, 2027. Whether the law survives is another matter. A Manhattan judge used it on August 6, 2026 to restore a dismissed claim against the City, then paused that claim, because the Court of Appeals still has to say whether the state's own lookback laws preempt the City's. Council file, Int 1297-2025.

We checked this on September 12, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from January 29, 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 Rose M. Singer Center lawsuit

The City of New York. Not the one officer, or not only him. Rosie's is run by the City's Department of Correction, and the cases already on file, the settled ones and the 700-odd pending, are against the City. The theory is plain enough. The City locked you in, put its officers in charge of you, and then, the complaints say, failed to investigate them, failed to discipline them and let the ones it was warned about keep their posts. The 2023 complaint calls it an accepted practice. A federal judge in 2018 said a jury could find the Department's failures were the reason two officers thought they'd get away with it. That is what makes it the City's case to answer.

The City is self-insured and it has paid on this building before: $1.2 million in 2017, $425,000 in 2018, $500,000 and another $1.2 million in 2019, each to women who said an officer at Rosie's assaulted them. Those were individual cases, not a promise about yours, and nobody should put a number on yours from a web page. One thing to know going in: New York does not allow punitive damages against a city, so a City case is about what was done to you and what it cost you, plus fees.

The officer, the captain, whoever it was, can be sued too; the 2023 complaint does that, and that's where punitive damages are still possible. The one who can pay, though, is the City. The one who had the duty, same answer.

Your deadline: the New York City lookback window for abuse at the Rose M. Singer Center

Work back from July 29, 2027. Nothing else on this page matters as much as that date, so here it is first. Eighteen months is not long. What's behind the date is a City law, not a state one (that distinction is going to matter in a minute), and it covers anything that happened before January 9, 2022, so every Rosie's allegation in the record sits inside it, 2003 to 2005, 2015, 2016, the decades the 719 suits cover. An officer abusing a woman in his custody? That's the kind of act it was written for, and the 2026 version says in so many words that the City itself can be sued under it. If you want to look it up: Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, Administrative Code 10-1101 and following, reopened January 29, 2026 by Local Law 50 of 2026.

Here's the honest part. The state's own lookback laws are closed: the Child Victims Act window shut August 14, 2021, and the Adult Survivors Act window, the one the 2023 suits used, shut November 24, 2023. The City is arguing in court that those state laws cancel out the City's window, and the state's highest court agreed in March 2026 to answer that question. One Manhattan judge has already restored a claim under the new law and put it on hold until the answer comes. So a case filed now is real, and it is filed into an open question. We'd rather you hear that here first.

If you were 16 or 17 at Rosie's, there may be a second road. New York gives anyone abused as a child until age 55 to sue (CPLR 208(b)), but only if the claim was still alive in August 2019 when that rule took effect, which in practice means born around 1996 or later. Earlier than that and the City window is the route. Either way, that's a conversation with a lawyer, not a guess.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told a soul. Not a CO, not a grievance, not your family. Most of the 719 didn't either, for twenty years.
You did report it and were written up, moved, or put in the box for your trouble. That happened to the women in the settled cases too.
You don't remember his name, or you only know the nickname the tier used.
You were only there a month. One of the women in the CBS story was there 33 days.
You live in Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, anywhere. Most people who passed through Rosie's don't live near it now.

Facilities covered

The Rose M. Singer Center, 19-19 Hazen Street, East Elmhurst, on Rikers Island, every housing area, the nursery, the clinic, intake, and the years from its opening in June 1988 to the start of 2022. If your years were in a different Rikers building, the men's jails, RNDC as a teenager, there is a page for the island as a whole at /rikers-island-survivors and the same questions work there. A different women's facility, Bedford Hills, Taconic, a county jail in Jersey or Connecticut? Answer the questions anyway and say where on the call.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue Rikers Island for sexual abuse?

Hundreds of women have, in Bronx Supreme Court and in federal court in Manhattan. The defendant isn't the island, it's the City of New York, which runs it. Whether you can comes down to two things, when it happened and how old you were, and that's what the questions above sort out.

How much are the Rikers Island lawsuits worth?

We won't put a number on this page, and be wary of anyone who does. The figures in the record, the $40 million the 2023 complaint asks for and the four Rosie's settlements between $425,000 and $1.2 million, are context, not a forecast. Yours depends on what happened, what the Department knew, and when. A lawyer will tell you plainly once they've looked.

What happened at Rosie's on Rikers Island?

The short version; the long one is in the record above. A federal survey in 2013 put the Rose M. Singer Center on a list of twelve jails nationwide where staff sexual misconduct ran high. Between 2017 and 2019 the City paid to settle four cases from women who said officers there had assaulted them, and one of those officers pleaded guilty to a felony. Then 2023, and more than 700 suits reaching back decades.

Is there a deadline to sue over abuse at Rikers Island?

Yes. The honest answer is two deadlines, one dead and one alive. Dead: the state's Adult Survivors Act, since November 24, 2023. Alive: the City's own lookback, which reopened in January 2026 and closes July 29, 2027 for anything before January 9, 2022. The City is contesting that law in court, so it is a real door and a contested one, and a lawyer should hear your facts before that date.

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.