What happened to you at Spofford was not okay.

Spofford. 1221 Spofford Avenue in Hunts Point, the City's own lock-up for kids from 1957 until it closed in March 2011. After 1999 they called it Bridges. Same building, same hallways. If you were held there, any year, at 11 or 16 or anywhere in between, and someone on staff did something you have never said out loud, then yes. This page 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 locked up. That is the whole point. Every one of the 257 people with a Spofford case in Bronx Supreme Court was a kid the City was holding, and the cases are against the City for what happened while it held them.
You have a record now, or you did time later as an adult. So what. Nothing about that changes whether a grown-up on staff should have been near you at 13.
You never told a soul. Not then, not since. Most of the people who filed in 2024 carried it for twenty or thirty years first.
The building is gone. Spofford closed on March 30, 2011 and there is housing on the site now. The defendant was never the building. It is the City of New York and the agency that ran the place, and both are still here.
It was decades ago. This January the City rewrote its own deadline law, over the mayor's veto; the new window runs to July 29, 2027, catch and all (the catch is below). And if you filed in 2023 or 2024 and got tossed in September 2025, the rewrite was aimed at you. Amend, or refile.

The Spofford lawsuits: what the public record says, and when

We didn't write what's below. The courts did, and the City's own investigators, and the reporters who covered it, and we link to every one of them. We don't add to it. The City of New York has denied the allegations in its filings, and the 2002 charges we mention were charges, not a conviction. Nothing here decides anything.

1957, then June 1978

The City opened the boys' detention center at 1221 Spofford Avenue in 1957 with 239 beds. Twenty-one years later a task force the Mayor himself convened found the place "too large, poorly designed" and "poorly managed, with insufficient resources and staff support," and told the City to phase it out for facilities of twenty beds or fewer. It stayed open another 33 years. Mayor's Task Force on Spofford, first report (NCJRS abstract).

June 20, 2002

The City's Department of Investigation announced the arrest of a 46-year-old juvenile counselor at Bridges, as Spofford was then called. The criminal complaint charged him with two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, sexual abuse in the second degree and sexual abuse in the third degree, over two 16-year-old residents. The City fired him the day before the announcement. Those are charges; we have found no published outcome. NYC Department of Investigation release.

March 30, 2011

ACS, which had taken over the city's juvenile jails, closed the building for good. Its commissioner said the agency had no plans to ever use it for detention again. The kids went to Horizon in the Bronx and Crossroads in Brooklyn. Mott Haven Herald.

April 29–30, 2024

More than 150 people sued the City of New York in Bronx Supreme Court under the City's Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, saying staff at Spofford, Horizon and Rikers sexually abused them as children, from the 1970s on. One of those complaints, Index 806950/2024E, names the City, ACS and "Spofford Juvenile Detention Center a/k/a Bridges Juvenile Center" as defendants. The complaints allege the City let it go on despite years of reports and investigations. Norwood News.

January 27–28, 2025

The count reached 539 suits across the four city facilities, with Spofford named in the largest share. Index 802036/2025E, Rivera v. City of New York, ACS and Spofford, was filed that week. The City had by then moved to dismiss, arguing the law reached only the individuals who did the abusing, not the institution that held the children. Harlem World Magazine.

September 11, 2025

A Bronx judge dismissed more than 450 of the juvenile-detention suits, the two Spofford cases we cite among them, on an appellate reading that the 2022 wording of the law did not clearly reach those accused of enabling abuse. The City had asked for exactly that, though an ACS spokesperson did call sexual abuse "abhorrent and unacceptable" and say the agency takes every allegation seriously. Gothamist.

January 29, 2026

The City Council overrode the mayor's veto, and on January 29, 2026, Local Law 50 of 2026 (Int. 1297-A) became law. The people dismissed in 2025 can amend, or refile, and anyone else has until July 29, 2027, eighteen months, to bring anything from before January 9, 2022. And the language on who answers for it, the part the 2022 wording left unclear, now reads "directed, enabled, participated in, or conspired in" the abuse. Summary of Local Law 50 of 2026.

April–August 2026

Both Spofford cases came back as amended complaints, 802036/2025E on April 2 and 806950/2024E on April 20. The City answered both on June 12, 2026. They are live. The court's e-filing index now lists 257 cases naming Spofford, 62 of them filed in July and August 2026. Meanwhile the state's highest court accepted a question from the federal appeals court on April 16, 2026, in Parker v. Alexander: whether the City's revival window is preempted by the state's Child Victims Act. On August 6 a Manhattan judge restored a survivor's claim against the City and ACS under the new law, then paused it until that question is answered. A.G. v City of New York, Aug. 6, 2026.

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

The City of New York. Not a counselor who may be dead or gone by now, not a building that has been torn down. The cases on file name the City and the Administration for Children's Services, which inherited Spofford from the Department of Juvenile Justice, and the law they are filed under says a party that enabled the abuse answers for it alongside the person who did it. A city that locks up an eleven-year-old takes on the duty to watch the adults it puts on his hallway. The complaints say the City knew, for decades, and kept the place running anyway.

That knowledge is not something the lawyers invented. The Mayor's own task force wrote in 1978 that Spofford was poorly managed and under-staffed and should be phased out. In 2002 the City's Department of Investigation arrested one of its own counselors over two 16-year-old residents and fired him. Whether what the City knew adds up to what the law calls enabling is the question a court will decide. But it is the City's record, not ours.

One honest thing about money. The City is a public defendant, so there is no insurance company to go bankrupt and no cap on what a jury can award in New York for a case like this. There are also no punitive damages against the City. A lawyer will tell you what that means for you, not this page.

Your deadline: the New York City window for childhood sexual abuse claims, and the catch

Two doors. The City's is the one open right now, and it shuts July 29, 2027. Your 2023 or 2024 case got dismissed? It lets you amend, or refile. And this time the law says institutions, in plain words. That is the route the 257 Spofford cases are on. The law is Local Law 50 of 2026, the one in the record above, dates and all: the City's Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, reopened for a year and a half, reaching back to anything before January 9, 2022. Spofford closed in 2011, so you're inside, whatever year it was.

Here is the catch, and we would rather you hear it from us. The City fought the first wave and won a dismissal in September 2025; the Council answered by rewriting the law over the mayor's veto. The City has since answered the amended complaints and the cases are moving. But a separate question, whether a city law can revive claims that the state's Child Victims Act already dealt with, is sitting with New York's highest court in a case called Parker v. Alexander, accepted April 16, 2026, and at least one judge has already paused a case against the City until it answers. Nobody can promise you how that comes out. What a lawyer can do is get you filed inside the window, so that whatever the court says, you are in line and not outside it.

There is a second route, and it is why we ask your birth year. The state's Child Victims Act lets a childhood claim be brought until the person turns 55 (CPLR 208(b)). Born in 1971 or later, you are under 55 this year. Born earlier, that door is likely shut, and the Act's own look-back window closed on August 14, 2021. Whether the age-55 rule reaches a claim from the 1980s or 1990s is a lawyer's question, not a page's. Either way, the answer takes a conversation, and it takes it before July 2027.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You have never said it out loud. Not to a spouse, not to a cellmate, not to anyone.
You don't have a clean word for what happened, and you're half convinced it wouldn't count. The counselor arrested in 2002 was charged over things a lot of people would not have called anything.
You were sent there for something you did. The City still had to keep you safe. That is the whole case.
You went through Spofford more than once, or you were at Horizon or Crossroads too. Say so. The cases cover all three.
It was another kid, not staff. A locked unit exists so that can't happen. It is still the City's watch.
You live in New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, or somewhere farther now. Most people do, by the time they are ready.

Facilities covered

Spofford Juvenile Center at 1221 Spofford Avenue in Hunts Point, the Bronx, from 1957 to 2011 · Bridges Juvenile Center, which is the same building after the 1999 renaming · the girls' side and the intake units on those same grounds. Held at Horizon Juvenile Center in Mott Haven instead? Or at Crossroads in Brownsville, or on Rikers at 16 or 17? The questions still work. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue Spofford Juvenile Center?

Not the building, no; that closed in 2011. What the 257 cases on file in Bronx Supreme Court go after is the City of New York and ACS, with Spofford named as the place. Whether you can join them turns on three things: the years you were there, the year you were born, and what happened. The questions above sort that out.

The judge threw out the Spofford lawsuits. Is it over?

No. What happened on September 11, 2025 is that a judge dismissed more than 450 cases because the City's law, as it was worded then, didn't clearly reach institutions. So the Council rewrote it, January 29, 2026. The two Spofford cases we cite were re-pleaded in April; the City answered in June; and then July and August 2026 brought 62 more Spofford cases.

How much is a Spofford lawsuit worth?

We won't put a number on this page and you should be wary of anyone who does. No Spofford case has settled or gone to a jury that we can point to, and the City has not admitted anything, so the plain answer comes from a lawyer who has looked at your facts, not from us.

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.

Do I have to name the person?

Not for us, no, and never on this page. The cases are against the City. On the call, say what you can say; what the complaint needs is for a lawyer to work out. Some who filed in 2024 had a first name, or a nickname, and nothing more.

The statute of limitations in New York: has it run out on me?

Yes, two that matter here. The state's Child Victims Act runs until the person turns 55, but only for claims that were still alive when it passed, and its catch-all window closed in August 2021. The City's own law is open for anything before January 9, 2022 until July 29, 2027, and the City is contesting whether it can stand. A lawyer reads both against your dates.

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.