All defendants are denying culpability in a federal class action lawsuit that alleges the conditions and treatment of youth at the Mary Davis Juvenile Detention Home in Galesburg violate the constitutional rights of those who are detained there.
The lawsuit, filed May 28 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois on behalf of two juveniles, names four defendants – Raymond Cavanaugh, chief judge of the Ninth Judicial Circuit; Wendi Steck, administrator of the Mary Davis Home; Bridget Pletz, director of court services; and Knox County.
The lawsuit alleges many detained there have already suffered significant abuse and trauma in their lives and face mental health issues.
“But instead of caring for them, defendants subject them to prolonged solitary confinement that is well known to cause lasting harm, especially to the young,” reads the complaint.
Knox County’s answer to the complaint, filed Sept. 20 after being granted two extensions by the court, repeatedly states that county government has no oversight or control over the practices at the Mary Davis Home, although the county does have administrative and financial ties to the facility.
The other three defendants — all represented by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office —deny that children detained at the Mary Davis Home spend the majority of their time in solitary confinement and are denied mental health care.
Their answer to complaint was also filed Sept. 20 after two extensions.
Plaintiff part of ‘riot’ at the facility
Youth as young as 11 years old are detained at the Mary Davis Home, but the majority of those housed there are between the ages 14 and 18.
ACLU of Illinois, which represents the plaintiffs in the case, said youth endure abusive, extended solitary confinement at the Mary Davis Home despite repeated warnings from the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice to end such practices. Neither of the two plaintiffs is still detained at the facility, according to defendants.
The lawsuit alleges one plaintiff, A.M., spent 23 hours a day in his room on what the facility calls Special Group Status. That requires youth to eat meals in their cells and denies them proper education and recreation, according to the lawsuit.
Attorneys for Cavanaugh, Pletz, and Steck said in their response to the complaint that A.M. was placed on SGS “due to his participation in a riot that injured multiple MDH staff, his continued assaults on staff and other juveniles, and his damaging property.”
Eight staff members and two juveniles were injured in the March 27 incident that the Knox County Sheriff’s Office described as a “riot.”
Another youth, N.J., alleges a dentist appointment was canceled as punishment while he was enduring painful toothaches.
The defendants claim the Knox County Health Department canceled the appointment over safety concerns, following N.J.’s participation in the incident.
“The Knox County Sheriff put a halt on transportation at that time due to the riot,” the defendants say in their response, denying N.J. was denied medical care as a punishment.
Another plaintiff, J.B.H., alleges he too was placed on SGS as a disciplinary measure and spent 23 hours a day in his cell, with the lawsuit claiming that youth endure a “constellation of abuses and deprivations” at the Mary Davis Home.
“J.B.H.’s cell, where he now spends the majority of his young life, is not a place where he can get any rest. It has fluorescent lights on the ceiling that never turn off – it is brightly lit all day and all night, which makes it very difficult to sleep. J.B.H. does not remember the last time he got anything close to a full night’s sleep, and he is constantly exhausted,” reads the complaint.
The defendants deny that youth are confined to their cells for 23 hours day. They claim that lights are dimmed at night and that no constitutional deprivation occurs at the facility.
However, they admit that the United Nations prohibits solitary confinement for juveniles, that the Department of Justice has banned solitary confinement in federal prisons – and that the Illinois legislature enacted the End Youth Solitary Confinement Act last year.
IDJJ standards
The lawsuit alleges that in addition to the excessive use of solitary confinement, the Mary Davis Home also subjects youth to invasive and humiliating facility-wide strip searches — and fails to provide adequate nutrition, education, or mental health services.
As previously reported by TSPR, the Mary Davis Home is striving to abide by new IDJJ standards that were implemented in 2022. Prior to that, the standards had not been updated since 1998, and previously dealt almost exclusively with the physical conditions of facilities.
For instance, Steck told TSPR that before the new standards, state inspections would include making sure that toilets flushed, that water came out of faucets, that youth were being fed – and not much else.
The updated standards and publicly available audits of county juvenile detention centers have shined a light on practices inside the facilities and prompted improvements to areas identified as needing urgent correction.
In the first year under the new standards, the Mary Davis Home was out of compliance in eight areas —hygiene, food, discipline, education, staffing, admission procedures, medical care, and mental health care — conditions that were concerning enough for IDJJ to require follow-up visits.
This year, after making significant improvements in multiple areas of non-compliance, the Mary Davis Home still failed to meet IDJJ standards in education and discipline, the latter because of the continued use of extended confinement.
IDJJ standards mandate that room confinement can only be used only as a temporary response to behavior that threatens the safety of the youth or others — not for a fixed period of time as punishment, but only until the youth is calm enough to join regular activities.
The lawsuit alleges the defendants knowingly persist with the “culture of solitary confinement” despite the IDJJ standards and known research that shows the practice inflicts immeasurable harm on youth.
IDJJ audits show the Mary Davis Home was regularly strip searching every youth that came into the facility before the new IDJJ standards were implemented. That process was discontinued as a result of the new standards, although facility-wide and individual strip searches still occur.
The lawsuit claims the facility continues to subject youth to “invasive, humiliating, and traumatic” facility-wide strip searches without reasonable, individualized suspicion.
One youth, M.P., claims there was a facility-wide strip search in September 2023 because a writing pen went missing. M.P. alleges staff pulled youth into the gym, then forced them one by one into an empty cell and forced them to take off all their clothes.
In their response to the complaint, the defendants admitted to a facility-wide strip search that occurred in September 2023, but deny the missing item was a pen.
What happened in Franklin County
The Mary Davis Home is affiliated with Knox County. It receives funding from the Administrative Office of Illinois Courts, the Illinois State Board of Education, Knox County, and the other counties that house youth there.
While the facility is striving to abide by new standards from the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice implemented in 2022, it is not under the jurisdiction of any state agency but the Ninth Judicial Circuit.
There were 16 such county juvenile detention centers in Illinois — until the one in Franklin County was shut down late last year.
In June 2023, ACLU of Illinois filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of youth against the Franklin County Juvenile Detention Center in Benton, following IDJJ audits and significant non-compliance at that facility.
Two months after the defendants filed their responses to the complaint in that federal class action lawsuit, the Chief Judge of the Second Judicial Circuit abruptly closed that facility, saying that staffing shortages made it difficult to abide by the updated IDJJ standards.
The lawsuit was then dismissed.
Kevin Fee, Senior Special Litigation Counsel for ACLU of Illinois, said the organization was pleased that youth will no longer “be exposed to the horrible conditions” at the Franklin County Juvenile Detention Center.
“As we celebrate this development, we know that there are other youth facilities that subject children to harmful and unconstitutional conditions,” Fee said. “Our recent lawsuit against the Mary Davis Home in Knox County makes that clear.”
Mary Davis Home leadership has also stated that staffing shortages are a hurdle to being compliant with the IDJJ standards.
Fee said ACLU of Illinois will continue its work to ensure that youth in Illinois are not subjected to long periods of solitary confinement or denied mental health treatment.
“The harms resulting from this treatment lasts for decades. None of us can look the other way while young people suffer the consequences,” Fee said.
As with the Franklin County case, the Mary Davis Home lawsuit was filed on behalf of the individual plaintiffs as well as all youth who are currently are detained there or will be detained there in the future.
“We are asking a federal court to order the fixes this facility desperately needs,” ACLU of Illinois said in a release.
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