Civil Suit Filed on Behalf of Former JCCA Residents Alleges Sexual Abuse

By Martin Wilbur

Civil lawsuits were filed last week in Manhattan Supreme Court on behalf of seven former residents who allege they were sexually abused while living at Pleasantville Cottage School and Edenwald School.

The separate suits, submitted to the court on July 8, level explosive charges that the children, one as young as 10 years old, were victimized by staff or other minor residents while in the care and custody of the schools as far back as 2015 until as recently as 2023, in one instance. All of the plaintiffs have now reached adulthood.

New York City, the city’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), the Jewish Child Care Association (JCCA) of New York, the JCCA Foundation, the Pleasantville Cottage School and the Mount Pleasant Cottage School Union Free School District have been named as defendants in the case. 

The Cottage School, located at the JCCA at 1075 Broadway in Pleasantville, houses emotionally troubled children between the ages of 7 and 16 years old who are in the New York City foster care system. They are to be provided with daily community meetings, group therapy, structured school days, job skills, workshops, internships and community employment opportunities. The Edenwald School serves children with behavioral and cognitive difficulties.

The plaintiffs, four males and three females, are seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages against the defendants under the state’s Child Victims Act, said Madeleine Skaller, an attorney from the Manhattan law firm Levy Konigsberg, LLP that is representing the seven former residents. A key feature of the law stipulates that anyone born after Feb. 14, 1998, have until they reach 55 years old to file a civil case against people or entities who they allege sexually abused them, she said.

Skaller said it is her clients’ position that staff members whose responsibility were to look out for the children at the two facilities were aware of the abuses and “turned a blind eye to it.”

“These folks are some of the forgotten kids in society, they’re kids that the foster care system couldn’t handle,” Skaller said. “They’re difficult. They have a lot of trauma and a lot of baggage, and when the world isn’t looking after these children, these despicable things happen to them, and I think the defendants are banking on the idea that no one cares what happens to these kids.”

The suit contends that allegations of sexual abuse date to the 1970s at the campus and has been “a breeding ground of sexual abuse, physical violence, and trauma.”

The Examiner reached out to the JCCA through its public relations spokesperson last week and did not receive a response or a statement from the organization. Nicholaus Paolucci, an attorney representing the New York City Law Department, said last Thursday the cases will be reviewed when the city is served but typically declines comment on pending litigation.

The suit lays out graphic descriptions of what each of the seven plaintiffs allegedly endured during their time at the JCCA campus. Although the former residents’ names are included in the lawsuit, The Examiner is using only their initials because of the sensitive nature of the case.

In 2016, C.W., a 16-year-old female, was placed at the Cottage School and was sexually abused by a male staff member more than 100 times, the suit alleges. She was often highly medicated, and the staff member would enter her room and hug and kiss her in exchange for promises of food money. The litigation also states that she was “penetrated digitally.”

A second plaintiff, a boy with the initials E.G., was 10 years old when he was placed in the Edenwald School in 2016 and was allegedly abused by a male staff member. During his four-year stay, the child had befriended another male resident, who forced him to perform oral sex five to 10 times, and when he told two female staff members, no action was taken, according to the litigation. 

The youngster then told a male staff member in the dining hall, who was on his phone, and then proceeded to put the child in a chokehold while grabbing his genitals, the litigation claims.

From 2017 to 2019, resident I.T. lived at the Edenwald School from the ages of 15 to 17. A few months into his stay, there was a night of music and dancing at the facility, when a female staffer began dancing in front of him and pushing her buttocks into the front of his body and making contact in the area of his genitals, the suit contends. The staff member then put her hands inside his clothing and began touching his genitals.

A fourth plaintiff, J.N., a 14-year-old girl, arrived at the Pleasantville Cottage School in 2016. She was allegedly abused by a male resident, who was uncomfortable in the boys’ cottages and was moved into his own room on the lower level of the girls’ cottage. He and J.N. soon became friends, and one day while doing makeup in the male resident’s room, he cut her arm twice and put her blood in a bottle with some of his blood to show they were bonding.

When J.N. expressed shock, the male resident pinned her and forced her to perform oral sex. The girl started screaming, then soon ran away from the facility for three days. When she returned to the school, the girl told staff of the incident, a police report was filed and an order of protection was granted, but the male resident was seen on campus several more times.

In 2017, a 15-year-old boy, N.K., entered the Edenwald School for six years. One night another male resident entered his room, took off his own clothes before removing N.K.’s pants and sexually abused him, the lawsuit charges. Despite telling staff, no action was taken other than to provide N.K. with medical attention.

S.E. was 13 years old when she was placed in the Cottage School in 2016, and was allegedly abused by two male staffers. One would meet her in the woods behind the infirmary to give her Metro-North tickets to leave the campus and eventually forced her to perform sexual acts. Another male staff member would look to bribe her with extra food, train tickets, marijuana, cigarettes and liquor in exchange for groping her.

In 2015, T. S. entered the Edenwald School and was allegedly abused by two staffers, one woman and one man about nine times combined.

Skaller said the decision to pursue a civil suit was made to have a greater chance at justice. Various criminal charges carry different statutes of limitations, so a civil case may offer a more viable path. If successful, she said, the suit could provide direct compensation. Also, sometimes law enforcement or district attorney offices will open a criminal investigation after a civil suit is filed.

“Very often, the criminal justice system fails these folks even if the perpetrators of these offenses, say, go to prison,” Skaller said. “So, maybe there is some peace of mind for the plaintiffs. But through the civil litigation system, they can get compensation that will allow them to get their lives back on track. (But) no amount of money can get them back to where they were before they were abused.”

For at least the past decade, the JCCA has been under fire from the Town of Mount Pleasant and local residents for hundreds of incidents that have involved police. The suit references the hundreds of calls – 648 in 2022 and 779 in 2023 – that were answered by local police at the campus.

Mount Pleasant Supervisor Carl Fulgenzi said Friday that he wasn’t surprised to learn of the allegations in the suit, some of which are consistent with the warnings raised by the town. Whether it was incidents involving residents off-campus or calls for fights or violent offenses on-site, the town has been trying to work with the JCCA and the state to improve the situation, he said.

“In the 10 years that I’ve been supervisor, the focus has always been protecting the kids in the facility, and what are you doing inside that facility to protect kids besides making it seem like we don’t like children,” Fulgenzi said.