Staffers Raped Teen Boys at Juvenile Detention Center, Lawsuit Claims

A former inmate at a juvenile detention center in Washington was allegedly raped multiple times by his own counselors. And he wasn’t alone, a new lawsuit claims.

The allegedly pervasive sexual abuse at the all-male Green Hill School in Chehalis was perpetrated by counselors, a cook, and other staff members, according to the lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of a former inmate and sexual-assault victim.

To make matters worse, state officials “ignored” the repeated alleged abuse and “protected” the perpetrators, the lawsuit claims.

“We’ve heard of at least six or more children at the school being abused by staff,” the former inmate’s attorney, Tim Tesh, told The Daily Beast on Thursday. But he said that number is the “tip of the iceberg” when it comes to the actual abuses potentially perpetrated at the school.

Tesh’s client, a now-21-year-old former inmate at the facility, says he was sexually assaulted by two counselors from 2013 to 2015, and that the state’s Department of Social and Health Services “protected” the abusers. He was 16 years old when the alleged abuses started.

In addition to his two allegations against counselors at the facility, the victim—identified in the suit only as C. O-H—“witnessed other residents being sexually assaulted by staff.”

“They are victims, and they don’t have the ability to consent,” Tesh told The Daily Beast. “They have the keys to these young mens’ freedom.”