Arlando “Tray” Jones was a toddler when his dad was killed by Baltimore police during a robbery. His mom died several years later after battling alcoholism.
His surviving relatives often struggled to offer for him. Sometimes the lights got turned off and the refrigerator was empty.
Jones turned to a notorious neighborhood drug dealer, a sinister father figure whose lavish lifestyle demonstrated what may very well be achieved within the streets. Under the supervision of “Fat Larry,” Jones finally had stable housing and money in his pocket, but violence was throughout him. He began carrying a gun and punishing anyone who crossed him. Barely a youngster, he was charged with attempted murder and sent to juvenile detention within the early Eighties.
There, on the Maryland Training School for Boys, Jones says a staff member repeatedly sexually assaulted him while one other kept watch. The guards would corner children in dark spaces and bribe them with extra snacks and other special treatment, in response to a slew of recent lawsuits alleging widespread misconduct in Maryland’s juvenile detention facilities.
“They broke me,” Jones said, recounting how his abusers beat him into submission. “Everything that connected me to my humanity was just gone.”
Jones is amongst 1000’s of individuals looking for accountability under a recent state law that eliminated the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse claims. It was passed in 2023 with the Catholic Church abuse scandal in mind. But now Maryland lawmakers are scrambling to deal with an unexpected onslaught of cases targeting the state’s juvenile justice system. They’re fearful the state budget can’t support a possible payout.
The Associated Press requested an interview with the state’s Department of Juvenile Services, however the department responded with a press release as an alternative.
“DJS takes allegations of sexual abuse of kids in our care with utmost seriousness and we’re working hard to offer decent, humane and rehabilitative environments for youth committed to the Department. We don’t comment on pending litigation,” the agency said.
To the plaintiffs, it’s no surprise that Maryland leaders did not anticipate a public reckoning of this size. Many victims spent many years in silence, paralyzed by shame. They were a few of Maryland’s most vulnerable residents, mostly Black kids growing up in poverty with little family support.
All these years later, Jones still broke down crying in an interview. “But now I do know the shame just isn’t mine to bear,” he said.
A law with unexpected consequences
Maryland lawmakers passed the Child Victims Act within the immediate aftermath of a scathing investigative report that exposed widespread abuse throughout the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Before its passage, victims couldn’t sue after they turned 38.
The law change prompted the archdiocese to file for bankruptcy to guard its assets. But state leaders didn’t anticipate they’d be facing similar budgetary concerns. Lawmakers at the moment are considering recent laws to shield the state financially.
An estimated 6,000 people have retained attorneys and recent complaints are pouring in, in response to lawyers involved. In addition to monetary damages, plaintiffs want mandated reform of Maryland’s juvenile justice system.
The system has drawn serious criticism over time. A 2004 Justice Department report found a “deeply disturbing degree of physical abuse” at the ability where Jones was detained, now called the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School. The state closed Hickey’s youth treatment program in 2005, but it surely’s still operating as a youth penitentiary.
Many other facilities named within the lawsuits have already been closed, and state leaders have strengthened oversight in recent times. They’ve also focused on detaining fewer youths.
Advocates say they’re confident the system is significantly less abusive than it was.
Other states have faced similar reckonings after changing their laws. While juvenile arrests and detention rates are declining nationally, research shows nearly all of detainees are children of color. A 2024 report from the nonprofit The Sentencing Project found Black youth are roughly five times more prone to be incarcerated than their white peers.
“It’s not only in Maryland, it’s in every single place,” said attorney Corey Stern, who represents Jones and others. “It’s really a ripple effect across the U.S.”
Systemic abuse everywhere in the state
Still, the Maryland lawsuits paint a very disturbing picture. It wasn’t just select facilities or a small group of abusive staff members, it was statewide and endured for many years, attorneys say. The abuse was often a poorly kept secret, however the system repeatedly did not stop it, the lawsuits say.
In a grievance filed earlier this month, 69 people brought claims against the identical abuser, a former housing supervisor at Hickey.
One of the plaintiffs in that case, who asked to stay anonymous, said that because the abuse escalated, he began to avoid properly cleansing himself to grow to be less desirable. He later spent many years scuffling with addiction and mental health issues. He said suing the state “even now felt like I used to be snitching.” The AP doesn’t typically discover victims of abuse unless they need to be named.
Nalisha Gibbs said she didn’t initially report her abuse because nobody would have listened. A past experience gave her proof of that.
Not long before she went to juvenile detention over a missed curfew enforced by a college truancy officer, Gibbs said, she had been raped by an uncle — and punished by her mother when she didn’t keep quiet concerning the abuse.
In the penitentiary, a female guard would come to her cell at night and assault her. Gibbs said the lady would degrade her, calling her worthless and “a throwaway.”
For coming home quarter-hour after curfew, she was sentenced to a lifetime of trauma.
After 30 days in detention, Gibbs never went back to middle school. She ended up in foster care, where she suffered more sexual abuse. She spent most of her 20s hooked on drugs, sometimes living on the streets. But in 2008, she sought treatment. She enrolled in a transitional housing program and earned her GED. She now lives together with her fiancé and his mother.
Thinking back on her childhood, she sees a scared little girl who needed an adult to get up for her.
“She just had a lot life snuffed out by people mistreating her and mishandling her,” Gibbs said through tears. “But I’m not that little girl anymore. I can fight for myself.”
Pushed over the sting
A pair years after being released from Hickey, Jones was involved in a fight over drugs that escalated into gunshots, killing Joshua O’Neal.
Jones was 16 when he was arrested and charged with murder. He was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
He said the sexual abuse pushed him over the sting; if he was headed down a negative path before juvenile detention, that have sent him hurtling toward the unchecked brutality of the drug game.
In 2022, he was released from prison under a state law that enables sentence reductions for people convicted as children.
During his incarceration, Jones earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology. He’s studied philosophy and published two books. Now 56, he works at Georgetown University’s Prisons and Justice Initiative, which teaches students about mass incarceration and prison reform.
He said getting educated restored a number of the humanity he lost. It helped him regain his freedom and gave him a second probability at life. It also made him query the whole lot.
“An orphan child surviving poverty as best I can,” he said. “Where was my first probability?”
——
Associated Press reporter Brian Witte in Annapolis contributed to this report.
