NYC NOW - June 18, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: June 18, 2024

Gay male couples who work for the city could soon have coverage for IVF services. Plus, WNYC’s Tiffany Hanssen talks with Bahar Ostadan about lawsuits filed by people who claim to have been sexually assaulted while detained in New York’s juvenile jails. And finally, WNYC’s Alec Hamilton takes us to South Salem, New York to howl with the wolves

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Jenae Pierre. Gay male couples who work for the city could soon have coverage for in vitro fertilization services, known as IVF. While the city's health plan does cover multiple rounds of IVF for its employees, it requires the individual to try to get pregnant through other means beforehand. It's a stipulation that gay male couples cannot satisfy, and affect, barred them from accessing IVF coverage. Critics argue the current law is discriminatory. The New York City Council held a hearing Tuesday about a bill that would expand coverage.

250 people have filed lawsuits saying they were sexually abused as kids while being held at New York City's juvenile jails. Some of the cases go back decades. For more, my colleague Tiffany Hansen talked with WMYC's Bahar Osteron. So first, just give us a little primer on these lawsuits. suits tell us who's involved. This is more than 250 people who say they were sexually abused while in custody at one of the city's juvenile jails. These claims they go as far back as the 1970s all the way through last year. And they allege abuse at the hands of staff at all levels, really, correction officers, nurses, counselors, supervisors. On average, the New Yorkers filing these suits were 14 years old when they say they were sexually abused.

And it's not the first time we've heard of this, Tiffany. Certainly, if you're familiar with the juvenile jail system in New York City, you might remember last year when a guard was fired and arrested for sexually abusing a teenager. Now, all of these suits now that have been filed are happening under a city law that created this two-year window for people to sue over abuse that happened many years ago. And for our listeners, that window is opened through March 1, 2025. Well, you talked with one of the plaintiffs, so tell us about him. I met a man named Niger Stort this week. He's 30 years old, but 15 years ago when he was 15 years old, the NYPD arrested him and his friends when they were walking in Crown Heights after claiming they found a gun nearby. So there was this sort of rush to the precinct, Niger's mom backing him up saying this was a mistake, a wrongful arrest. But it was too late. Nigeria was jailed at that point at Crossroads, which is the juvenile jail in Brownsville, Brooklyn. And he told me that from the minute he walked in, he was terrified. He was jumped his first night there. And for months, he says that one correctional officer and several other detainees sexually abused him, beat him up and raped him every night.

And to add salt to the wound, his case was ultimately thrown out. Here's some of what he remembers. I didn't know what to do. I felt like life was over. I was like I'd never been through this in my life. The way I was treated, I thought I would never get out. I was like, I might die here. And where is he now?

Bahar. So like I said, Stuart is 30. He still lives in Brooklyn. He now has three sons of his own. And he teaches kids Mokajumbi, which is the traditional Caribbean stilt walking, stilt dancing. He's really hoping that by speaking out about his own experience, he can prevent this happening from kids in juvenile jail today. What have you heard from city officials about these claims? I asked prosecutors in Brooklyn and the Bronx how they plan to respond. The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office said, you know, these are civil suits. So someone would need to file a criminal complaint for the prosecutor's suppressed charges. And that would need to be within a statute of limitations, which many of these cases are not. City Hall told me, you know, most of these allegations didn't take place during our administration, but we're taking it, quote, seriously. and the administration for children's services, which is the city agency that oversees these jails, says it conducts randomize inspections of the halls, it trains its staff under a federal law that is supposed to provide training, data collection, and resources to help deter sexual abuse in prisons nationally.

But these responses don't satisfy the attorneys filing these suits. Jerry Block is one of those attorneys. He says the abuse is systemic. It's not just about, you know, a few bad apple. in his words. I believe the sexual abuse of children in the city's juvenile justice system is an outgrowth of treating children as less than human. So this idea that he's speaking about, you know, treating kids like they're less than human is something that Nigeria spoke to me about as well. He said he remembers the correction officer who he says sexually abused him skipped his room when that guard was delivering meals each night.

Bahar, I can imagine that New York is not the only place where these kinds of claims are being made. So do we know what's happening elsewhere? That's right. This actually comes during a wave of similar cases across the country. So far, that's resulted in a federal investigation into Kentucky's youth jails. You know, one study published a few years back found that 7% of juvenile detainees reported being sexually abused while in jail. But experts say those numbers are also severely underreported. There was another study that found that less than 10% of minors who are sexually abused in jail actually end up reporting. Some of these issues also, I should mention, go hand in hand with other problems we've reported on at WNYC in the New York City Juvenile Jails.

We've covered a staff smuggling network where staff, again, at all various levels are bringing in drugs, cash, you know, razor blades tucked into wads of chewed gum. Recently, classrooms at these jails have been repurposed as jail cells and teens have even been sleeping on the ground due to overcrowding at these sites. So, you know, we'll continue to have eyes on this and keep our listeners posted. That's WNYC's Bahar Ostadon talking with my colleague Tiffany Hanson. Coming up, we're leaving the big city and joining the wolves at the Wolf Conservation Center. That's after the break. New Yorkers who want to hear the call of the wild can experience it without even leaving the state. WMYC's Alec Hamilton recently spent a night at the Wolf Conservation Center

in South Salem, New York with her family. The drive isn't too bad. Maybe 90 minutes from our home in Brooklyn. Surprisingly, only one of my kids threw up. Our destination? The Center's Sleeping with Wolves program. For $340, you and up to three other people can sleep outside in a canvas tent

surrounded by wild wolves in their enclosures. Dana Goan is the program coordinator and wildlife educator with the center. She says the center focuses on raising and releasing the endangered wolves back. into the wild. We also focus on advocacy, so we encourage people to use their voices for wolves. Before we meet the wolves, she has us all howls. So I'll count to three, we're going to aim our voices. Some of the adults look somewhat

uncomfortable, but the kids are totally into it and everybody's game. We'll see if maybe we get lucky. One, two, three. We set up our sleeping bags in one of the tents. Then Goin leads us to a chain link fence. Behind it live the center's two so-called ambassador wolves, Silas and Nikai. Ropes discourage anyone from getting within arm's reach at the fence. I remember I mentioned the ropes, please don't cross them. It's very tempting because I know Silas is right there kind of begging, but we are not going to reach for the wolves or anything like that. Goin stands outside the fence, telling us about the wolves who loll in the grass inside the enclosure. They don't really seem to care that we're there. But when Goan pulls

on gloves and reaches towards a barrel of meat scraps, the younger wolf rockets over, crashing into the fence behind her and leaping into the air, very much like a dog, excited to go for a walk. So now you're like, oh yeah, that is a puppy. He's just ridiculous. Each enclosure is about an acre or two and holds several wolves. But without any deer in there to eat the underbrush, it grows in thick, and the shy wolves can be hard to spot. We walk along the fences, peering in. Then, back to the tents for more bug spray. There were several other families spending the night, and all the kids quickly hit it off and started playing.

As it got towards dusk, workers bring out pizza and set up a movie on the lawn. In the fall, Yellowstone's elk herds migrate from the mountainsides to lower valleys. That's followed by my kids' favorite part, a campfire and s'mores. Once it's dark, we zip ourselves into the tent for the night. Then, after we've all fallen asleep, our first howl. Is that a wolf? Followed maybe an hour later by another, louder this time, like it's surrounding us. And another.

And then, just as the sun begins to rise around five, and the birds are waking up, another. Around six, a siren goes off at the nearby volunteer fire department. By then, all the birds are awake, including the birds are awake, including the birds. one that seemed to be sitting on our tent. Hugh the wolves. We get a lot of compliments that from some folks, it was not the best sleep of their life, but it was certainly the most memorable and exciting. Regan Downey is the center's director of education.

I have to say your description of not getting any sleep very actually describes my experience. It was great. It was so cool, but I got zero sleep. Oh, yeah. No, you don't come here to sleep. You come here to camp out, but lay awake in your tent and hear the wolves. Downey says the program, which the center has a lot of, offered since 2012 remains its most popular. Wolves are crepiscular, meaning that they're most

active at dawn and at dusk. So camping there overnight really lets you be there during their peak activity levels. It's an experience, hopefully everyone can have at least once, whether it's here or in the wild hearing a wolf howl. Definitely one of the best things you'll ever hear. Six-year-old Frances Rodriguez of Rochester is here with his parents and his twin eight-year-old brothers. He is not a fan of the howling. I know the annoying thing. What was the annoyingest thing? Here in the wolf's shower over night. I couldn't really sleep.

His eight-year-old brother, Lucas, is more enthusiastic about it. The sign was like, ooh! And then the wolf's jerked, oh! And they went crazy. It does sell out, so if you want to go, plan ahead. But don't plan to get a lot of sleep. That's WMYC's Alec Hamilton. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC.

Catch us every weekday. three times a day. I'm Jenae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.