They are mostly African-American kids, forgotten and discarded – state wards who have suffered abuse and neglect. Illinois officials send them by the thousands to live in residential treatment centers promising skilled therapy and close supervision. These taxpayer-financed institutions boast of restoring and even saving young lives.
But the horrific conditions inside were hidden from the public and even many government regulators until a year-long Chicago Tribune investigation used confidential documents and sensitive interviews with youths to pierce the secrecy that surrounds the most troubled facilities. Hundreds of Illinois wards are assaulted and raped by their peers each year as authorities fail to act on reports of harm and continue sending waves of youths to the most violent facilities, the Tribune’s “Harsh Treatment” investigation found.
Prostitution becomes a fact of life at facilities where experienced residents introduce others to pimps, escort websites and street corners. Youths with histories of sexual abuse are attacked again by peers and even by their adult caregivers. And thousands of kids flee to the streets, where some sell drugs and sex to survive and others break into homes and mug passers-by. Dozens have never been found. Many of these underprivileged youths are shuttled for years from one grim institution to another before emerging more damaged than when they went in.