BALTIMORE — Dozens of women filed lawsuits on Tuesday accusing a Baltimore County facility for troubled youth of sexual abuse and blaming Maryland state agencies for failing to protect them.

In total, 39 women joined the lawsuit against the agencies that contracted Good Shepherd Services, a facility ran by a Catholic religious order that operated in Halethorpe, Maryland, for nearly 50 years but is now shuttered and abandoned.

One of the lawyers said he expects the number of plaintiffs to triple.

The facility was the site where a chance at reform turned into trauma for dozens of women, according to the lawsuits.

“It’s extremely emotional,” said attorney Frank Natale, who is representing 26 of the 39 women who claim they were sexually abused at Good Shepherd Services. 

The program was founded in 1864 by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, a Catholic religious order focused on helping women and girls. It began at a facility in Baltimore before moving to its most recent campus just outside the city.

Natale’s lawsuit is one of two filed Tuesday under the Child Victims Act that alleges the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services and the Department of Human Services sent children to the program, and along with the Maryland Department of Health, failed to monitor it as children were allegedly sexually abused by guards, counselors and teachers, as well as nuns and priests.

The lawsuit accuses staff members of bribing and grooming children before abusing them. Some abusers allegedly drugged their victims and told them not to tell, according to the lawsuit.

“The state was sending children to this facility,” Natale said. “They put warnings out about this facility, yet they still allowed children to go there.”

This is just the latest round of allegations of abuse against juvenile facilities in Maryland.

In October 2023, CBS News spoke with Claudia McLain, who at 13 was sent to the Charles H. Hickey School, a state-run juvenile detention center in Baltimore, for stealing bikes and other minor offenses. She said she was abused at the school repeatedly. 

“I was in my room, it was night. The door opened, [and] your body clenched because you don’t know what the f*** is going on. You[‘re] so shocked,” McLain explained in an interview with CBS News. “[A] short time later [the assaults] happened again, then again, then again.”

McLain is one of a dozen people who have reported sexual abuse while in the care of Maryland’s juvenile detention centers in recent years.

“I used to hear the keys turn at night, but I never knew what it was until it happened personally to me,” McLain said.

Her story is echoed by those who stepped forward on Tuesday claiming those entrusted to protect them at juvenile facilities did the opposite.

In a joint statement, spokespersons for DJS, DHS and the Maryland Department of health said they had not been served with the lawsuits yet, but that they took the allegations of sexual abuse of children in the state’s care seriously.

Kelsey Kushner

Kelsey Kushner joined the WJZ team in January 2019.