$2 Million Settlement Reached for 12-Year-Old’s Gang Rape in Detroit Juvenile Detention Center
On September 26, 2025, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and Wayne County agreed to pay $2 million to settle claims brought by the mother of a former detainee at the County Juvenile Detention Facility (JDF) in Detroit, who alleged that officials failed to protect him from a gang rape by five fellow detainees during a 2023 stint in the lockup.
Tocarra McMullin’s son, “T.M.,” was just 11 when first confined in 2022 at JDF, where he observed the same conditions for which MDHHS cited JDF in its later decision to place the lockup on a provisional license: “A failure to provide showers and basic hygiene” or “an adequate change of clothes,” as well as “[a] failure to provide recreational time” or “educational programming,” the complaint recalled. McMullin also alleged that T.M. and fellow juvenile detainees were locked in their rooms “for 22 to 24 hours a day,” without “[n]ecessary medication” or “[s]ufficient food and sustenance.”
Moreover, she said, guards sequestered themselves in a control room without remote surveillance video to watch detainees, skipping required 15-minute checks, while also failing to secure vacant rooms and placing younger detainees, like T.M., in confinement with older juveniles—including those with a “history of sexual misconduct.” T.M. was held at the lockup on four occasions in 2022, the last stretching to March 2023, when he was “brutally beaten and anally gang raped by five JDF residents while JDF staff did nothing to stop it.”
Calling the situation “untenable,” County Executive Warren Evans declared a Public Emergency after the attack for JDF and its 140 juvenile detainees. MDHHS also investigated and cited the youth prison for numerous shortcomings when it placed its license on provisional status in September 2023.
With the aid of attorney Cary S. McGehee of Pitt McGehee Palmer Bonanni & Rivers PC in Royal Oak, McMullin filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in 2024. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, she accused County and MDHHS officials of failing to protect T.M. by their deliberate indifference to his serious risk of harm, in violation of his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. She also sought to extend liability to the county and the state for failure to supervise and train their employees, as provided under Monell v. N.Y. City Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978). Additional claims alleged violations of the state’s civil rights and child protective statutes.
The parties then proceeded to mediation and reached their settlement agreement. Under its terms, Wayne County paid $1.35 million of the settlement, and MDHHS paid the remaining $650,000. One-third of the total, $702,943.06, was paid to Plaintiff’s attorneys for costs and fees. The balance of $1,297,056.94 was placed in trust for T.M. as compensation for the “irreparable harm” that he suffered—“physical injuries, sexual violence and abuse, including anal rape, severe emotional distress and mental trauma, degrading treatment, lengthened periods of detention, solitary confinement and deprivation of educational, medical and rehabilitative services.” See: McMullin v. Wayne Cty., USDC (E.D. Mich.), Case No. 2:24-cv-11801.
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Related legal cases
McMullin v. Wayne Cty.,
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (E.D. Mich.), Case No. 2:24-cv-11801 |
| Level | District Court |
Monell v. N.Y. City Dep’t of Soc. Servs.
| Year | 1978 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 436 U.S. 658 (1978) |
| Level | Supreme Court |