BATON ROUGE - Fifty-two lawsuits have been filed on behalf of victims who say they were abused by correctional officers while incarcerated at an East Baton Rouge Parish juvenile correctional facility.

The allegations, spanning from 1972 to 2005, center around employees of the shuttered Louis Jetson Correctional Center for Youth, which closed in 2014.

The lawsuits, which have all been filed over the past two months, allege that correctional officers working at the Louisiana Training Institute and Jetson abused children, ages ranging from 11 to 17, who were in their care.

The allegations include juveniles being forcibly raped by officers and objects, forced to give and receive oral sex, touched inappropriately and threatened if they were to tell anyone about what happened.

Excerpt from lawsuit filed May 15. The alleged abuse happened in 1975, when the victim was 12. 

In multiple instances, the now-adults who were housed at the facility as kids say the abuse from staff happened multiple times, often alongside preferential treatment. 

Many of the allegations include details that staff members would isolate the alleged victims while they were on a work assignment.

Excerpt from lawsuit filed May 22. The alleged abuse happened in 2005, when the victim was 15. 

Several of the lawsuits said the abuse only ceased when the juveniles left the facility or were transferred to another dorm.

In one lawsuit filed on June 24, a man stated that he was 14 years old when he entered the facility in 1998. During his year-long stay, he alleges four different employees sexually abused him. He said he was raped more than five times by one male correctional officer, forcibly raped by other teens while a second correctional officer watched and forced to have oral sex more than a handful of times with a third male employee. The suit says the teen attempted suicide and was put into a lockdown unit, where he was touched inappropriately by a female correctional officer. 

Correctional officers used solitary confinement as a punishment for juveniles who spoke up, multiple suits say. Very few of the lawsuits indicated that the children attempted to expose the abuse at the time it happened, with many being threatened that they would be physically hurt or punished in other ways if they told anyone. 

Excerpt from lawsuit filed July 23. The alleged abuse happened in 1990, when the victim was 15. 

The WBRZ Investigative Unit spoke with Daniel Meyer, one of two attorneys representing the victims. He said that while the law stipulates that employees cannot be explicitly named in the lawsuits, in some cases, the same correctional officers were connected to multiple victims of sexual abuse.

The facility opened in 1948 as a segregated juvenile correctional facility for Black minors, but was changed into the Louisiana Training Institute after desegregation in 1969. Nearly 15 years later, it took the namesake of Louis Jetson, the humanitarian and social activist. It was ordered to be closed in 2008, but was officially shut down in 2014. Now, it houses the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women. 

Editor's note: Names of sexual abuse victims have been redacted from lawsuit excerpts. WBRZ does not name victims of sexual assault.