A now-defunct youth drug rehabilitation program subjected a budding hip-hop artist to years of abuse in the early 1990s, derailing what his attorneys describe as a promising music career, according to a lawsuit.
The plaintiff, identified as John Doe, alleges he was forcibly taken from his home at age 16 and confined against his will at the Kids of North Jersey facility in Secaucus.
Doe had already opened for major artists like Ice Cube and recorded original tracks when he was forcibly removed from his home by a security guard hired by the program, according to the complaint,
The lawsuit, filed April 17 in Superior Court in Hudson County, invokes the New Jersey Child Sexual Abuse Act and the Child Victims Act, which extend legal recourse to survivors of childhood abuse.
According to the lawsuit, after discovering his 16-year-old son smoking marijuana, the plaintiff’s father secretly arranged for a security guard from the drug treatment program to remove the teen from his home while he slept.
Doe’s legal team claims that what followed was a year of forced confinement, drugging, and abuse at the hands of staff members at Kids of North Jersey, a program allegedly operated by Virgil Miller Newton.
A message left for Newton was not immediately returned.
Several affiliated entities were also named in the complaint, including Kids Centers of America, the Straight Foundation, and the Drug Free America Foundation.
The complaint describes a grim environment inside a windowless warehouse where children were subjected to a rigid “rehabilitation” regimen.
New arrivals, called “newcomers,” were reportedly forced to sit in silence for hours, chant confessions, and participate in violent “rap sessions,” the complaint said.
Doe alleges he was routinely restrained in painful “five-point holds,” during which he was groped and sexually assaulted.
The abuse allegedly extended beyond the facility to so-called “host homes,” where children were sent to sleep under the supervision of senior program participants and staff.
These homes, the lawsuit claims, were outfitted with barred windows and locks to prevent escape and became additional sites of sexual abuse.
Doe says he eventually escaped the program in 1992 by fleeing a host home in Fort Lee.
Once a rising star in New York City’s hip-hop scene, he now lives with his father, unable to work and suffering from severe PTSD, depression, and memory loss, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint argues that KONJ operated with impunity despite mounting allegations.
It cites a 1989 CBS documentary, a 1993 criminal case in which three KONJ counselors were convicted of beating a child, and a 2009 congressional address by another survivor.
Now 50, Doe is seeking compensatory and punitive damages for sexual abuse, negligence, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Doe’s attorney, Rosemarie Arnold, said “The depravity of the staff members and complicity of the host families in the torture of these children is mind blowing.
“The psychological and physical toll it has irrevocably taken on my client’s life is devastating,” Arnold added. “The abuse left deep scars that permeated every aspect of his life and derailed his promising potential.”