List of youth detention center incidents in Ontario

This is a listing of reported incidents in past and present youth detention centers in Ontario, Canada, including abuse allegations, suicides and deaths, strip searches, segregation practices, lawsuits, and more.

Class action lawsuits

Segregation

The Ontario Youth Segregation Class Action lawsuit includes everyone who, while under the age of 18, were placed in segregation for more than six hours between April 1, 2004, and December 17, 2018, at these Ontario youth detention facilities:

The settlement was approved on October 14, 2021. $15 million was paid out, with compensation ranging from $1,000 to $40,000 per qualifying segregation placement, depending on duration. the claims period closed on August 26, 2022. [1][2]

Strip searching

There is a proposed class action that alleges that Ontario routinely conducted unlawful and degrading strip searches of youth in juvenile detention. The claim covers all minors strip searched while detained in Ontario youth justice facilities from January 1, 2000 onward. The lawsuit argues that these searches were often conducted without lawful grounds, in violation of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and provincial policy. The action was launched in 2021 and remains ongoing.[3]

Sexual abuse

  • A survivor's testimony published by Toronto Life reads "At first, he pressured me to give him handjobs, then he was forcing me to perform oral sex on him. Then he raped me, night after night. This went on for three months. It was a new level of trauma I couldn't ­process—an adult, someone who was supposed to protect me, was exploiting me in the worst way possible."[4]
  • On September 29, 2020, a 24-year-old woman working at the Syl Apps Youth Centre was arrested. She was charged with sexual assault, sexual exploitation, and breach of trust. She was released on a promise to appear in court on November 3, 2020.[5][6][7]
  • Over the course of a year, a staff member at the William E. Hay Juvenile Detention Centre in Ottawa has pleaded guilty to having used a hidden camera in the shower and strip search area of the building where staff are not allowed to have phones. He is also accused of sexually assaulting 13 of the 14 victims, and he is charged with sexually touching 11 victims with part of his body or an object, directly or indirectly. And is charged with inviting four victims to touch themselves sexually with part of their body or an object, directly or indirectly. There are also four counts of making child pornography and five counts of possessing child pornography. Investigators with the sexual assault and child abuse unit believe there could be other victims.[8][9]

Strip searches

Strip searches in Ontario's youth detention centres have been criticized, with incidents covering patterns of frequent, intrusive procedures that frequently go beyond the law and result in serious harm.

  • A girl who was 13 at the time who was involved in the killing of Ken Lee was repeatedly made to strip naked during searches while in custody. she was strip searched six times at two different youth detention center's. she said in court that "It was humiliating" and "highly traumatic" she also said "My experiences where I was made to undress at the demand of adult strangers, have worked to complicate further how I view myself" and "I am constantly thinking about how people view my body and wondering if I am being judged as a result of these experiences. It has negatively impacted my mental health and my relationship with my body."[10][11]
  • Four of the eight girls in the Killing of Ken Lee were strip searched multiple times. they tried to have the charges against them put on stay arguing the strip searches that happened violated their rights.[12]


  • See also: Roy McMurtry Youth Centre § Abuse
    A teen claims to have been strip searched completely naked at the Roy McMurtry Youth Centre in Brampton four times between September 23 and September 25, 2024, in less than 48 hours in Ontario custody. He called it "horrifying".[13]

Suicides and murders

17-year-old Gleb Alfyorov[15] committed suicide in Syl Apps Youth Centre While awaiting a mental health assessment in May 2008. He hanged himself with his black shoelace from a ceiling grate in his cell. Fifty-six minutes passed before a guard checked and found him hanging. It was five days after his 17th birthday. Due to a series of errors, the court-ordered assessment never occurred during Gleb's month-long stay.[16] Gleb was also strip-searched at least once.[17]

Sixteen-year-old David Meffe committed suicide in his cell in October 2002 while on suicide watch at the Toronto Youth Assessment Centre inmates had bullied him before his suicide, forcing him to lick spit from the floor and eat excrement from a toilet.[4][18][19]

In September 1996, a sixteen-year-old named James Lonnee was beaten to death by another minor at the now closed Wellington Detention Centre in Guelph. Other inmates at the time say they heard Lonnee screaming for help for hours. He was the first young offender to die in an Ontario juvenile detention centre.[20]

On July 3 2001, fourteen-year-old Paola Rosales, after being charged with assault, hanged herself at a youth detention centre in Milton, Ontario.[21][22]

An unnamed fourteen-year-old girl committed suicide at the MacMillan Youth centre.[23]

Other

  • From December 2019 to December 2024, there have been 1,106 "serious occurrence reports" against the William E. Hay Youth Centre: 39 reports are of abuse or mistreatment and 267 reports are of physical restraint.[24][25]
  • Between 2022 and 2023, the Ontario Ombudsman’s office reported 187 complaints and inquiries about youth justice facilities.[26]

References

  1. ^ "Youth Segregation Class Action". Youth Segregation Class Action. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  2. ^ "Settlement approval in Ontario youth segregation class action". Newswire. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  3. ^ "Youth Detention Strip Searches Class Action". Sotos Class Actions. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  4. ^ a b "Locked Up: The Ontario reform school where the abuse I endured almost destroyed me". Toronto Life. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  5. ^ "Oakville youth centre worker charged". Global News. Retrieved 9 February 2026.
  6. ^ "Staff member at youth centre charged with sex assault in Oakville, Ont". Ottawa CityNews. Retrieved 9 February 2026.
  7. ^ "Oakville youth detention centre staff charged with sexual assault". Oakville News. Retrieved 9 February 2026.
  8. ^ "Youth worker secretly recorded boys in showers at Ontario facility". Yahoo News Canada. Retrieved 9 February 2026.
  9. ^ https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/kevan-henshaw-guilty-plea-sexual-offences-children-1.7324482
  10. ^ "Toronto police defend strip searches of girls accused in 'swarming' attack". CBC News. Archived from the original on 9 February 2026. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  11. ^ "Strip searches of teens before fatal Toronto swarming attack ruled unconstitutional". CBC News. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  12. ^ "Strip searches of teens before fatal Toronto swarming attack ruled unconstitutional". CBC News. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  13. ^ https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/toronto-teen-details-horrifying-experience-of-being-repeatedly-strip-searched-in-youth-jail/article_9c142f85-50b7-41f8-9533-182616b239f4.html
  14. ^ "Submission to the Ministry regarding searches of staff, visitors and young persons in youth justice facilities". Ontario Ombudsman. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  15. ^ "Jail where teen died now specializes in 'truly disturbed' youth". Toronto Star. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  16. ^ "Justice system failed teen who hanged himself in jail, inquest told". National Post. Archived from the original on 8 February 2026. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  17. ^ "'Nobody cared about her son' until he hanged himself". Toronto Star. Archived from the original on 8 February 2026. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  18. ^ "Submission to the Ministry regarding searches of staff, visitors and young persons in youth justice facilities". Ontario Ombudsman. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  19. ^ "Many recommendations from child-death inquests never carried out". Toronto Star. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  20. ^ "'Disturbing evidence' uncovered in James Lonnee inquest". CBC News. Retrieved 9 February 2026.
  21. ^ https://www.fixcas.com/scholar/inquest/rosales.pdf
  22. ^ "June 2003 OACAS Journal – Page 16" (PDF). Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies. Retrieved 9 February 2026.
  23. ^ https://cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cycol-0703-tragiclives.html
  24. ^ "Report details 'disturbing' abuse against youth at the William E. Hay Centre". Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved 9 February 2026.
  25. ^ "Ottawa's youth detention centre is a 'warehouse of horrors.' Shut it down and build communities, not cages, researchers and advocates urge". Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Retrieved 9 February 2026.
  26. ^ https://www.ombudsman.on.ca/en/our-work/submissions-government/submission-ministry-regarding-searches-staff-visitors-and-young-persons-youth-justice-facilities
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