MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility sex abuse lawsuit set for trial in April

A 12-person jury trial has been set for April in a Marion County lawsuit that concerns alleged sex abuse crimes perpetrated at MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility by convicted child sex predator Frank James Milligan, 48.

Milligan is currently serving combined prison sentences of over 60 more years at the medium-security Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla for charges including attempted aggravated murder, kidnapping and sodomy.

His most infamous crime was the July 2000 abduction of a 10-year-old boy, whom he sexually assaulted, choked unconscious and left for dead in a park in Dallas. He slit the boy’s throat with a razor blade, but the victim survived and confronted Milligan in court the following year, telling him to “rot in hell.”

He was also charged and convicted of the sexual molestation of a Seaside boy in 1999.

Prior to these crimes, Milligan had been employed by the Oregon State Hospital and Oregon Youth Authority, working as a group life coordinator at MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility from May 1997 until being placed on leave by OYA in 1999. He was formally dismissed in 2000.

While at MacLaren, Milligan allegedly sexually assaulted at least one youth offender housed there, according to the $5.5 million lawsuit that was filed in Marion County court in 2014. The plaintiff in the case, identified only as “J.M.,” is also the alleged victim of the assaults.

The complaint alleges that, on two separate occasions during the plaintiff’s first month there, Milligan ordered J.M. (who was 15 in 1998) to accompany him to the laundry room. Once there, Milligan forced the plaintiff to perform a sex act on him and sexually assaulted him, the complaint alleged.

The petition said J.M. blocked out the abuse after being released, and the memories did not begin to resurface until 2012, when news broke of the sex abuse scandal at Penn State University involving Jerry Sandusky.

The complaint named OYA as a defendant in the case, along with Richard Hill and Gary Lawhead, who were, at the time, the director of OYA and superintendent of MacLaren, respectively. The plaintiff and his attorneys alleged that OYA staff were aware of widespread problems with sexual abuse happening at MacLaren and other facilities and failed to take reasonable steps to punish and prevent the behavior.

The trial is currently set to begin at 9 a.m. April 19, with a pretrial conference on April 7, according to court records.

In a separate criminal case regarding the alleged abuse of J.M. at MacLaren, Milligan was convicted in September 2015 of two counts of first-degree sex abuse and one count of first-degree sexual penetration with a foreign object. He was sentenced by Judge Cheryl Pellegrini to 35 years in prison.

Milligan is still serving the six-year sentence he received from the Seaside (Clatsop County) case. Once that concludes, the 30-year sentence from the Dallas case will begin, followed by the most recent judgment. The earliest the 48-year-old would be eligible for release is Sept. 25, 2071.

More information about Frank James Milligan’s case can be found here:

• MacLaren sex abuse lawsuit set for trial in April
• Oregon Youth Authority accused of failing to stop infamous predator’s sex attacks at Woodburn lockup

If you have information about abuse by Frank James Milligan please contact the Oregon state police department.

Also, if you would like advice from an attorney about the rights and options for victims of child sexual abuse, please contact Crew Janci today for a free, confidential consultation at 1-888-407-0224 or by using our private online form.  We will treat you with discretion and respect.

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