Female guards employed by a New York City juvenile detention centre are being accused of using young male detainees as "sex slaves."

According to the New York Post, a lawsuit filed by Franklin Maldonado, an 18-year-old Bronx resident, accuses one supervisor at the Horizon Juvenile Center of offering him protection from disciplinary action and special privileges, such as cellphone usage, special movies and extra food, if he "took care of her needs."

Maldonado said the sexual assaults took place in 2013 and 2014 when he was 15.

"I didn't have a choice," Maldonado said in the lawsuit, according to the New York Daily News. "She was doing everything to make me feel I was doing the right thing. After a while, I started growing up."

Maldonado's lawsuit says he would occasionally be released from a segregated unit and the guard would "bring him to her office for the purposes of engaging in sexual contact with him."

The lawsuit also alleges male workers turned a blind eye to the assaults, with one admitting to Maldonado that female guards regularly had sex with inmates.