Tag Archives: prison rape elimination act

‘Sexual Abuse Victims: We’ve Got Your Back!’ Said No BOP Official Ever – Update for October 5, 2023

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LEGAL ABUSE CONTINUES AFTER SEX ABUSE ENDS

The California office of a New York law firm announced last week that it had sued the Federal Bureau of Prisons alleging that 10 inmates were sexually assaulted while in BOP custody while housed at FCI Dublin. The action was brought under the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

Slater Slater Schulman LLP said at least 20 different BOP sex abuse perps have been identified by at least 92 former female inmates at FCI Dublin. And the lawyers are going after them.

rape230207However, a 6th Circuit decision last week suggests that holding the BOP liable for its employees’ sex crimes could be a hard sell.

L.C. (we’ll call her ‘Lonnie,’ not her real name) was in the BOP’s Residential Drug Abuse Program at FMC Lexington when her path crossed with Hosea Lee, a BOP RDAP instructor and serial rapist. When happened then was ugly and left Lonnie with a sexually transmitted disease. Hosea was eventually walked off the compound, arrested and convicted.

Lonnie was traumatized by being repeatedly raped and assaulted by a person she was powerless to resist. Eventually, she got medical treatment for herpes, at which time a BOP Health Services nurse told her that Harry had given herpes to all of his inmate victims. She said another BOP employee, a counselor, told her that Hosea had been reported to BOP officials a long time before she had been raped.

Lonnie sued the BOP under the Federal Tort Claims Act, arguing that the agency had a duty to protect inmates from serial rapist employees and it negligently failed to do so. To make clear how seriously the BOP takes its obligations to protect inmates from criminal sex acts of its own staff, the BOP argued in court that it had discretion whether to protect female inmates from sexual predator staff and anyway, Lonnie had not made a plausible claim that BOP management knew that Hosea liked to rape female inmates.

didnotknow231005Under the FTCA, a federal agency is immune from being sued for negligence if it is accused of not performing a function that is discretionary or grounded in policy. The district court held that investigating and taking action where the BOP has become aware of alleged misconduct is discretionary, so Lonnie’s FTCA suit had to be dismissed. Even if that were not so, the district court said, Lonnie’s negligence claim should be dismissed under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) because her complaint failed to “allege sufficiently” that the BOP knew or should have known of Hosea’s attacks.

Last week, the 6th Circuit left Lonnie with nothing. The Circuit agreed that BOP Program Statements impose a mandatory requirement that the first BOP official with “information concerning incidents or possible incidents of sexual abuse or sexual harassment,” report such information and investigate immediately. “These are mandatory regulations and policies that allow no judgment or choice,” the 6th said.

But Lonnie had not “plausibly alleged that BOP officials failed timely to report or investigate information that Lee may have been attacking women incarcerated at FMC before November 22, 2019,” the Court ruled. While Lonnie pointed to her allegation that a BOP told her that Hosea had been reported “a long time ago,” her complaint “provides no context for when the counselor made the statement, which limits our ability to draw inferences that the counselor herself knew of Lee’s attacks before November 22, 2019, or that the counselor later came to learn that others knew of his attacks before then. [Lonnie’s] allegation that a medical department staffer told her on February 18, 2020, that all of Lee’s victims had contracted herpes does not permit the inference that staff treated multiple other victims before November 22, 2019, and knew then that each person they were treating had contracted herpes because Lee had attacked them.”

bartsimpson231005The Circuit admitted that “there is of course a possibility that some BOP officials knew of Lee’s assaults before November 22, 2019, and failed to act on that information… With so many holes in the timeline in [Lonnie’s] allegations, we cannot plausibly draw the necessary inferences in a manner that satisfies the pleading standard.”

In an opinion piece appearing on CNN two weeks ago, US District Court Judge Reggie Walton (District of Columbia) wrote that a commission he served on heard from former prisoners who “described in detail to me and to my fellow commission members the abuse they endured while incarcerated, sometimes over many years. Some recounted how they were disbelieved, silenced or unofficially punished for speaking out and seeking help. The formerly incarcerated people who testified spoke of the guilt, shame and rage that consumed them after being sexually assaulted and how the abuse cast a shadow over their lives even years after they were released — trauma evident in their voices, on their faces and in the tears many shed.”

As the government made clear before the 6th Circuit, it will take any position necessary – even that the BOP is not liable if it knows its employees are raping prisoners – to avoid paying damages to those harmed by agency negligence.

PR Newswire, Approximately 250 Survivors of Sexual Assault File Lawsuits Against U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons and State of California For Being Sexually Assaulted by Correctional Staff While Incarcerated (September 27, 2023)

LC v. United States, Case No. 22-6105, 2023 U.S.App. LEXIS 25695 (6th Cir. September 28, 2023)

CNN, Opinion: Sexual assault should never be part of a prison term (September 17, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

Twenty Rocky Years of PREA – Update for September 8, 2023

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BITTERSWEET ANNIVERSARY FOR PREA

PREAAudit211014Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters last week commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Prison Rape Elimination Act in a statement that acknowledged “our dedicated employees who have worked diligently over the last two decades to uphold the letter of the law” while she hinted at PREA’s rocky ride with the BOP culture over the past two decades.

“The culture of the past which tolerated abuse and failed to meet the promises of PREA,” she warned, “will be met with swift justice. All individuals in our custody have a right to be physically, mentally, and sexually safe.”

Putting an ugly asterisk on her statement, former BOP employee Gregory Barrett, described by the Lexington Herald Leader as a “senior officer at a federal prison in Lexington” (the FMC Lexington minimum security prison camp for women) pled guilty to sexual abuse of an inmate multiple times between June and July 2022, according to the plea agreement. Last October, Barrett threatened and intimidated an inmate witness to the crimes, telling her to “keep her mouth shut” and suggesting retaliation if she reported the crime.

sexualassault211014Washington Post columnist George Will, writing about the doctrine of qualified immunity a week ago, said, “Americans would gag if they had an inkling of what occurs, unreported, in prisons. Americans should, however, be sickened when judges, with hairsplitting misapplications of qualified immunity, openly abet governmental malfeasance that allows prison violence. When prisoners depend on protection by governments that cannot be held accountable for culpable indifference, mayhem proliferates, lethally.”

BOP, PREA 20-Year Anniversary (September 1, 2023)

Lexington, Kentucky, Herald Leader, Former federal prison officer in Lexington pleads guilty to sexually abusing an inmate (August 29, 2023)

Washington Post, Four prison murders lead to a sickening ruling on ‘qualified immunity’ (August 23, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

Senators Consider Sexual Assault (And How to Stop It) – Update for February 7, 2023

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GRASSLEY, DURBIN, PADILLA MEET WITH BOP DIRECTOR PETERS TO FURTHER INVESTIGATE SEXUAL MISCONDUCT

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Alex Padilla (D-CA) met with Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters last Wednesday to discuss sexual misconduct by BOP personnel and the Dept of Justice’s efforts to root it out.

sexualassault211014The meeting followed letters that Grassley, Durbin, Padilla, and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) sent to DOJ last year seeking information about sexual misconduct allegations against BOP staffers.

“I appreciate that DOJ convened a Working Group to address sexual misconduct by BOP employees and that BOP has begun implementing reforms to enhance prevention, reporting, investigation, prosecution, and discipline related to staff sexual misconduct,” Durbin said. “DOJ’s report in November was evidence of the desperate need for reform and improved oversight. I will continue pushing BOP and DOJ to ensure that BOP operates federal prisons safely, securely, and effectively.”

The meeting comes as a new report released by the DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that prison and jail staff rarely face legal consequences for sexual assault.

BJS released data on more than 2,500 documented incidents of sexual assault in federal and state prisons and jails between 2016 and 2018. Despite federal laws intended to create zero-tolerance policies for prison sexual abuse, most notably the Prison Rape Elimination Act, the report found that staff sexual misconduct perpetrators were convicted in only 20% of jailhouse incidents and only a 6% of substantiated prison incidents. Fewer than half of the perps lost their jobs.

“Staff sexual misconduct led to the perpetrator’s discharge, termination or employment contract not being renewed in 44 percent of incidents,” the report states. “Staff perpetrators were reprimanded or disciplined following 43% of sexual harassment incidents.”

rape230207Not everyone is sanguine about BOP efforts, nor – according to the report’s findings – should they be. In a recent release, the advocacy group FAMM said, “The Department of Justice (DOJ) is stepping up prosecutions of prison sexual assault. While commendable, jailing the abusers is not enough. It won’t heal survivors’ trauma or stop this from happening in the future. We need independent oversight to make real change. The BOP has shown that it cannot be trusted to mind its own foxes in its own hen houses.”

Sen. Charles Grassley, Grassley, Durbin, Padilla Meet With BOP Director Peters to Further Investigate Sexual Misconduct (February 2, 2023)

DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics, Substantiated Incidents of Sexual Victimization Reported by Adult Correctional Authorities, 2016–2018 (February 2, 2023)

Reason, New Data Show Prison Staff Are Rarely Held Accountable for Sexual Misconduct (February 3, 2023)

FAMM, How the Department of Justice is Failing Victims of Sexual Assault in Prison (January 24, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

“What We Have Here…” – Update for October 27, 2022

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… IS A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE


failuretocommunicate221027We Should Have Told You It Would Be On the Test: If email is any indication, not only did Federal prisoners receive First Step Act earned-time credits applied well after the credits were promised, but what was delivered was well short of what was reasonably anticipated.

Writing in Forbes last week, Walter Pavlo reported that although BOP Director Colette Peters told the Senate Judiciary Committee during her September 28 testimony that the agency’s new “auto-calc” program was already up and running, “it was not until the week of October 3rd that FSA credits started to be applied. As one prisoner told me, ‘I was expecting a year of credits and I got 4 months. I have no idea what happened’.”

Pavlo said that “what happened is that the calculator still has errors in it. Prisoners who were transferred to a halfway house after receiving an interim calculation of their sentence, were called in and told they would be returning to prison after the new calculation took away their year.”

Pavlo wrote, “One of the main factors that seems to be causing issues is that federal prisoners were told to complete a needs assessment survey when they first entered prison. The survey was part of the FSA in that it was meant to provide an assessment of the types of programs, needs, that the prisoner would address while in prison. The assessment was to be done on-line through an internal computer terminal that prisoners use for email communications with their families… What prisoners were not told was that the survey’s completion was a requirement to initiating the FSA credits. All of the prisoners I spoke to stated that they were never told of the survey’s importance nor could I find information about this in the FSA nor in any directive given to prisoners.”

Pavlo’s report is consistent with email complaints I have gotten from prisoners that no one ever suggested that the needs surveys served any necessary purpose.

Pavlo quoted Emery Nelson of the BOP is quoted as saying, “Completion of the self-assessment survey is only one factor which determines when an inmate begins earning FSA time credits.”

We’re Not Listening to You: The DOJ Office of Inspector General told BOP Director Colette Peters two weeks ago about an aspect of its recent investigation into sexual abuse of inmates by BOP employees that it found troubling.

dontbelieve221027“These concerns arose when the OIG recently inquired of the BOP’s Office of Internal Affairs (OIA)… about a disciplinary action taken by the BOP following an OIG investigation of alleged sexual abuse by a BOP employee. In response to our inquiry, we were told by OIA that, in cases that have not been accepted for criminal prosecution, the BOP will not rely on inmate testimony to make administrative misconduct findings and take disciplinary action against BOP employees, unless there is evidence aside from inmate testimony that independently establishes the misconduct…”

OIG told Director Peters that BOP’s refusal to rely on inmate testimony to make misconduct findings in administrative matters “is inconsistent with the fact that such testimony is fully admissible in criminal and civil cases, and creates significant risks for the BOP in its handling of administrative misconduct matters. Inmate testimony alone has been found sufficient, and with corroborating evidence is often found sufficient, to support criminal convictions of BOP employees, where the evidentiary standard is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In short, inmates are not disqualified from providing testimony with evidentiary value in federal courts, and there is no valid reason for the BOP to decline to rely on such testimony… where the evidentiary standard is the preponderance of the evidence. In addition, the OIG found that in the context of sexual misconduct cases, BOP policy and federal regulations, specifically those DOJ regulations implementing the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), require the credibility of an alleged victim to be assessed on an individual basis and not be determined by the person’s status as an inmate.”

After the OIG provided the Bureau of Prisons with a draft of its report, BOP quickly denied that it had ever said it didn’t believe inmates as a matter of policy.  The Inspector General was unimpressed:

However, contrary to this assertion, the statements made by the OIA to the OIG as reflected in this memorandum were made by OIA on multiple occasions. Moreover, as described later in this memorandum, we found that in cases where the OIG substantiated BOP employee misconduct relying on inmate testimony the OIA has, on more than one occasion, sent less serious findings to the BOP’s Employment Law Branch (ELB) and the BOP institution where the subject employee works.

So now who doesn’t believe whom?

Forbes, Bureau Of Prisons’ Failure To Communicate First Step Act (October 15, 2022)

DOJ Office of Inspector General, Notification of Concerns Regarding the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) Treatment of Inmate Statements in Investigations of Alleged Misconduct by BOP Employees (October 12, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root

Congressional Committees Pile On BOP Sex Abuse Scandal – Update for March 10, 2022

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BOP BEATDOWN CONTINUES (DESERVEDLY)

Eight members of the House of Representatives have joined the fracas over the BOP’s mismanagement at FCI Dublin (California) where the rampant sexual abuse of female inmates has led to the arrests of four employees, including the former warden and chaplain.

PREA220310Last week, the legislators – including members of the House Judiciary Committee and oversight subcommittees – wrote to BOP Director Michael Carvajal demanding a copy of the Prison Rape Elimination Act audit conducted at FCI Dublin, California, by the end of the month.

(The last PREA audit of FCI Dublin, which reported that everything was just peachy, occurred in 2017, even while the “Rape Club” was in full flower. That’s hardly surprising: “In 2020, Associated Press reported, “the same year some of the women at Dublin complained, there were 422 complaints of staff-on-inmate sexual abuse across the system of 122 prisons and 153,000 inmates. The agency said it substantiated only four of those complaints and that 290 are still being investigated. It would not say whether the allegations were concentrated in women’s prisons or spread throughout the system.” That’s a one-percent  rate (or a three-percent rate, if you count only the investigations completed, having faith that the 290 still being investigated two years later have a snowball’s chance of concluding in favor of the inmate complainant).

The group also asked DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz to conduct an inspection at Dublin. In a letter to the IG, they said:

We were first made aware of the systemic issues plaguing FCI Dublin through the detailed articles and investigations completed by several reputable news sources earlier this month… These writings detailed how the all-women inmate population at FCI Dublin has allegedly been subjected to rampant sexual harassment and abuse at the hands of predatory male employees like former Warden Ray Garcia, former Chaplain James Theodore Highhouse, Prison Safety Administrator John Bellhouse, and recycling technician Ross Klinger.

As well, the Senate Judiciary Committee is also examining recent BOP problems. On February 23rd, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) asked DOJ for information on recent reports of BOP employee misconduct and sexual abuse.

sexualassault211014Meanwhile, the Dublin problems only worsen. DOJ said last week it is “gravely concerned about allegations that a high-ranking federal prison official entrusted to end sexual abuse and cover-ups at a women’s prison known as the “rape club” may have taken steps to suppress a recent complaint about staff misconduct.”

AP reported last week that BOP Deputy Regional Director T. Ray Hinkle has been accused of attempting to silence a female employee who said she had been harassed by an FCI Dublin manager by meeting with her personally in violation of established protocols.

“These allegations, if true, are abhorrent, and the Department of Justice takes them very seriously,” DOJ told AP.

Hinkle, who pledged to staff that he would help Dublin “regain its reputation” during a stint as acting warden that ended this week, was also admonished by his BOP bosses for sending all-staff emails that were critical of agency leadership and policies. In one email, AP said, Hinkle complained he was unable to defend himself in news reports airing allegations that he bullied whistleblower employees, threatened to close Dublin if employees kept speaking up about misconduct, and stonewalled a Congresswoman who sought to speak candidly with staff and inmates at the prison last month.

prisonhealth200313The BOP was also blasted last week for poor planning in its contract with private healthcare contractor NaphCare for some inmate medical services. The Bureau awarded NaphCare a three-year blanket purchase agreement in 2016 to care for inmates in home confinement and halfway houses. The contract had an initial ceiling value of less than $4 million, but officials used the agreement to add on some $52 million in additional health care services. Then, the BOP issued sole-source awards to extend the same contract for three more years – one year at a time – all against federal contracting regulations.

The IG says it’s still auditing the contract with NaphCare, but the issues are serious enough to warrant management attention now.

AP, House Dems demand to see investigation into rapes at Dublin women’s prison (March 4, 2022)

Legal Examiner, Sex Abuse, Corruption in U.S. Prisons to Be Examined By Lawmakers (March 2, 2022)

Pleasanton Weekly, Members of Congress demand investigation into ‘rampant’ abuse at Dublin prison (March 7, 2022)

AP, ‘Abhorrent’: Prison boss vexes DOJ with alleged intimidation (March 4, 2022)

Federal News Network, Certain agencies miss getting a clean audit bill of health for differing reasons (February 28, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root

BOP’s PREA Compliance Questioned… Maybe for Good Reason – Update for October 14, 2021

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SENATOR RUBIO DEMANDS MORE BOP SEXUAL ASSAULT INVESTIGATION

No sexual abuse problems here…

sexualassault211014The warden of FCI Dublin, a Bureau of Prisons female facility, has been charged with sexually abusing inmates in a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California late last month. According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney, Ray J. Garcia asked two female inmates to strip naked for him, groped one of the inmates, and took and saved pictures of a naked inmate being held in a cell.

The Warden, who – ironically enough, was in charge of training BOP personnel on compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act – is also accused of trying to stop a victim from reporting the sexual abuse by telling her “that he was ‘close friends’ with the individual responsible for investigating allegations of misconduct by inmates and that he could not be fired.”

He was wrong. Warden Ray was placed on administrative leave in July, and arrested on September 29. He is currently released on bond, something that would be very unlikely to have happened were he merely Peter Pervert living in his mom’s basement.

PREAAudit211014I bring this up to note the effectiveness of the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The last PREA Audit for FCI Dublin to be posted online is dated 2017. The inspector conducting the audit found that “[t]he inmates interviewed acknowledged that they received information about the facility’s Zero Tolerance policy against sexual abuse/sexual harassment immediately upon their arrival to the facility, that staff were respectful, and that they felt safe at the facility.”

Right. I’m sure they feel completely secure. Like, say the inmate known in Warden Ray’s Complaint as “Victim 1.” Here’s a tidbit from the complaint, as recounted by FBI Special Agent Kathleen Barkley:

Victim 1 reported that a fourth incident occurred when the “PREA people” were visiting. I understand Victim 1’s reference to “PREA people,” to be a reference to PREA staff who visited FCI Dublin to assess FCI’s Dublin’s compliance with PREA and to make recommendations regarding their policies and procedures.11 During this incident, and while the PREA staff members were on site, GARCIA told Victim 1 he needed to touch her, took her into one of the changing stalls designed for PREA compliant searches, grabbed her breasts, and briefly grabbed her vagina.

Rather graphic, but it illustrates the high regard in which the BOP staff hold PREA Audits. To be fair, Ray Garcia appears to be an aberration, but then, he’s not the first BOP staffer at Dublin to sexually abuse female inmates. Just ask Ross Klinger, a former BOP correctional officer at Dublin. That is, if his lawyer will let him say anything in advance of his trial…

The foregoing puts an exclamation mark on the letter Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) sent to BOP Director Michael Carjaval last week, demanding that the BOP conduct further investigations into allegations of sexual assault at the women’s facility – since closed – at FCI Coleman.

PREA211014Rubio wants to know why female inmates were not interviewed as part of the most recent Prison Rape Elimination Act audit, conducted just two days after all female prisoners were moved to other prisons. That’s right. All of the female inmates were packed out on buses to other facilities two days before the audit, which – among other things – was intended to address the climate of sexual abuse that had permeated the Coleman women’s facility.

“This is deeply concerning,” Rubio said, “because it was female inmates who made the allegations of sexual abuse. Female inmates were housed at the facility during the time period from 2018 to 2021 covered by the PREA audit. The allegations made by inmates at FCI Coleman raise serious questions as to the facility’s compliance with PREA and the conduct of its officers.”

Latin Times, Federal Prison Warden In California Charged With Sexually Abusing Inmate (October 1, 2021)

Complaint, United States v. Garcia, Case No. 4:21-mj-71517 (filed September 24, 2021)

Press release, Rubio: Bureau of Prisons Must Continue to Investigate Allegations of Sexual Assault at FCI Coleman (Ocober 8, 2021)

– Thomas L. Root

Government Proves How Serious It Is About Prison Rape – Update for August 31, 2021

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THE COST OF PRISON RAPE

We got a glimpse last week at how serious the Dept of Justice is about enforcing the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The answer, as though anyone is surprised, is “not much.”

PREA requires that federal, state, and local correctional facilities maintain and enforce a zero-tolerance policy toward sexual assault for both inmate-on-inmate and staff-on-inmate misconduct. Unsurprisingly, while the DOJ talks a good game, it seems much more interested in inmate-on-inmate than it is in staff-in-inmate sexual abuse.  Four cases in point:

(1) Phillip Golightly, a former BOP correctional officer at FCI Marianna and FCI Tallahassee, was sentenced to 24 months last week for “sexually assaulting female inmates who were then under his custodial, supervisory and disciplinary authority” (as the DOJ drily put it).

What did he really do? The lurid statement of facts in the case states that Golightly did not go lightly on female inmates. Instead,  he forced female inmates to perform oral sex on him, and to endure him forcing it on them, on multiple occasions. Read the statement (just not immediately before dinner).

rape190412For this – in a sentencing regime in which a poor black drug peddler gets a mandatory 10 years for possessing with intent to sell crack that weighs no more than a Big Mac (including bun) – the former corrections officer will serve 20 months and a couple weeks (after factoring in good-conduct time). Golightly isn’t just his name… it’s how the Court sentenced him.

That’s the cost of rape if you’re a BOP perp (that is, if you are prosecuted at all, as noted below).

(2)  Carleane Berman, a former FCI Coleman inmate who was one of 15 women to share a $2 million settlement with the BOP over their abuse at the hands of a group of FCI Coleman camp COs, died of a drug overdose last month.

carleane210831The Miami Herald reported last week that “Carleane returned from the Federal Correctional Complex Coleman in Sumter County a shattered woman.” Her father, Ron Berman, who had fought to keep her drug-free since her release, said he “could do little to help her quell her nerves, ease her insomnia, or stop recoiling at the sound of voices in hallways. The voices, Carleane said, reminded her of being behind bars with the prison officers who raped her.

Miranda Flowers, another victim, told the Herald she and Berman were raped together at least 11 times in various parts of the facility. “We’d walk back to the units and grab our stuff and go straight to the showers and not talk about it,” she recalled.

“The people that were supposed to be in charge were not doing what they were supposed to do,” former inmate Andrea DiMuro said. “Coleman was hell on earth.”

“I blame everything on Coleman. I want them held accountable,” Ron Berman said. “She was never the same after Coleman.”

(3)  Miranda Flowers said a prison investigator told her the officers had been allowed to resign in exchange for their admissions and no charges.  As it stands today, none of the rapes occurring prior to August 31, 2016, is prosecutable, falling as they do beyond the statute of limitations.

Joe Rojas, the southeast regional vice president for the workers union, AFGE Council of Prisons, said the Coleman case was a black eye for the BOP. “I’m just sad because honestly those officers got away with a crime,” Rojas told the Tampa Bay Times last May.

PREA210831(4) Want to read about the PREA violations at Coleman? Don’t bother going to the FCI Coleman Low PREA Audit results (last updated April 2018).  The report, but for the boilerplate, is significantly redacted, but it maintained that “There were no substantiated sexual abuse or harassment allegations at FCC Coleman over the period…” studied by the audit. According to the Report,  “[f]acility staff conducted 36 investigations into sexual abuse/harassment allegations. There were 34 unsubstantiated cases, and two cases were deemed unfounded.”

Yet the wholesale abuse of inmates dated from 2012, “in some cases, spanning five to six years,” the Times said, with specific allegations dating from as late as December 31, 2017.

With such detailed and unstinting investigation, it’s little wonder that so little staff-to-inmate rape is detected, and that so little is done about it.

DOJ Press Release, Former Bureau of Prisons Correctional Officer Sentenced to 24 Months In Federal Prison For Sexually Abusing Inmates (August 27, 2021)

Statement of Facts, R.23, United States v. Golightly, Case No 4:20cr32 (N.D. Florida, October 16, 2020)

Miami Herald, She was raped by Florida prison officers. After her drug death, supporters want justice (August 24, 2021)

– Thomas L. Root

Even as Inmates, Women Are Worse Off Than Men – Update for March 5, 2020

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FEMALE PRISONERS PUNISHED MORE OFTEN FOR LESS, REPORT SAYS

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights last week released a report finding that many incarcerated women experience physical and psychological harms disproportionate to those suffered by male inmates, with insufficient respect for their constitutional rights.

womenprison170821The report concluded that incarcerated parents permanently lose parental rights at higher rates than parents whom courts find to have neglected or abused their children but are not incarcerated; that despite the Prison Rape Elimination Act, sexual abuse and rape remain prevalent against women in prison; and that incarcerated women are often given disproportionately harsh punishments for minor offenses compared to incarcerated men, leading to time spent in segregation and loss of good-time credits for minor violations of prison regulations, and disproportionately harsh punishment for offenses such as “being disorderly.” Men, on the other hand, tend more often to be punished for violence.

“What we saw was that women themselves are substantially more likely [than men] to be subject to disciplinary practices for minor infractions,” says USCCR chair Catherine Lhamon. “Those minor offenses include “being what’s called insolent, or disobeying an order, or swearing.” An NPR/Medill School of Journalism study in 2018 found that women were disciplined at more than twice the rate of men for minor prison rule infractions.

The USCCR report found that prison officials, supervisors, and correctional officers are inconsistently trained on the prevalence of disproportionate punishment of incarcerated women and evidence-based disciplinary practices.

U.S. Civil Right Commission, Women in Prison: Seeking Justice Behind Bars (Feb 26)

NPR, Federal Report Says Women In Prison Receive Harsher Punishments Than Men (Feb 26)

 

– Thomas L. Root

BOP Faces Serious and Ugly Suit for Sexual Assault of Female Inmates – Update for December 9, 2019

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BOP RUNS SMACK INTO #METOO

A year ago, The New York Times published a scathing story of the sexual harassment suffered by female BOP officers and workers at the hands of male BOP employees. Given the detailed allegations by BOP female employees of not just harassment, but of a culture of tolerance and coverup by BOP management, no one should be surprised that allegations of charges of much uglier sexual abuse of female inmates and heavy-handed official coverup would someday bubble to the surface.

BOPsexharassment191209At the time, The Times said women who report harassment “face retaliation, professional sabotage and even termination,” while the careers of many male BOP harassers and their protectors flourish. The new charges, that the BOP staff protected male employees from criminal charges and impeded required audits under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, are even more detailed, comprising the inevitable result of a much greater mismatch of power between abuser and victim.

handson191209Last week, 14 current and former BOP inmate women, ranging in age from 30 to 56 and nearly all first offenders, jointly sued the federal government over sexual abuse they alleged they endured at the women’s federal prison camp at Coleman and at FCI Tallahassee, both in Florida. Seven of the plaintiffs are still incarcerated, but all of them sued in their actual names, despite what they allege is an official Coleman policy of punishing any female inmate making a sexual harassment claim by housing her in a nearby county jail while her allegations are being “investigated.”

The 78-page lawsuit, filed by Atlanta law firm Adams & Reese  in the Middle District of Florida, sets out in graphic detail charges ranging from verbal harassment and threats to groping to rape, and alleges not just that women who complained were punished but that the institution even interfered with the law firm’s investigation of the charges.

In what the Miami Herald called “stark, chilling detail,” the lawsuit describes how female inmates were lured into private offices or sheds with no surveillance cameras, stalked relentlessly by male correctional officers until they were forced to submit. Some officers would even display computer screens showing the women the exact location of their families, a pointed message that their relatives could be targeted if the women didn’t cooperate. Some of the accused officers, all of whom are fully identified in the lawsuit, have resigned or taken early retirement (with immunity from prosecution for the actions they admitted to, according to Bryan Busch, the plaintiffs’ attorney.

coleman191209B

“The prison certainly did not want this to come out so they suppressed any sort of allegations that were made, and did not conduct complete and full investigations,” Busch said.

The Prison Rape Elimination Act was enacted by Congress to require that facilities adopt a zero-tolerance approach to rape and sexual abuse. The PREA specifies, among other things, that institutions undergo annual audits to ensure their compliance with its terms. The lawsuit alleges that female inmates who had complained about sexual abuse were routinely made unavailable for interview by PREA inspectors by the institution’s transferring of them to another prison facility before auditors arrived. “By transferring victims of sexual abuse,” the complaint alleges, Coleman “shields itself from legitimate investigation and suppresses complaints by punishing the victims.”

The BOP is sued by inmates all the time, but this one really feels different. First, the lawsuit is a Golanda of detail, 78 pages of well-pled facts. It is brought by a law firm that does not appear to be a windmill-tilter, but instead focuses primarily on securities and business litigation (but with experience in prisoner abuse cases). The plaintiffs seem reasonably well funded and not dependent on a jailhouse lawyer for representation.

zerotolerance191209Most important, if the details in the lawsuit are correct, the BOP already investigated many of the officers and promised them immunity from criminal charges in exchange for full confessions. Thus, the agency’s personnel records on the officers involved probably contains a wealth of evidence of both the sexual abuse and the coverup.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has shown great interest in treatment of female BOP prisoners. Perhaps more of a concern to the BOP should be the popularity of the #MeToo movement, which focuses on male dominance in matters of sexual harassment.

The Beaubrun lawsuit (Rachelle Beaubrun, a recently-released prisoner, is the lead plaintiff) represents the most serious attack to date on the alleged sex abuse culture at the BOP. This suit has the potential to end a lot of BOP careers and disrupt BOP management culture at women’s facilities throughout the system.

Beaubrun v United States, Case No. 5:19-cv-615 (M.D.Fla. complaint filed Dec. 3, 2019)

Miami Herald, Rape is rampant at this women’s prison. Anyone who complains is punished, lawsuit says (Dec. 4)

The New York Times, Hazing, Humiliation, Terror: Working While Female in Federal Prison (Nov. 17, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root