Human Rights Reporting
Spring 2002 Student Work
© 2002 by Ericka J. Souter
“You belong to me” – Rape and sexual abuse of women prisoners by guards and staff commonplace
By Ericka J. Souter
As the police car turned down a rural road, Cassandra Collins knew that she was in trouble. From the passenger seat, she could see the dense patch of forest and a deserted cemetery with its endless rows of moss eaten and crumbing tombstones. There were no cars passing by to run to, no people to hear the cries that she knew would come. The car stopped and Capt. Roosevelt Baker began to take off his clothes, pointed his gun in her face and raped her.
Collins’ story is not rare in the United States according to human rights groups like Amnesty International. Of the 164,000 female inmates in jails and prisons in this country, most will experience some sort of sexual misconduct, which includes verbal and physical assaults.
For Collins, that nightmare persisted throughout the six months she served at the Gadsen County Jail in Florida. It started when the single mother of two was arrested in December 1995 for writing bad checks. At that time, her biggest fear was who would take care of her small children while she served the sentence. Desperate to find a solution, Captain Baker seemed like a white knight when he went to the judge and proposed a furlough program that would allow Collins to work at the jail laundry during the day, then return at night. "I thought he was being nice,” says Collins. “But he began acting strangely. One day I came to the jail with a new haircut and he told me not to cut my hair without his permission. He said, ‘You belong to me.’”
From that point on, the abuse escalated. Baker warned other inmates to stay away from the jail laundry while Collins was at work. And he would show up at her home unexpectedly. Then he forced her to pay him money in order to “show her appreciation” for what he had done for her. The first time he tried to force her to engage in sexual conduct with him, Collins ran away. The next night, he came by her house in a hearse and threatened her. “I wouldn’t let him in but he pointed at the hearse and said, ‘If you tell anyone, that’s where you’ll be. Remember where I work.’”
When Collins was released in February of 1996, she disclosed what had happened to her to her lawyer. She was unable to get the state to criminally prosecute Roosevelt for the attacks. However, Collins settled a civil suit for sexual misconduct against the Gladsen County Sheriff’s Office for $200,000. Shortly after, a female guard at the jail accused Baker of coercing her into having sex with him. Consequently, he was prosecuted in federal court for violating the guard’s civil rights and received a five-year sentence.
Inmate victims, like Collins, have little legal recourse. Many states do not have laws explicitly prohibiting custodial sexual conduct. If an inmate comes forward with allegations of rape, there are no set guidelines or regulations for prison officials to act in accordance with. The officials then can opt to reprimand the guard rather than contact the police and file criminal charges for the conduct. And in Colorado, Missouri and Wyoming, laws allow officers to claim they had of consensual sex with the inmate, thus nullifying any charges of assault. “You would think that a prison guard would not need a law to tell them that they cannot rape female inmates but the sheer number of cases indicates that some of them don’t seem to know better,” says Anita Smith, a social worked with prisoners in Michigan.
At times, prisoners find little sympathy for unjust treatment they experience during incarceration. “People seem to think that people who commit crimes deserve what they get in prison,” says Smith. “But I don’t think the public realizes how brutal the experience really is.”
So what makes a particular woman vulnerable to attack? “There could be several reasons,” explains Smith. “A guard may want to break down a tough or assertive inmate. Show her who runs things. Or he may target a meek or timid victim who won’t likely tell. In either case, it’s more about power than sex.” Lesbians and transgender inmates are also particularly vulnerable, according to Amnesty International. An officer at an U.S. detention center in Miami raped Christina Madrazo, a transsexual woman from Mexico seeking residence in the United States. In exchange for admitting that he had sex with Madrazo, the guard was not charged with felony rape charges.
In some states, including Iowa and Maryland, engaging in sex with an inmate does not even qualify as a felony offense. “So if a guard who rapes an inmate is only charged and convicted of misdemeanor, theoretically, he could get the same amount of jail time as someone who steals a watch from a department store,” says Smith. “Now is that fair?”
In several states, the laws punish women who come forward. In Arizona, California, Delaware and Nevada an inmate can be found criminally liable for having sexual contact with a guard. Enforcement of the laws differs slightly in each state. In California, the prisoner is only penalized for having oral sex; Delaware and Nevada, an inmate will be punished if they cannot prove rape; and in Arizona, even if an inmate is raped, she can be charged and punished for the interaction, according to Amnesty International.
Many women choose to keep quiet about the abuse for fear of retaliation by the perpetrator and other staff members. In 1995, Stacey Barker, a former prostitute serving a life sentence at Scotts Correctional Facility in Michigan for stabbing to death an abusive client, who happened to be a priest, said a guard sexually assaulted her over a year. She has experienced unrelenting retaliation from other guards since her abuser was fired and she won a settlement from the Michigan Department of Corrections. Barker, whose story was a part of the Human Rights Watch Report Nowhere to Hide, claims to have been denied due process, physically threatened, set up by guards and had visitation privileges denied. Prior to the civil suit, Barker was considered a model prisoner—she was pursing a bachelor’s degree in behavioral sciences and never got into trouble. Immediately following, she said guards would raid her cell to “find” contraband they had planted. Over the next nine months, Barker lost all privileges, and was constantly harassed and set up by guards.
Things got worse for Barker in January of 1997 when she alleges another corrections officer began sexually assaulting her. He threatened her with solitary confinement if she reported the abuse and told her that other guards were ‘out to get her.’ This time, Barker relented and did not try to stop him. The abuse was only discovered when another inmate reported seeing the officer leave Barker’s cell one night and reported this to her lawyer. Barker was eventually transferred, but her reputation as a troublemaker for guards followed her there. “When women speak up they risk more severe physical abuse, verbal abuse and getting written up for rules violations they didn’t commit,” says Smith, who once counseled Barker at Scotts Correctional Facility. “There are endless ways a guard can torture an inmate when no one is there to protect her.”
Another reason for silence is the shame that many rape victims experience after being victimized. According to Smith, a victim can feel she somehow provoked the attack or that her husband and children will be disgusted by what happened.
The abuse isn’t limited to guards and prison officials. There are many cases in which medical personnel, vendors and kitchen staff that attack inmates. In Texas, Dean Bradley Hagen, a dentist who worked at the Del Valley Correctional Complez, pleaded guilty to public lewdness in February 2001. Hagen was caught on videotape fondling a prisoner while treating her and has been sued by three other inmates for sexual misconduct. Ten states have statutes that cover all prison employees including Iowa and North Carolina. But in most other states, including DC and the US Bureau of Prisons system, peripheral custodians, like dentists, can engage in sexual misconduct without facing criminal charges.
Tougher penalties for custodial sexual misconduct may prove an effective deterrent for would-be rapists. Nevertheless, some groups criticize America for allowing this type of abuse to happen under existing laws. The United States has ratified both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which prohibit abuse and torture and require cases of it to be investigated and punished, yet prison rape continues to be a large problem in the penal system. Additionally, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantees a prisoner’s right to privacy. But these victims need not look further than the US Constitution for an explanation of their rights. The Eighth Amendment states that prisoners should not be subject to cruel and unusual punishment. To Collins and other victims, rape behind prison walls qualifies as such.
“In all honesty, the best solution would be to not allow male guards to have contact with female prisoners,” says Smith. “But that probably won’t happen. So until prisons can screen out the guards who will attack, I fear that women in prison will continue to be brutalized and have their dignity and rights stripped away.”