Post by ScotKaren on Jun 21, 2006 6:48:16 GMT -5
detnews.com/2005/specialreport/0505/24/A01-189215.htm
From April 2002 to spring of the following year, Renee Williams says she received gifts from a prison guard with whom she was having a sexual relationship. When they had a falling out, Williams says the guard withheld her mail. When she complained, he had her committed to a mental services unit claiming she was delusional.
Sexual Abuse Behind Bars
Guards assault female inmates
INACTION: Accused officers go unchecked
REFORM: Promised changes slow in coming
PRICE: Lawsuits cost Michigan taxpayers millions
By Melvin Claxton, Ronald J. Hansen and Norman Sinclair The Detroit News
Robin Buckson / The Detroit News
Necole Brown, paroled from Robert Scott Correctional Facility in 2001, says when she went to prison in 1996 at age 24, she quickly learned prison life meant sex and intimidation.
Plea for help
Harris
T'Nasa Harris reported in an April 2002 letter to William Overton, former Corrections director, that she had been raped by Corporal Edmond Hook, a guard left on the job despite previous complaints.
Naming victims
The Detroit News does not routinely publish the names of alleged sexual assault victims. All of the women in these stories either agreed to talk to the newspaper or made their names public by joining a class-action lawsuit.
A decade of lawsuits
• In 1996, 32 inmates filed a lawsuit against the Michigan Department of Corrections alleging rampant sexual abuse in the state’s female prisons. The state said abuse was not widespread but settled the case by agreeing to pay inmates $3.8 million in 1999.
• In 1996, inmates filed a second lawsuit in Washtenaw County against the department, alleging widespread sexual abuse by guards. The case, which involves about 440 inmates, is still pending.
• In 1997, the U.S. Justice Department filed a civil rights suit against Michigan, which the state settled in 1999 by promising major reforms.
• In 2000, corrections officers sued the state over a proposed ban of male guards in female prisons. In December, an appeals court ruled against the officers.
Michigan women’s prisons
Robert Scott Correctional Facility, Plymouth, 860 inmates
Camp Brighton, Pinckney, 404 inmates
Huron Valley Facility, Ypsilanti, 820 inmates
About this series
TODAY
The Michigan Department of Corrections has failed to fully implement promised prison reforms to stamp out the sexual abuse by guards, placing the state's 2,000 female prisoners in jeopardy.
MONDAY
For decades, the Corrections Department hired convicted felons as prison guards, encouraging several to hide their past by legally erasing their criminal records. Some went on to sexually abuse female prisoners.
TUESDAY
Faced with mounting lawsuits by female inmates over abuse, Michigan legislators have written prisoners out of the state's civil rights laws. This could block inmates' rights to seek damages even in cases of rape.
Comment on this story
Send this story to a friend
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Three years before prison guard Edmond Hook sexually assaulted and impregnated inmate T'Nasa Harris, officials at the Camp Brighton facility near Pinckney received an anonymous letter claiming he was a "sexual predator."
Four months after Michigan Department of Corrections officials got the letter, 18 women complained that Hook leered at them in the shower or groped them during pat downs. Corrections officials made no effort to closely monitor Hook.
These incidents came as the U.S. Justice Department was suing the state for failing to address conditions that allowed female prisoners to be sexually abused by guards. On May 25, 1999 -- the day the state settled that suit and promised major reforms to better protect inmates -- Hook was admonished to "exercise better judgment in dealing with females."
Eight months later, Hook forced inmate Tiffany Gilmore to touch his genitals. The next month, he sexually assaulted Harris, 29, a mother of three.
Hook's case illustrates the state's continuing failure to protect female prisoners from sexual abuse by guards despite its agreement with the Justice Department. Indeed, the number of sexual abuse complaints since 2000 is slightly higher than in the years before the federal government sued Michigan.
As a result, Michigan's 2,000 female inmates remain in jeopardy, predatory guards often go unpunished and taxpayers face a mounting bill from inmate lawsuits that already exceeds $4 million, a five-month Detroit News investigation found.
At the heart of the problem is the department's failure to change practices that allowed abusive behavior to flourish in the 1990s, The News' investigation found. Among them:
• Investigations of inmate complaints are often incomplete or superficial. Dozens of cases have lingered for months and even years, while others were closed within days without talking to crucial witnesses or the Corrections employee accused.
• Sexual misconduct complaints are still routinely dismissed on technical grounds, sometimes for the way forms are filled out. In some cases, prison officials have dismissed typewritten complaints as "illegible."
• The department has never punished officers for failing to report sexual assaults even when there is compelling evidence employees knew of the abuse for months or years yet did nothing.
• The department continues to punish inmates whose charges do not stand up under scrutiny to discourage false complaints. The practice, which requires victims to offer overwhelming evidence, has chilled reports of assaults, inmates and prison advocates contend.
Despite these problems, the Michigan Legislature two years ago closed its office that heard inmate complaints and passed a law that makes it more difficult for prisoners to sue for damages.
From 2000 to 2003, the last year for which information was available, inmates filed 169 complaints of sexual abuse -- from harassment to rape -- against prison staff, a Detroit News analysis of inmate complaints and prison records found.
In the 145 cases where the outcome is known, prison investigators determined 34 of the claims were true, 67 could not be proved or disproved and 44 were unfounded.
"This level of incidents is serious and troubling," said Brenda Smith, a law professor at American University in Washington, D.C., who has studied women's prisons issues.
Corrections officials declined to discuss specific abuse cases because of ongoing litigation. They said that sexual abuse incidents are rare and the department has implemented all the promised reforms and has a "zero-tolerance" policy toward sexual misconduct by guards.
"We made some major changes at MDOC," said Nancy Zang, who oversees policy compliance for the department's female prisons. "The administration and the managerial staff are so committed to doing the right thing."
She said that while the number of abuse investigations has gone up, the number of proven allegations has fallen drastically. The department confirmed three sexual abuse complaints in 2003 and 2004, prison officials maintain.
But The News, using the department's own information obtained by inmates' attorneys in an ongoing lawsuit, found 10 confirmed allegations of sexual abuse in 2003 alone. In addition, The News found that the department routinely fails to classify all complaints of sexual contact as a sexual misconduct case.
A lack of urgency
Implementing the reforms promised six years ago was especially important because the department's effort to take male guards out of housing units and other sensitive areas in prisons was blocked by an August 2000 lawsuit by Corrections officers. The department sought to remove male guards after its legal settlement with federal authorities.
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, reversing earlier legal victories for the guards, ruled in December that the department had the right to fill certain positions with women only. The court refused to rehear the case and the department has taken no action pending possible appeals.
But in the more than four years the lawsuit made its way through the courts, Corrections officials failed to treat the sexual abuse problem with the urgency the department's own internal investigations and reports showed was needed.
In the past 15 years, at least 31 prison employees have been convicted of sexual assaults on female inmates.
Most of the charges against Corrections employees were brought after lawsuits by inmates and the Justice Department, as well as the intervention of other parties, led to increased scrutiny of the department.
Sexual assaults in Michigan's female prisons surfaced as a problem 20 years ago when male guards were first allowed in the institutions. While there are no comprehensive nationwide figures tracking sexual misconduct, Michigan was one of two states sued by the federal government in 1997 over sexual abuse of female prisoners.
The high level of abuse in Michigan's female prisons also attracted the concerns of such diverse organizations as the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, U.S. Justice Department and civil rights lawyers.
Prison officials say they are working to end the problem of sexual abuse and point to the reforms they have implemented as proof of their commitment. Male guards, who once routinely performed full-body pat downs and searches of female inmates, are now only allowed to do so when no female guard is present and there is an emergency situation, such as a fight, officials say.
But here again, the department has been slow to act. Two years after it ended opposite-sex pat downs at some institutions in 2000, male guards at the now-closed Gilman facility in Union Lake were still patting down female inmates.
Complaints hard to make
As recently as Jan. 10, Marquetta Tarver, a 26-year-old inmate at the Huron Valley complex in Ypsilanti, reported she was raped in a storage room by a prison maintenance worker. Like other inmates before her, Tarver said she had a hard time getting prison authorities to investigate her claim.
Tarver said she tried to report the alleged rape for two weeks. She said she wrote four complaints and even spoke to the warden, who was passing her housing unit while giving the director of Corrections a tour of the prison, before officials decided to look into her case.
Prison officials and the Michigan State Police are investigating Tarver's complaint. But sometimes inmates say they are too afraid of retaliation from guards and staff to file sexual abuse complaints.
Necole Brown, paroled from the Robert Scott facility in December 2001, said when she went to prison in 1996 at age 24, she quickly learned prison life meant sex and intimidation. She said some officials knew about the abuse but did little to stem it.
"There was sex everywhere," said Brown, who complained she was victimized by a guard whom four other women accused of sexual assault. She said inmates who reported abuse "got (misconduct) tickets and wound up serving years in extra time."
Guards get a break
Prison officials say they are caught in a delicate balancing act between responding to inmate complaints and protecting officers from unjust charges. Guards who have been accused of sexual misconduct point out that complaints are being made by convicts, whom they insist often are convincing liars and manipulators.
The women who accuse guards of abuse are convicted criminals guilty of offenses ranging from theft to murder. Prisoner advocates argue that sexual abuse of inmates amounts to "cruel and unusual punishment," and Corrections officials agree that no crime warrants a punishment of prison rape.
But even when evidence appears strong, history suggests that department investigators give guards accused of wrongdoing the benefit of the doubt. Corrections officials have closed investigations as unsubstantiated despite eyewitnesses, lie-detector tests, video surveillance, DNA or other evidence.
In a 2003 case, inmate Carolyn Moss kept an officer's semen after being forced to perform oral sex. The officer took early retirement shortly after Moss filed her complaint. Officials closed the case as unsubstantiated, department records show.
In other dismissed cases, women had intimate information about the officer or contracted venereal diseases in prison. In February 2003, inmate Janise Leonard filed a complaint against an officer, claiming she had awakened to find him exposing and touching himself in her cell and making advances on her. She reported that he was not circumcised.
A logbook showed that the guard, who admitted he was uncircumcised, was indeed away from his desk at the time of the alleged assault, according to Internal Affairs records. On Sept. 18, 2003, an Internal Affairs report agreed with Leonard's claim of sexual misconduct by the guard.
However, a review committee still closed the matter as "not sustained" without explanation.
In July 1999, two months after the state pledged to better investigate inmate complaints, inmate Charlene Harris reported she had been raped in her cell by guard Nolan Ware. A videotape showed Ware entering her cell after midnight and leaving a half-hour later. It also showed another guard passing the cell and an inmate knocking on the door while Ware was in it.
The department closed Harris' sexual assault complaint as "not sustained." Officials did find that Ware violated prison rules and that there was physical contact.
The state police were not so lenient. They arrested Ware on third-degree rape charges, a felony that carries a 15-year maximum prison sentence. He pleaded guilty to assault and battery and disorderly conduct in March 2001.
He was sentenced to two years' probation, and the department terminated his employment.
Tom Tylutki, president of the Michigan Corrections Officers Association, said considering about 200 male guards work in female units, the number of convictions is not shocking.
"Every profession has their bad apples," Tylutki said. "We feel (in our membership) they are very far and few between. We don't condone messing around with these inmates because it is a security breach."
Accusers face retaliation
On Feb. 24, 2001, one day after she testified against guards in a sexual abuse lawsuit, inmate Robin McArdle received a ticket for not being on her bunk during a head count, a violation of prison rules.
The officer at the Wayne Correctional Facility who cited her testified for the guards in that case.
Although she had no misconduct tickets on her record in her first eight years in prison, McArdle received a total of five tickets after she first testified in a prisoner abuse lawsuit in 1999.
The tickets jeopardized her parole and ultimately extended her stay in prison by a week.
Department officials say they are aggressively fighting to end reprisals by officers against inmates. They point to a committee set up four years ago to review claims by inmates who believe they are victims of retaliation.
But the committee doesn't rule on retaliation claims during an active investigation of the original charges of sex abuse. This often means misconduct tickets remain on prisoners' records for weeks or months.
"This could be really critical if the inmate is up for parole," said attorney Deborah Labelle, one of the lawyers representing female inmates in their class-action suit against Corrections.
"Having a major misconduct ticket could prevent an inmate from being eligible for a hearing and could mean she spends another year in prison."
Vulnerable preyed upon
In Michigan's prisons, the young and vulnerable are the prey of choice for abusive guards.
Renee Williams, who had just turned 20 when she went to prison in 1999, knew that guard Rodney Madden had the power to make her life even more miserable. He also had the power to grant her favors.
From April 2002 to spring of the following year, Williams said she received gifts, including a gold chain and money, from Madden. She said from October 2002 they had sexual intercourse on a regular basis and that the guard gave her his cell phone number.
Williams, who was released two months ago, said guards and inmates knew of the relationship.
"It was not a secret," she said. "He called me his baby. When I wore the necklace with the cross, everybody knew he gave it to me."
When they had a falling-out, she said Madden withheld her mail. She said when she complained to the officer in charge of her unit, the officer downplayed the matter and encouraged her not to report Madden.
"She said, 'He might just be in love with you and don't know how to act,'" Williams recalls. Williams filed a complaint against Madden in June 2003, exposing their alleged sexual relationship, prison records show.
Madden accused Williams of fabricating the story of their affair and had her committed to the mental services unit on June 20, claiming she was delusional and "acting strange." The officer said Williams' charges were part of her sexual fantasies about him.
A prison psychologist determined after one interview that Williams wasn't mentally ill. After the interview, Williams was transferred to Camp Brighton, a minimum-security boot camp, until she was released. She has never been informed of the outcome of her complaint.
Pain lingers for victims
The pain of sexual abuse is no less real for inmates than for other sexual assault victims. It is especially so for those who bear children from the attacks.
T'Nasa Harris, who was impregnated by officer Edmond Hook, knows that pain only too well. Harris said she made several attempts to abort the child.
She is bitter toward Hook, whom she calls a monster, and toward the department for failing to stop him.
Hook eventually pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of sexual misconduct. He was sentenced to a year in jail in 2003.
"I was wrong for what I done and I'm still doing time for my wrongful doings," Harris wrote in a letter to prison officials. "But nothing, nothing on this planet could make me believe I deserve to be raped and violated of my privacy."
From April 2002 to spring of the following year, Renee Williams says she received gifts from a prison guard with whom she was having a sexual relationship. When they had a falling out, Williams says the guard withheld her mail. When she complained, he had her committed to a mental services unit claiming she was delusional.
Sexual Abuse Behind Bars
Guards assault female inmates
INACTION: Accused officers go unchecked
REFORM: Promised changes slow in coming
PRICE: Lawsuits cost Michigan taxpayers millions
By Melvin Claxton, Ronald J. Hansen and Norman Sinclair The Detroit News
Robin Buckson / The Detroit News
Necole Brown, paroled from Robert Scott Correctional Facility in 2001, says when she went to prison in 1996 at age 24, she quickly learned prison life meant sex and intimidation.
Plea for help
Harris
T'Nasa Harris reported in an April 2002 letter to William Overton, former Corrections director, that she had been raped by Corporal Edmond Hook, a guard left on the job despite previous complaints.
Naming victims
The Detroit News does not routinely publish the names of alleged sexual assault victims. All of the women in these stories either agreed to talk to the newspaper or made their names public by joining a class-action lawsuit.
A decade of lawsuits
• In 1996, 32 inmates filed a lawsuit against the Michigan Department of Corrections alleging rampant sexual abuse in the state’s female prisons. The state said abuse was not widespread but settled the case by agreeing to pay inmates $3.8 million in 1999.
• In 1996, inmates filed a second lawsuit in Washtenaw County against the department, alleging widespread sexual abuse by guards. The case, which involves about 440 inmates, is still pending.
• In 1997, the U.S. Justice Department filed a civil rights suit against Michigan, which the state settled in 1999 by promising major reforms.
• In 2000, corrections officers sued the state over a proposed ban of male guards in female prisons. In December, an appeals court ruled against the officers.
Michigan women’s prisons
Robert Scott Correctional Facility, Plymouth, 860 inmates
Camp Brighton, Pinckney, 404 inmates
Huron Valley Facility, Ypsilanti, 820 inmates
About this series
TODAY
The Michigan Department of Corrections has failed to fully implement promised prison reforms to stamp out the sexual abuse by guards, placing the state's 2,000 female prisoners in jeopardy.
MONDAY
For decades, the Corrections Department hired convicted felons as prison guards, encouraging several to hide their past by legally erasing their criminal records. Some went on to sexually abuse female prisoners.
TUESDAY
Faced with mounting lawsuits by female inmates over abuse, Michigan legislators have written prisoners out of the state's civil rights laws. This could block inmates' rights to seek damages even in cases of rape.
Comment on this story
Send this story to a friend
Get Home Delivery
Three years before prison guard Edmond Hook sexually assaulted and impregnated inmate T'Nasa Harris, officials at the Camp Brighton facility near Pinckney received an anonymous letter claiming he was a "sexual predator."
Four months after Michigan Department of Corrections officials got the letter, 18 women complained that Hook leered at them in the shower or groped them during pat downs. Corrections officials made no effort to closely monitor Hook.
These incidents came as the U.S. Justice Department was suing the state for failing to address conditions that allowed female prisoners to be sexually abused by guards. On May 25, 1999 -- the day the state settled that suit and promised major reforms to better protect inmates -- Hook was admonished to "exercise better judgment in dealing with females."
Eight months later, Hook forced inmate Tiffany Gilmore to touch his genitals. The next month, he sexually assaulted Harris, 29, a mother of three.
Hook's case illustrates the state's continuing failure to protect female prisoners from sexual abuse by guards despite its agreement with the Justice Department. Indeed, the number of sexual abuse complaints since 2000 is slightly higher than in the years before the federal government sued Michigan.
As a result, Michigan's 2,000 female inmates remain in jeopardy, predatory guards often go unpunished and taxpayers face a mounting bill from inmate lawsuits that already exceeds $4 million, a five-month Detroit News investigation found.
At the heart of the problem is the department's failure to change practices that allowed abusive behavior to flourish in the 1990s, The News' investigation found. Among them:
• Investigations of inmate complaints are often incomplete or superficial. Dozens of cases have lingered for months and even years, while others were closed within days without talking to crucial witnesses or the Corrections employee accused.
• Sexual misconduct complaints are still routinely dismissed on technical grounds, sometimes for the way forms are filled out. In some cases, prison officials have dismissed typewritten complaints as "illegible."
• The department has never punished officers for failing to report sexual assaults even when there is compelling evidence employees knew of the abuse for months or years yet did nothing.
• The department continues to punish inmates whose charges do not stand up under scrutiny to discourage false complaints. The practice, which requires victims to offer overwhelming evidence, has chilled reports of assaults, inmates and prison advocates contend.
Despite these problems, the Michigan Legislature two years ago closed its office that heard inmate complaints and passed a law that makes it more difficult for prisoners to sue for damages.
From 2000 to 2003, the last year for which information was available, inmates filed 169 complaints of sexual abuse -- from harassment to rape -- against prison staff, a Detroit News analysis of inmate complaints and prison records found.
In the 145 cases where the outcome is known, prison investigators determined 34 of the claims were true, 67 could not be proved or disproved and 44 were unfounded.
"This level of incidents is serious and troubling," said Brenda Smith, a law professor at American University in Washington, D.C., who has studied women's prisons issues.
Corrections officials declined to discuss specific abuse cases because of ongoing litigation. They said that sexual abuse incidents are rare and the department has implemented all the promised reforms and has a "zero-tolerance" policy toward sexual misconduct by guards.
"We made some major changes at MDOC," said Nancy Zang, who oversees policy compliance for the department's female prisons. "The administration and the managerial staff are so committed to doing the right thing."
She said that while the number of abuse investigations has gone up, the number of proven allegations has fallen drastically. The department confirmed three sexual abuse complaints in 2003 and 2004, prison officials maintain.
But The News, using the department's own information obtained by inmates' attorneys in an ongoing lawsuit, found 10 confirmed allegations of sexual abuse in 2003 alone. In addition, The News found that the department routinely fails to classify all complaints of sexual contact as a sexual misconduct case.
A lack of urgency
Implementing the reforms promised six years ago was especially important because the department's effort to take male guards out of housing units and other sensitive areas in prisons was blocked by an August 2000 lawsuit by Corrections officers. The department sought to remove male guards after its legal settlement with federal authorities.
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, reversing earlier legal victories for the guards, ruled in December that the department had the right to fill certain positions with women only. The court refused to rehear the case and the department has taken no action pending possible appeals.
But in the more than four years the lawsuit made its way through the courts, Corrections officials failed to treat the sexual abuse problem with the urgency the department's own internal investigations and reports showed was needed.
In the past 15 years, at least 31 prison employees have been convicted of sexual assaults on female inmates.
Most of the charges against Corrections employees were brought after lawsuits by inmates and the Justice Department, as well as the intervention of other parties, led to increased scrutiny of the department.
Sexual assaults in Michigan's female prisons surfaced as a problem 20 years ago when male guards were first allowed in the institutions. While there are no comprehensive nationwide figures tracking sexual misconduct, Michigan was one of two states sued by the federal government in 1997 over sexual abuse of female prisoners.
The high level of abuse in Michigan's female prisons also attracted the concerns of such diverse organizations as the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, U.S. Justice Department and civil rights lawyers.
Prison officials say they are working to end the problem of sexual abuse and point to the reforms they have implemented as proof of their commitment. Male guards, who once routinely performed full-body pat downs and searches of female inmates, are now only allowed to do so when no female guard is present and there is an emergency situation, such as a fight, officials say.
But here again, the department has been slow to act. Two years after it ended opposite-sex pat downs at some institutions in 2000, male guards at the now-closed Gilman facility in Union Lake were still patting down female inmates.
Complaints hard to make
As recently as Jan. 10, Marquetta Tarver, a 26-year-old inmate at the Huron Valley complex in Ypsilanti, reported she was raped in a storage room by a prison maintenance worker. Like other inmates before her, Tarver said she had a hard time getting prison authorities to investigate her claim.
Tarver said she tried to report the alleged rape for two weeks. She said she wrote four complaints and even spoke to the warden, who was passing her housing unit while giving the director of Corrections a tour of the prison, before officials decided to look into her case.
Prison officials and the Michigan State Police are investigating Tarver's complaint. But sometimes inmates say they are too afraid of retaliation from guards and staff to file sexual abuse complaints.
Necole Brown, paroled from the Robert Scott facility in December 2001, said when she went to prison in 1996 at age 24, she quickly learned prison life meant sex and intimidation. She said some officials knew about the abuse but did little to stem it.
"There was sex everywhere," said Brown, who complained she was victimized by a guard whom four other women accused of sexual assault. She said inmates who reported abuse "got (misconduct) tickets and wound up serving years in extra time."
Guards get a break
Prison officials say they are caught in a delicate balancing act between responding to inmate complaints and protecting officers from unjust charges. Guards who have been accused of sexual misconduct point out that complaints are being made by convicts, whom they insist often are convincing liars and manipulators.
The women who accuse guards of abuse are convicted criminals guilty of offenses ranging from theft to murder. Prisoner advocates argue that sexual abuse of inmates amounts to "cruel and unusual punishment," and Corrections officials agree that no crime warrants a punishment of prison rape.
But even when evidence appears strong, history suggests that department investigators give guards accused of wrongdoing the benefit of the doubt. Corrections officials have closed investigations as unsubstantiated despite eyewitnesses, lie-detector tests, video surveillance, DNA or other evidence.
In a 2003 case, inmate Carolyn Moss kept an officer's semen after being forced to perform oral sex. The officer took early retirement shortly after Moss filed her complaint. Officials closed the case as unsubstantiated, department records show.
In other dismissed cases, women had intimate information about the officer or contracted venereal diseases in prison. In February 2003, inmate Janise Leonard filed a complaint against an officer, claiming she had awakened to find him exposing and touching himself in her cell and making advances on her. She reported that he was not circumcised.
A logbook showed that the guard, who admitted he was uncircumcised, was indeed away from his desk at the time of the alleged assault, according to Internal Affairs records. On Sept. 18, 2003, an Internal Affairs report agreed with Leonard's claim of sexual misconduct by the guard.
However, a review committee still closed the matter as "not sustained" without explanation.
In July 1999, two months after the state pledged to better investigate inmate complaints, inmate Charlene Harris reported she had been raped in her cell by guard Nolan Ware. A videotape showed Ware entering her cell after midnight and leaving a half-hour later. It also showed another guard passing the cell and an inmate knocking on the door while Ware was in it.
The department closed Harris' sexual assault complaint as "not sustained." Officials did find that Ware violated prison rules and that there was physical contact.
The state police were not so lenient. They arrested Ware on third-degree rape charges, a felony that carries a 15-year maximum prison sentence. He pleaded guilty to assault and battery and disorderly conduct in March 2001.
He was sentenced to two years' probation, and the department terminated his employment.
Tom Tylutki, president of the Michigan Corrections Officers Association, said considering about 200 male guards work in female units, the number of convictions is not shocking.
"Every profession has their bad apples," Tylutki said. "We feel (in our membership) they are very far and few between. We don't condone messing around with these inmates because it is a security breach."
Accusers face retaliation
On Feb. 24, 2001, one day after she testified against guards in a sexual abuse lawsuit, inmate Robin McArdle received a ticket for not being on her bunk during a head count, a violation of prison rules.
The officer at the Wayne Correctional Facility who cited her testified for the guards in that case.
Although she had no misconduct tickets on her record in her first eight years in prison, McArdle received a total of five tickets after she first testified in a prisoner abuse lawsuit in 1999.
The tickets jeopardized her parole and ultimately extended her stay in prison by a week.
Department officials say they are aggressively fighting to end reprisals by officers against inmates. They point to a committee set up four years ago to review claims by inmates who believe they are victims of retaliation.
But the committee doesn't rule on retaliation claims during an active investigation of the original charges of sex abuse. This often means misconduct tickets remain on prisoners' records for weeks or months.
"This could be really critical if the inmate is up for parole," said attorney Deborah Labelle, one of the lawyers representing female inmates in their class-action suit against Corrections.
"Having a major misconduct ticket could prevent an inmate from being eligible for a hearing and could mean she spends another year in prison."
Vulnerable preyed upon
In Michigan's prisons, the young and vulnerable are the prey of choice for abusive guards.
Renee Williams, who had just turned 20 when she went to prison in 1999, knew that guard Rodney Madden had the power to make her life even more miserable. He also had the power to grant her favors.
From April 2002 to spring of the following year, Williams said she received gifts, including a gold chain and money, from Madden. She said from October 2002 they had sexual intercourse on a regular basis and that the guard gave her his cell phone number.
Williams, who was released two months ago, said guards and inmates knew of the relationship.
"It was not a secret," she said. "He called me his baby. When I wore the necklace with the cross, everybody knew he gave it to me."
When they had a falling-out, she said Madden withheld her mail. She said when she complained to the officer in charge of her unit, the officer downplayed the matter and encouraged her not to report Madden.
"She said, 'He might just be in love with you and don't know how to act,'" Williams recalls. Williams filed a complaint against Madden in June 2003, exposing their alleged sexual relationship, prison records show.
Madden accused Williams of fabricating the story of their affair and had her committed to the mental services unit on June 20, claiming she was delusional and "acting strange." The officer said Williams' charges were part of her sexual fantasies about him.
A prison psychologist determined after one interview that Williams wasn't mentally ill. After the interview, Williams was transferred to Camp Brighton, a minimum-security boot camp, until she was released. She has never been informed of the outcome of her complaint.
Pain lingers for victims
The pain of sexual abuse is no less real for inmates than for other sexual assault victims. It is especially so for those who bear children from the attacks.
T'Nasa Harris, who was impregnated by officer Edmond Hook, knows that pain only too well. Harris said she made several attempts to abort the child.
She is bitter toward Hook, whom she calls a monster, and toward the department for failing to stop him.
Hook eventually pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of sexual misconduct. He was sentenced to a year in jail in 2003.
"I was wrong for what I done and I'm still doing time for my wrongful doings," Harris wrote in a letter to prison officials. "But nothing, nothing on this planet could make me believe I deserve to be raped and violated of my privacy."