She Says Rikers Guards Raped Her, Then Warned: ‘This Never Happened’
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/nyregion/rikers-rape-guards-federal-lawsuit.html
Two correction officers and their supervisor walked the woman from an intake area to an isolated room in an abandoned area of the Rikers Island jail. There, according to a lawsuit, she was stripped of her clothing, handcuffed to a toilet fixture and sexually assaulted for several hours.
The woman said her attackers included a correction captain and two officers, who raped her and penetrated her with a flashlight. They forced her to perform oral sex and rub one officer’s genitals. She was also compelled to drink soapy liquid, she said, and the officers pepper-sprayed her genitals.
The next day, she said, a correction officer took her from the isolated area to a housing unit in the jail and warned: “This never happened. If it is being heard upstairs, things are going to be worse.”
The disturbing account of a brutal sexual assault in 2013 at the Rose M. Singer Center — the jail that houses women on Rikers Island — was detailed in a federal civil rights lawsuit the woman filed against the city initially under seal in 2015.
Advocates for prisoners say sexual harassment and assault have long been a problem at the women’s lockup, which is known by the initials R.M.S.C. Sexual assault complaints there are double the national average for correctional facilities but are seldom substantiated, a report found.
The woman, identified in court papers only as Jane Doe, claims that the city’s Department of Correction is to blame because it does not properly investigate complaints. The suit argues the city violated her constitutional rights by allowing a culture of sexual violence against inmates to persist, and in her case failed to supervise a correction captain who was already under investigation for sexual assault. The woman did not file a complaint with the Department of Correction regarding the alleged attack.
The lawsuit remained under seal while the Bronx district attorney’s office investigated the allegations. The office concluded its investigation in late 2015 without making an arrest. No one was charged, and the case was unsealed, but some documents remain sealed or redacted. Patrice O’Shaughnessy, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, declined to comment about the investigation.
In September, a federal judge allowed the case to move forward, ruling there was evidence the city was doing too little to investigate sexual assault allegations at the jail and discipline its staff, according to a court order made public late last month. The judge granted the woman anonymity in court papers because of the nature of the crime.
“The court concludes that a reasonable juror could find that the city exhibited deliberate indifference in its investigation and discipline practices and that this deliberate indifference caused Doe to be sexually assaulted at R.M.S.C.,” wrote Judge Alison J. Nathan of United States District Court in Manhattan.
The judge added that there was “significant evidence” of “a policy of deliberate indifference to the physical and sexual assault of inmates at R.M.S.C.” She also said in her decision that the failure to investigate and discipline people for sexual misconduct had led to more incidents.
A number of similar complaints have landed in the courts. Last year, the city agreed to pay about $1.2 million to settle a lawsuit by two women who claimed they had been repeatedly raped and sexually abused by a correction officer at Rikers.
The Department of Correction said it has taken steps to address sexual violence. It has a division trained to respond to sexual assault allegations that works with the police’s special victims unit. Eight new investigators have been hired and four more will join the agency by January.
The department also has a 24-hour hotline where inmates can report sexual assault, and an electronic screening tool to identify people at risk of sexual assault and to place them in safer housing.
A spokesman for the City Law Department, Nick Paolucci, declined to comment on the specifics of the lawsuit but said the city takes sexual assault allegations seriously.
“At this stage, the court has not determined the credibility of the plaintiff’s claims, but has ruled that a jury must decide whether the allegations are true,” he said.
The correction captain accused in the assault did not respond to requests for comment. The president of his union, Patrick Ferraiuolo of the Correction Captains’ Association, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Elias Husamudeen, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, would not comment, a spokesman said.
The lawsuit said that the captain was in charge of processing new arrivals and had been accused of sexually assaulting another inmate in 2012. Correction department investigators found that allegation unsubstantiated and removed it from his record, the complaint said.
The captain was also cited by a warden for using excessive force in another case. The warden, however, did not change the captain’s assignment, and the captain retired in 2015. Judge Nathan wrote that the city was on notice that the captain “had a propensity to seriously abuse or sexually assault female inmates.”
Another correction officer named in the lawsuit no longer works in an inmate housing area.
The plaintiff, who was twice detained on Rikers Island, claims that the first sexual assault occurred in October 2013 after she was jailed on a shoplifting charge. She was released that month, but then was jailed again in January 2014 on a charge of credit card fraud, and was again assaulted, her lawyers said in court papers.
“The evidence that was before the court and that we have amassed suggests to us that this conduct was systemic,” said Alan S. Futerfas, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiff.
A report by a former warden, Timothy Ryan, included in the lawsuit said that inmates housed at R.M.S.C. report sexual assault at a level more than double the national average for correctional facilities, but those allegations were rarely substantiated. He concluded that the department’s investigators jumped to “quick conclusions that the assaults could not have occurred exactly as described and thus did not occur at all.”
The Board of Correction also analyzed a sample of 42 investigation reports related to sexual abuse complaints in city jails from January 2010 to December 2017. In an audit released in September, it found significant problems in the investigations, including failure to complete key interviews, review video and testimonial evidence, establish a crime scene and complete investigations in a timely manner.
Mitchell Abramson, a spokesman for the Department of Correction, said the number of sexual assault and harassment allegations that have been substantiated has increased in recent years, reaching 19 this year, up from two in 2015. Of the 44 sexual abuse and harassment complaints substantiated since 2015, 13 include allegations against correction staff, he said.
“It is important litigation like this continues,” said Ellen Resnick, another lawyer representing the woman. “It’s a valuable mechanism to bring public attention to the city’s oversight of Rikers and to compel much-needed reform.”