picture from google
December 12, 2013 By Victoria Law
http://solitarywatch.com/2013/12/12/women-solitary-confinement-sent-solitary-reporting-sexual-assault/#more-11725
http://solitarywatch.com/2013/12/12/women-solitary-confinement-sent-solitary-reporting-sexual-assault/#more-11725
It seems absurd that a person who has been sexually assaulted would
be punished for speaking up, especially since prison policy prohibits
sexual contact between staff and the people whom they guard. Yet, in
many women’s prisons, those who report rape and other forms of sexual
assault by prison personnel are often sent to solitary confinement.
After enduring over a year of repeated sexual assaults by a guard,
Stacy Barker became one of 31 women incarcerated in Michigan who filed Nunn
v MDOC, a 1996 lawsuit against the Department of Corrections for
the widespread sexual abuse by prison guards. The following year,
Barker was repeatedly sexually assaulted by an officer, who was also a
defendant in Nunn. After a month of silence, she reported the
assaults to a prison psychiatrist. Barker was immediately placed in
segregation and then transferred to Huron Valley Center, which was then
a psychiatric hospital for prisoners. There, she reported that hospital
attendants verbally harassed her.
In October 1997, Barker attempted suicide. Barker did not receive
counseling or psychiatric evaluation. Instead, three male guards
stripped her naked, placed her in five-point restraints (a procedure in
which a prisoner is placed on her back in a spread-eagle position with
her hands, feet and chest secured by straps) on a bed with no blanket
for nine hours. She was then placed on suicide watch. She reported
that one of the staff who monitored her repeatedly told her he
would “bring her down a few rungs.”
Placing women in solitary confinement for reporting staff sexual
harassment or abuse is far from rare. In 1996, Human
Rights Watch found that, in Michigan, incarcerated women who report
staff sexual misconduct are placed in segregation pending the
institution’s investigation of their cases. The placement is allegedly
for the woman’s own protection. The five other states investigated also
had similar practices of placing women in segregation after they
reported abuse.
Not much has changed in the thirteen years since Human Rights Watch
chronicled the pervasive and persistent sexual abuse and use of
retaliatory segregation in eleven women’s prisons. Former
staff at Ohio’s Reformatory for Women have stated that women who
reported sexual abuse are subjected to lengthy periods of time in
solitary confinement where cells often had feces and blood smeared on
the wall. In Kentucky, a woman who saved evidence from her sexual
assault was placed
in segregation for fifty days. In Illinois, a prison
administrator threatened to add a year onto the sentence of a woman
who attempted to report repeated sexual assaults. She was then placed
in solitary confinement.
In 2003, the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) became law,
ostensibly to address the widespread sexual abuse in the nation’s jails
and prisons. Among its recommendations was “the timely and
comprehensive investigation of staff sexual misconduct involving rape
or other sexual assault on inmates.” However, this has not stopped the
widespread practice of utilizing solitary to punish those who speak
out. An investigation
into sexual abuse at Alabama’s Tutwiler Prison for Women found that
women who report sexual abuse “are routinely placed in segregation by
the warden.” Some prison systems have also created new rules to
continue discouraging reports of staff sexual assault. At Denver
Women’s Correctional Facility, a woman reported that prison officials
responded to PREA by creating a rule called “False Reporting to
Authorities.”
“A lot of us do not report any kind of staff misconduct
because history has proven that any kind of reports true or
false are found [by the administration] to be false,” she stated. “When
it was found to be false, the people were immediately found guilty and
sent to administrative segregation.” In some cases, a woman may not
even file an official complaint, but may only be speaking within
earshot of another staff member.
I didn’t want to believe it but then I experienced it first hand with a close acquaintance of mine. She had conversations with a guard and he asked sexually explicit questions about what she would be able to do in bed because of her disability and it went on for a while. She came to me and said she didn’t want to be around him and she told an office worker about him and he ended up writing a report on her, before she could do it to him and she was eventually questioned. I was questioned and I told the investigator that I believed her and that the officer was a pervert and flirted openly with any girl who was desperate for a man’s attention. I told him I felt like he was a predator and shouldn’t be working at a women’s prison. I later found out she went to the hole and was going to be ad. seg’d just like the others but she left on her mandatory parole to go back to court and was re-sentenced and brought back. Luckily they didn’t ad. seg her when she came back. I’m not sure why they dropped it but maybe it was because she was gone for a while.
Under PREA, those accused of sexual assault are sent to solitary
confinement even before the charges are proven. In California, Amy
Preasmyer was placed in solitary confinement after being accused of
sexual assault by another woman. “I was abruptly removed from my bed
late in the evening to face an extended wait and then a transfer to
Ad-Seg,” she reported. “Upon entering my newly assigned chambers at 3
a.m., I found the toilet was backed up and a DD3 (EOP) [person with a
disability] had urinated everywhere prior to me, leaving extremely
unsanitary conditions and aromas.” She was not allowed to access
supplies that would allow her to clean or disinfect her cell. Although
she was eventually cleared of all charges, being in Ad Seg forced her
to miss her final examinations for college. During that time, she also
lost the privilege to shop, walk outside or even call home.
Preasmyer reflected on the double standard between prison staff and
prisoners accused under PREA: “Had this woman falsely accused an
officer, would that officer have been arrested and forced to relinquish
rights pending results of the investigation into the accusation? Would
the employee suffer a wage loss? Would disciplinary action and
consequences be rendered to the accuser once charges turned out to be
baseless?”
After reading Preasmyer’s article in her segregation cell in
Indiana, Sarah Jo Pender, who has spent five years in solitary
confinement after an officer helped her escape, agreed. She noted that,
although the officer who helped her escape had had sex with her and
seven other women in the prison, he evaded a sexual misconduct charge
as part of a plea bargain. He was sentenced to seven years in prison
and released after two years. As far as Pender knows, he spent no time
in solitary confinement. On the other hand, the superintendent at the
Indiana Women’s Prison has told her that she will remain in segregation
so long as she is incarcerated so that he knows where she is at any
given time.
We might know more about the prevalence of isolating those who
report sexual abuse if that threat didn’t hang over their heads. But it
does, bullying who-knows-how-many into silence. As one woman in Texas
reported, “When officers and inmates are found to be involved, the
common court of action here is to move her to another facility. If she
consented in any way, she will be placed in Ad Seg. Being moved with
the jacket of a prior officer relationship can make time very
difficult. And, if they found any reason to write the inmate a major
case, it also costs her at least a one-year parole set-off. Being
moved, time in isolation, a label and a set-off? Those are powerful
motivations to keep a girl quiet.”
This is the second article in a two-part series on women in
solitary confinment. Read the first article here.
--
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
--
SIGN THE JERICHO COINTELPRO PETITION!
Free All Political Prisoners!
www.jerichony.org
No comments:
Post a Comment