Bureau of Prisons employees sexually assaulted female prisoners, Senate report says
In some cases, the report said, “horrific abuse” stretched out for months or even years, and “management failures enabled continued sexual abuse,” with some senior prison officials among those abusing women in their custody.
“I was sentenced and put in prison for choices I made,” Briane Moore testified on Tuesday during a Senate hearing held by the subcommittee, describing how she was repeatedly raped and attacked by a prison captain while incarcerated in West Virginia. “I was not sentenced to prison to be raped and abused while in prison.”
There are nearly 160,000 federal inmates nationwide, according to the Bureau of Prisons, which is part of the Justice Department. Women account for about 7 percent of that population, the agency says. The Senate investigation, which spanned eight months, included interviews with abuse victims and prisons officials, along with a review of documents and data provided by the agency and whistleblowers.
“This situation is intolerable,” Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), who chairs the committee, said at the hearing Tuesday. “Sexual abuse of inmates is a gross abuse of human and constitutional rights and cannot be tolerated by the United States Congress.”
The report released Tuesday notes that any sexual relations between Bureau of Prisons staff and inmates is illegal, regardless of consent.
Instead of holding its employees accountable, the report said, the bureau “failed to detect, prevent, and respond to sexual abuse of female prisoners in its custody.” The investigation found that the agency has a backlog of about 8,000 internal affairs cases — at least hundreds of which deal with sexual abuse — including some pending for more than five years.
This failure to work through cases, the report said, prevents accountability. In an interview with the panel, the internal affairs chief at the Bureau of Prisons said that the longer cases drag on, the more difficult it can be to substantiate allegations, the report said.
Colette S. Peters, director of the Bureau of Prisons, told the committee that stopping sexual misconduct at facilities under the agency’s watch “is an issue of critical importance.” In her opening statement to the committee Tuesday, she said they were adding more employees to the internal-affairs office, among other reforms.
According to the report, there are 27 facilities where the Bureau of Prisons holds women, while two others have held women since 2012 but stopped. Sexual abuse was found in at least 19 of those facilities since 2012, the report said.
In at least four facilities, the report said, “multiple women endured ongoing sexual abuse for months or years,” the report said. The report lists examples that include a California prison where the warden and chaplain were among the Bureau of Prisons employees ultimately charged with repeatedly abusing multiple female prisoners; abuse at a New York prison that lasted for years; and a Florida prison where officials say at least six male employees sexually abused at least 10 female prisoners for nearly a decade.
Some allegations resulted in criminal cases. Last week, a jury convicted Ray J. Garcia, the former warden at the California prison, of sexually abusing female prisoners. The Bureau of Prisons “began to institute agency-wide changes,” the report said, but only after abuse at the California prison “came to light.”
In other cases, the panel found, even admitted abuses resulted in no criminal prosecution. In the Florida case, the report said, the office of the Justice Department’s inspector general declined to investigate the officers and referred the cases back to the Bureau of Prisons internal-affairs office. The officers were compelled by the internal-affairs office to sit for interviews, the report said, and they “admitted to sexual abuse of female detainees in graphic detail,” but none faced charges.
The Senate report decried what it called a “perverse” outcome in the Florida case, saying that because the internal-affairs office compelled the officers to sit for an interview under oath, their statements could not be used in a criminal prosecution.
The Justice Department’s inspector general is tasked with criminal investigations into alleged misconduct among the bureau, the report said, but owing to “capacity constraints” can only investigate a small fraction of all allegations. In the last year, the report said, the inspector general’s office has also enacted some reforms, including trying to investigate more sexual misconduct allegations and prioritizing those investigations.
Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, told the committee in a prepared statement that his office was hoping to devote even more resources to these investigations. Horowitz also told the committee that if his office received allegations from the Florida prison now, he believes many would lead to criminal investigations.
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