Links & Resources
- Prison Rape and Abuse
Amnesty
International USA: Rights for All
Amnesty International USA's "Rights for All" campaign includes action on
prison reform, including reducing the incidence of rape and sexual assaults
on both male and female prisoners throughout the U.S.
Submitted 09/12/2007.
Human Rights
Watch: Prison Conditions
Human Rights Watch's Prison Project documents abuses, including prisoner
rape, in U.S. correctional facilities and worldwide.
Submitted 09/12/2007.
Stop Prisoner Rape
Stop Prisoner Rape seeks to end sexual violence committed against men,
women, and children
in all forms of detention.
Submitted 09/12/2007.
7-Up Bubbles Over Prison Rape (Mother Jones News U
A new 7-Up commercial featuring the soft drink's spokesman pitching the
product in prison may be a hit with focus groups, but human rights and
prison reform advocates aren't laughing.
Representatives from a broad coalition of rights groups say that the ad,
which includes jokes about prison rape, amounts to laughing at sexual
assault.
"The commercial makes light of a very serious human rights issue to sell
something as trivial as a soft drink," says Lara Stemple, director of the
Los Angeles-based Stop Prison Rape. "People would never joke about rape
outside the context of prison."
Submitted 09/12/2007.
Another Carswell Conviction: Guard found guilty
On Feb. 10, former guard Michael Lawrence Miller became the seventh employee
of the federal prison camp for women at Carswell to be convicted of sexual
abuse of a prisoner in the last seven years.
A jury in U.S. District Judge John McBryde's court that morning convicted
Miller of raping Marilyn Shirley, a prisoner in his custody, in March 2000.
The jury of 10 women and two men found him guilty on five counts: aggravated
sexual abuse, sexual abuse of a ward, abusive sexual contact, abusive sexual
contact with a ward, and assault. His are the most serious charges to date
to be brought against Carswell's sexual predators. According to the U. S.
Attorney's office, he is facing a sentence of 11 years to life in prison and
a fine as high as $1.25 million.
Prison rights advocates such as Boston law professor Wendy Murphy, who
teaches about sexual violence at the New England School of Law, hailed the
verdict as a giant step forward on behalf of prison rape victims. "Indeed,
the law should now send a message [through sentencing] that an attack by
someone in a position of power against a defenseless person such as Ms.
Shirley … will result in extreme sanctions," she said.
Shirley has already won a $4 million civil judgment against Miller. But her
push for justice hasn't stopped with him. Her attorneys have also filed a
$10 million civil rights lawsuit against the federal Bureau of Prisons, on
behalf of Shirley and her family, accusing the agency of failing to protect
her from sexual violence while she was in custody.
Submitted 09/12/2007.
Boy Raped in Juvenile Center
TAVARES — The 13-year-old boy never recovered emotionally after he
repeatedly was sexually molested for more than a year.
Instead, he lashed out. First he stole a bike; another time, he took his
parents’ car for a joyride, then fled from police when they tried to stop
him.
The state took the troubled teen from his Eustis home in February and gave
him a chance to get his life back together at a Brevard County youth
detention center.
But on Thursday, state officials were forced to acknowledge in an emergency
hearing that the boy had been raped twice at the center in mid-April.
Officials of the state Department of Juvenile Justice left the boy living
with one of his accused attackers, who has continued to taunt him and
threaten him during the past two weeks, an attorney for his parents said.
The boy’s furious parents hired the lawyer to try to force the state to get
their son away from the teen he says sodomized him.
Submitted 09/12/2007.
Ex-Guard Indicted In Inmate Assault
A former state prison guard has been indicted in Grimes County on charges of
sexually assaulting an inmate after a prosecutor said DNA evidence linked
him to the crime.
Prison prosecutor Kelly Weeks said Magnolia resident Michael T. Chaney, 50,
was indicted Thursday by a Grimes County grand jury on one count of
aggravated sexual assault and improper sexual activity.
Chaney, who oversaw laundry operations at the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice's Luther Unit in Navasota, resigned in January from his post of
seven years, a prison spokesman said.
He is expected to be arraigned on the charges next month. An indictment is
not an indication of guilt, only that a grand jury believes there is
sufficient evidence to warrant a trial.
Submitted 09/12/2007.
Guard Charged in Sex Abuse of Inmate
A 300-pound Brooklyn prison guard was charged yesterday with sexually
abusing a female inmate at a federal jail.
Randy Denjen, 38, a lieutenant at the Metropolitan Detention Center,
allegedly forced a 23-year-old inmate to perform oral sex, raped her, and
then made her clean his office, according to the criminal complaint filed
yesterday in Brooklyn federal court.
The incidents took place Nov. 25, when the victim was housed in an isolation
cell, the complaint stated, and was reported by the victim after Denjen
left.
The victim told FBI agent Peter Kohn that she "attempted to dissuade the
defendant but he persisted," the complaint said.
Submitted 09/12/2007.
Inmate Rape
When Charles Turner was first sent to prison in 1963, he did not know that
fighting off rapists would be part of his punishment.
The convicted burglar learned that lesson while taking a shower one day at
the Utah State Prison.
"I didn't see them," Turner, who is black, said of his white attackers. "It
was three of them. I got raped . . . But what can you do? They saw someone
who was young, didn't know what was going on, and took advantage of it . . .
. As long as they have prisons, they'll happen."
Recent studies by Human Rights Watch and Prison Journal magazine estimate
that at least one-fifth of the nation's 2 million inmates have either been
raped or forced to perform sex acts during incarceration. If those
findings—based on interviews with inmates—are accurate, about 1,100 of
Utah's 5,600 prisoners have been sexually assaulted behind bars.
Submitted 09/12/2007.
Inmates' Coercion Makes Sex a Currency (The Beacon
In a jail primer pamphlet put out by former Watergate conspirator turned
prison minister Chuck Colson, a young, first-time inmate gets a whispered
piece of advice from an older prisoner:
Accept no favors, never gamble, never accept loans.
It's a warning repeated by defense lawyers and others preparing novice
convicts for the realities of life behind bars.
It's a warning about the kinds of missteps that can lead heterosexual men
into sex with other male inmates—and the risk of contracting the AIDS virus.
According to inmates and experts alike, most of the sex going on in men's
prisons is voluntary. It's forbidden by Ohio law and prison rules but winked
at in other regulations—such as the one allowing inmates to request and pay
for an HIV test "after consensual sex."
But not all sex on the inside is voluntary.
Submitted 09/12/2007.
Jail-Rape Trial Set to Begin in Jeffco
A 20-year-old man who admitted raping his cellmate seven years ago in a
juvenile detention center is charged with raping his cellmate in the
Jefferson County jail and is being investigated for allegedly raping another
inmate at another facility.
Information-sharing slip-ups apparently prevented James Westbrook's past
from following him from facility to facility.
Westbrook is scheduled to go on trial Monday on 23 counts of sexual assault
and one count of extortion for allegedly raping his 19-year-old cellmate at
the Jefferson County jail.
The assaults occurred from the evening of Jan. 3 to the morning of Jan. 4,
according to court documents.
The assaults also happened just hours after another inmate told deputies
that Westbrook tried to sexually assault him when they were cellmates, court
records show.
Submitted 09/12/2007.
L.A. Sheriff's Jail Assistant Convicted
LOS ANGELES — Jurors convicted a sheriff's custody assistant of sexually
assaulting a woman inmate at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility downtown
in 1999.
Submitted 09/12/2007.
Rape In Adult Prisons
Rehabilitation, as a criminal justice ideal, has gone so far out of style in
the United States that many Americans are apparently quite willing to
relegate even young offenders to the ranks of the irredeemable. The passage
last year of California's Proposition 21, which expanded the number of
children who will be tried as adults and sent to adult prisons, was just the
latest blow to the traditional distinction between juvenile delinquents and
adult criminals.
[juvenile]
Mesmerized by visions of the rampaging "youthful predator," legislators at
both the federal and state levels have enthusiastically promoted these legal
changes. Indeed, over the past several years, nearly every state has revised
its juvenile justice laws to facilitate prosecuting minors as adults.
At present, more juveniles than ever before are incarcerated in adult
prisons and jails in the United States. And, given the proven link between
youth and vulnerability to prisoner-on-prisoner rape, these juveniles are
also at much greater risk of violent sexual assault.
Submitted 09/12/2007.
Sexual Assault in Prison
On a popular College Station radio commercial, an announcer advertising bail
bonds facetiously implies that if one has the misfortune to end up in
prison, one might want to consider posting bond instead of suffering the
abuse of "Roscoe," a stereotypical love-starved inmate, who would enjoy
nothing more than to "befriend" a new, young cell mate.
Submitted 09/12/2007.