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Source: Times Union, Albany, N.迷你倉Y.Sept. 09--ALBION -- Anna cowered in a prison hallway, her inmate jumpsuit ripped, her neck bruised. Afraid to speak the unspeakable truth, she told the sergeant who found her that she was upset about issues with her kids.When questioned later, she said Donald Lasker, a guard at Albion State Prison in Orleans County, had just raped her and threatened to harm her if she told.Lasker was eventually convicted of statutory rape. His sentence: 10 weekends in jail, 10 years' probation, and being listed as a Level 1 sex offender. He claimed in court that he'd been seduced.Anna, who now lives in Albany, was put in solitary confinement for a week "for her own safety," she was told, before finishing her two-year sentence for cashing a fake check. She requested that her last name not be used.Her story is one of many across New York in recent years, and the cases encompass a wide range of scenarios. Sexual abuse in women's prisons is nuanced, law enforcement experts say, ranging from forcible rape to more complicated types of coercion in which women may be, at least initially, willing participants.Since 2006, the state's prison agency has substantiated 33 incidents involving the sexual abuse of female inmates by prison staff and 27 incidents involving sexual harassment by staff. It's a situation well-known to state officials for decades, yet New York state has continuously failed to implement policies used in other states to protect female prisoners from being sexually victimized by prison employees, usually correction officers. One New York women's prison ranked among the worst in the nation for prison rape, with a rate five times the national average.In at least three rulings in the past year, judges compensated women raped by New York state correction officers, including a woman who gave birth to a guard's child while incarcerated. Prison officials say there have been seven pregnancies since 2000 in which the father of the inmate's child was a staff member from the facility."The sexual abuse of women in custody is a long-standing and endemic problem," said Brenda Smith, a professor at American University Washington College of Law. She has more than 30 years' experience working in the area of sexual victimization behind bars, and served from 2004 to 2009 on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission.She called abuse by prison staff "the most basic betrayal of the public's trust," particularly since the United States has the highest population of incarcerated people in the world. "The people being victimized in custody are not just them. They are us. It could be anyone you know," Smith said.New York's prison agency, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), said in a statement their position can be summarized in two words: "Zero Tolerance," wrote spokesperson Tom Mailey. "Regardless of the enormity of our responsibility, for over 90,000 inmates and parolees zero tolerance means even one instance of sexual abuse is one too many ... Through prevention, education, and ongoing victim support programs, DOCCS works to eliminate all forms of sexual violence within the department, to provide access to appropriate and meaningful emotional support services for victims of sexual abuse, and to prosecute anyone who sexually abuses an offender to the fullest extent of the law."Still, justice often eludes women imprisoned here. Success in criminal court is frequently stymied by the difficult nature of proving sex crimes in prison, where an inmate's word can hold little or no credibility, and where the sympathies of a judge and jury can often lie with guards. That, coupled with an aggressive union that fights to keep its male members employed in female prisons despite allegations of abuse, has resulted in an atmosphere largely insulated from systemic change.So it continues, shrouded in secrecy.In preparing this story, the Times Union reviewed prison agency records and the court files of eight correction officers charged with felony sex crimes against female prisoners in recent years.Local district attorneys say that without hard evidence -- DNA, a letter, an admission, an eyewitness, a piece of video -- proving sexual misconduct against guards can be impossible, and they often aim for conviction on a lesser charge. There are also examples in which the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision determined that a rape occurred but the guard was not charged because prosecutors did not feel they had sufficient evidence.In recognition of the power held by guards, state law dictates there is no such thing as consent: sex between a correction officer and inmate is statutory rape, and therefore a felony crime. Yet felony convictions are rare.While an inmate at Bedford Hills prison in Westchester County, Jennifer Coombs said she and correction officer David Sawyer would meet in storage closets and his office for their sexual encounters. Coombs felt she was in love, and hoped she and Sawyer would be together when she got out. That all changed when Coombs said she heard rumors Sawyer was interested in a fellow prisoner. She said she saved his DNA and turned him in.Sawyer pleaded guilty to statutory rape and received 10 years' probation and is now listed as a Level 1 sex offender. Neither Sawyer nor his attorney responded to requests for comment.His punishment was relatively harsh when compared with similar cases. Out of the eight felony sex cases against guards reviewed for this story, five received misdemeanor convictions with minimal punishments, like short probation sentences or, in some cases, a small fine. Most officers in these cases resigned.Then there are those who keep their jobs, like a guard at Willard Drug Treatment Campus in Seneca County who faced 11 counts, including multiple charges of forcible touching and criminal sex act involving three different inmates. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor harassment charge and got a conditional release with an agreement that he would no longer guard women. In 2012, an Albion guard whom the prison agency determined had victimized 10 women was found not guilty by a jury. DOCCS moved him to a position at Orleans prison, an all-male facility.Lasker is the only perpetrator out of the cases reviewed sentenced to jail time, and Orleans County Court Judge James Punch expressed his condolences: "[T]here is only so much empathy you can have for an inmate who wanted to have relations with you," he said, speaking of Anna, "and you fell into the trap of having those relations."Every guard in the court cases either pleaded not guilty or claimed in court that they fell victim to the inmate's advances, even in incidents in which the women claim there was nothing consensual about their encounter.While staff sexual abuse occurs in both men's and women's facilities, it disproportionately affects female inmates, who are a fraction of the state's correctional system. Women represent 5 percent of all inmates in New York, yet account for 30 percent of sexual misconduct cases and 61 percent of sexual harassment cases that are classified as having occurred, according to the state's prison agency records from 2007 to 2012.Guards determined by the prison agency to have sexually harassed female inmates are reprimanded or referred to labor relations, but aren't typically discharged from employment.People on all sides of this issue agree that the majority of prison guards do their work honorably without crossing any lines. When a guard has an allegation lodged against him, he has a right to due process, said Donn Rowe, president of the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association. He noted that "retaliatory allegations" are part of "the games inmates play.""I don't think we have a substantial problem with this,文件倉 he said.In interviews, inmates admitted that other inmates sometimes lie about officers in hopes of gaining some type of advantage, like a transfer to another facility.But there's also reason to believe that many sexual encounters and assaults go unreported.Fredric Green heads the sex crimes bureau for the Westchester County District Attorney's Office, which has prosecutorial jurisdiction over two female prisons -- Taconic and Bedford Hills. Green said he has presented female inmates with video evidence and eyewitness testimony that they are involved with a guard, yet "they will look you right in the eye and say no," said Green. That's often because the woman has feelings for the guard and wants to protect him, he said.In other cases, inmates keep quiet out of fear of retribution, since complaints of abuse are reported internally. "It's not an atmosphere that makes a woman feel comfortable, when she knows she is likely reporting to someone who is a colleague of her abuser," said Green.When Coombs was first locked up for violating probation after an arson charge, the prison atmosphere surprised her. "I couldn't believe how many of the girls were with the guards," she said. "They were getting gifts, money, special treatment."Like many incarcerated women, Coombs describes being sexually abused before prison: she was raped by a friend of her ex-husband, she said. She recollects sexual relationships with seven different guards, including Sawyer, and was interviewed on multiple occasions by a DOCCS investigator."After I was raped, I felt so bad about myself. I thought sex was all that I was good for," she said.One-third of women in state prisons have been raped before their incarceration, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics. A 1999 study of inmates at Bedford Hills found that 90 percent had endured physical or sexual violence during their lifetime.New York's prison rape problem came under national scrutiny in 2010, when the federal government released its survey of 167 prison facilities, and found the state to be among the worst in the nation for staff-on-inmate abuse. Out of the 11 prisons ranked as having a "high incidence" of staff sexual misconduct, three were in New York.The highest rate of inmate-alleged staff rape occurred at Bayview, a female-only state prison in lower Manhattan. The prison had 137 women in custody, and out of 96 surveyed, 11 said staff had sexually victimized them. That's 11.5 percent of the women -- five times more than the national average of 2.2 percent. The prison was shut down after damage from Hurricane Sandy.The survey was done as part of the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which created national standards to help deter sexual abuse in every type of detention facility.Soon after New York's prison-rape statistics were released, agency officials were summoned to testify before a federal panel in Washington. Then-Commissioner Brian Fischer addressed the high rate of reported staff abuse at all-male Elmira prison, saying, "The perception that a good pat-frisk constitutes a sexual assault is the major factor influencing the results." But he offered no explanations for the high incidence of sex assault reported by women at Bayview.It would have been relevant, since New York is one of the only states in the country with a policy that allows male guards to conduct pat-down searches of clothed female inmates absent any emergency. Only females diagnosed by mental health staff as having post-traumatic stress disorder are exempt. Prison officials say such pat-downs are rare.Male officers in New York can also be alone with women prisoners without female guards present in areas outside video surveillance, including sleeping areas.Linda (not her real name) was alone in an isolated part of the prison with a guard when she alleges he raped her at Lakeview Shock Incarceration, a state prison in Chautauqua County.She didn't plan to tell officials because she thought it would mean more time away from her kids. She later confided in a cellmate, who told prison officials her friend had been raped by the guard. Linda, like Anna and Coombs, was questioned and placed in solitary confinement for four days.It felt punitive, though staff reminded her it was for her own safety, she said.Chautauqua County District Attorney David Foley said despite corroborating stories from inmates, he didn't have enough evidence to charge the guard with a sex crime. There were no cameras in the area in which the rape allegedly happened, and no DNA evidence, so instead he indicted the guard for promoting prison contraband because he brought breakfast for the inmates the morning of Linda's alleged rape. The guard has pleaded not guilty and faces trial in December.Joe Cardone, the district attorney of Orleans County for the past 22 years, works in a town with two state prisons that employ a lot of local people. He noted that juries don't always convict on the evidence. In the first DNA case Cardone ever prosecuted, the guard was convicted on misdemeanor charges but found not guilty of the felony sex charges against him despite genetic evidence."I've had jurors say to me, 'These are people that ended up in state prison, so what happens to them they probably deserve,'" Cardone said.The effects on these women last long after they gain freedom. Anna could barely leave her house; in court she said she had five locks on her door and kept a knife under her pillow. Coombs said she still gets upset about how her younger self was taken advantage of. Linda said she still looks over her shoulder every day, and has nightmares about the guard she says raped her.Linda is now suing the state, alleging it failed to protect her from sexual abuse.Anna won the largest verdict on record in New York involving prison-abuse allegations. Court of Claims Judge Philip Patti ordered the state to pay $605,750, since Lasker was already under investigation for illicit behavior with prisoners and the state "had notice of Lasker's propensity to pursue unauthorized relationships with inmates and yet left him in the position to continue to pursue the same." Lasker declined a request for comment.Anna's attorneys, Laurie Shanks and Terence Kindlon, said the state Inspector General investigators who looked into Anna's case were all former prison guards. Kindlon likened the oversight to "a fox guarding the henhouse."The influence of the correction officers union also plays a significant role, illustrated by the case of Frederick Brenyah. Brenyah was first prosecuted for raping an inmate in 2003, but a jury acquitted him. When the state prison agency tried to terminate him, he appealed to an arbitration panel, which ruled in his favor, and he returned to his job guarding women.In 2010, he was charged with raping another inmate. He admitted receiving oral sex in the encounter, saying she pursued him. "He 'froze' because he didn't want it," an investigator wrote.In 2012, he was convicted of attempted rape and sentenced to 10 years' probation with Level 1 sex offender status.His victim, 57, a convicted murderer and arsonist, testified that Brenyah pulled her into an officers' bathroom and raped her. She was brave to speak out, said the prosecutor on the case, Westchester Assistant District Attorney Fredric Green. "The people making decisions for her for the rest of her life are all potential friends of Brenyah," Green said. "That's something no other crime victim has to deal with."asanto@timesunion.com 518-454-5008 @alysiasantoRead the full series:Part 1: Raped behind barsPart 2: Hidden world of official silencePart 3: Gender-based solution finds success in MichiganCopyright: ___ (c)2013 the Times Union (Albany, N.Y.) Visit the Times Union (Albany, N.Y.) at .timesunion.com Distributed by MCT Information Services存倉