Hawai'i women file prison suit alleging sexual abuse
By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Capitol Bureau Chief
Three Hawai'i women who served time in a privately run Oklahoma prison claim they were sexually assaulted by prison staff there, and a fourth woman alleges she was "tortured" by prison officials after she complained that a prison lieutenant was sexually preying on women inmates.
One Kaua'i woman says she was forced to have sex with a guard, became pregnant and underwent an involuntary abortion at a prison medical facility.
Interviews with attorneys, officials and former prison employees by The Advertiser, as well as a review of court documents, suggest a troubling pattern of sexual, physical and mental abuse in a facility where Hawai'i continues to send female prisoners. There are 63 Hawai'i women in the prison under a contract that costs the state about $1.1 million a year.
The four Hawai'i women are suing the Hawai'i Department of Public Safety as well as Dominion Group, the company that operates the Central Oklahoma Correctional Facility in McLoud. The federal court lawsuits allege that "more than a dozen" women locked up at the prison were raped or endured "unwanted sexual advances and other forms of improper behavior" by prison staff.
The suits allege Hawai'i officials were told about "a widespread pattern of inmate sexual assaults" but did not intervene.
When the Oklahoma Department of Corrections investigated allegations of sexual misconduct at the prison, authorities concluded "there probably was some sexual activity that took place" between staff and inmates, according to Jerry Massie, spokesman for the Oklahoma state agency.
But investigations into similar allegations by the Hawai'i Department of Public Safety and prison owner Dominion Correctional Properties turned up no proof of sexual misconduct, according to Dominion and Hawai'i officials.
"We haven't been able to substantiate any of the allegations, but the investigation has not been closed yet," said Ted Sakai, director of the Hawai'i Department of Public Safety. Because the investigation is continuing and the state has been sued, Sakai declined to answer further questions.
The FBI also investigated with the assistance from the U.S. Marshal's Service, but a spokesman for the FBI in Oklahoma City said no information was available on the outcome of the investigation.
Dominion Correctional Services President Larry Fields and Dominion Properties Vice President Jim Hunter said no allegations of sexual misconduct have been substantiated as far as they know.
Dominion officials questioned the finding by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections that there "probably was" sexual contact between staff and inmates. Fields said the investigation was an inquiry into allegations of sexual misconduct involving Oklahoma inmates, not prisoners from Hawai'i.
"Well, they were really unsubstantiated findings," he said. "What the suggestion was is that there's a possibility that some were going on, but they really had no hard evidence, and that was just based on inmates' allegations, and at that time they were unable to contact the staff person that they were against."
He said the results of the investigation were referred to a local prosecutor, but no charges were filed. He also noted that a lawsuit in Oklahoma over similar allegations of sexual misconduct involving Oklahoma inmates was dismissed.
Massie, spokesman for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, said the department will not release reports related to the investigation because they are not considered public record. He said he would gather other specifics about the findings of the investigation, but did not provide any last week.
The state first sent inmates to the Central Oklahoma Correctional Facility outside Oklahoma City in 1998 and is negotiating a new contract with Dominion. The prison was operated by the Sarasota, Fla.-based Correctional Services Corp. until December, when the operation was taken over by Dominion.
Overall, Sakai said he rated the prison's performance as "pretty good," and noted that the six employees named in the lawsuit — including the warden, the deputy warden and the chief of security — do not work at the prison anymore.
Fields said Dominion's prison training emphasizes "professional conduct" by the staff, and prison officials are careful to explain to staff that a sexual relationship with an inmate is a felony.
The Hawai'i inmates filed three separate lawsuits in federal court in Honolulu under the aliases of "Jane Doe." The women did not use their real names out of fear of retaliation, according to their suits. Their attorney, David Gierlach, declined to make the women available for an interview.
Gierlach said the six former prison employees named in the suits either engaged in the improper sexual contact or failed to stop it.
It is a felony in Hawai'i and Oklahoma for a prison employee to have sexual contact with an inmate, regardless of whether or not the inmate consents to the sex. In any event, Gierlach said, "It's impossible for it to be consentual because of the circumstance of guards and inmates."
One lawsuit alleges that a Kaua'i woman was subjected to "repeated unwanted sexual contact," including intercourse with a member of the prison staff throughout the time the woman was held at the Oklahoma prison.
According to the suit, a test showed the woman was pregnant in November 1998, and an abortion was performed in the prison medical unit without her consent.
Linda Phipps, a former grievance officer and compliance monitor at the prison, said she was asked by the prison administration to "informally" investigate allegations of sexual misconduct involving the lieutenant who is accused in the suit.
The inmate refused to discuss the matter with Phipps, so Phipps said she began looking for other evidence to try to make a case.
Other corrections officers told Phipps they had logged incidents where the lieutenant had entered the inmate's cell at night and told the inmate's roommate to leave. "The officers that were seeing this were not liking it, and so they told me about it," Phipps said. "I went to include that as part of my investigation, and the pages in the logbook were torn out."
Phipps said she finally dropped the inquiry after deciding she would be unable to prove anything.
Charolette Hodges, a former case manager in the prison, said the Hawai'i inmate admitted to Hodges that she had a sexual relationship with the lieutenant, but said she was afraid to report it.
"She was afraid to tell on him because if she told on him, she'd go into lock, that she'd be set up," Hodges said. "Things like that happened to them when they'd tell things."
Hodges said she relayed the inmates' allegations to officials at the prison and to Hawai'i Public Safety Deputy Director Marian Tsuji when Tsuji toured the facility.
Sid Stell, a former captain and acting chief of security at the prison, said he also began asking questions after rumors circulated the inmate had been raped and forced to have an abortion.
Stell said a corrections officer who worked the night the inmate was supposedly removed from the prison and taken to a medical facility for an abortion told Stell she was summoned that night to open a portion of the prison to admit a private car that was used to transport the inmate out of the prison. The inmate was later returned to the facility, Stell was told.
That event was so unusual that Stell said he filed a written report to document the officers' statements.
Stell, now a deputy sergeant with the Oklahoma County Sheriff's Department, said he also arranged for a polygraph exam for the same inmate in mid-1999 as part of a new investigation into her allegations. The polygraph examiner told Stell that the inmate passed the exam and was being truthful, Stell said.
Fields said Dominion officials "would have not seen" the results of such a polygraph because Correctional Services Corp. was responsible for the day-to-day management of the prison at the time.
Hawai'i's contract is with Dominion, and Dominion oversaw the operation of the prison all along, but Fields said CSC's role as the day-to-day operator of the prison until last Dec. 21 has made it more difficult for Dominion to defend itself in the Hawai'i lawsuit.
Fields said he doesn't recall the specifics of the case, although he did discuss it with CSC officials.
Hawai'i prison officials denied wrongdoing in federal court filings in that case, and alleged the inmate earlier denied having either the sexual relationship or the abortion. Prison officials also said there is no record of a pregnancy or an abortion in the prison medical unit.
Dominion has denied wrongdoing, and the lieutenant who was accused wrote to the federal court to deny all of the charges. The lieutenant could not be reached for comment.
As part of the same lawsuit, a second inmate alleged she filed a grievance on Sept. 7, 1998, alleging the same lieutenant was "a sexual predator against inmates," but prison officials did nothing to stop the assaults.
The inmate who complained alleged in the lawsuit that she was then improperly drugged and was forced to remain in her cell, naked or in underwear, in view of male guards. That was part of an effort to make her "behave," according to the suit. That incident was videotaped, according to the suit and former staff at the prison.
Nancy Conley, the former internal affairs investigator at the prison, said she and Hodges "threw a fit" when they learned how the inmate was being treated.
"I just happened to walk into the medical department one day and she's in there in an isolation cell stark naked, she's heavily drugged, and she just looked at me and said, 'Please help me, somebody help me,'" Conley said.
Conley said Warden Howard Ray told her she was overreacting, but the inmate's clothes were returned and she was moved to a segregation cell where Conley said she remained for four months.
Conley said she then scrutinized the credentials of the prison psychologist who supervised the way the inmate was treated in that incident, and discovered he was not licensed to practice in Oklahoma.
"We brought it to the attention of the warden and the deputy warden, and of course all of a sudden this guy is gone. He just quietly left the facility," Conley said.
Fields said he has never heard of a psychologist at the prison being removed because he lacked credentials.
Phipps and Hodges also said they saw sexually explicit pictures of a Hawai'i inmate and an Oklahoma inmate that were circulated among staff in 1999. Because inmates are not allowed to have cameras, Hodges and Phipps said they believed a staff member took the photos.
"Other people got those pictures, and they were distributed around among staff by people who thought they were funny," Phipps said. "Rather than secure the chain of evidence and be discreet about it, they were shown around. That's how I got to see them."
Hodges said the background of the pictures made it clear they had been taken in an office in the prison's education building. The Hawai'i inmate in the photos accused a prison employee who worked in the office of taking the photos. The Hawai'i inmate also told Hodges she had sex with the employee, Hodges said.
Hunter, the Dominion vice president, said he was told one employee was fired because of the pictures, which he said were apparently taken with a Polaroid camera that prison officials used to take identification photos.
"My understanding was the violation (by the employee) probably resulted from the failure to secure the camera," Hunter said. "The violation had to do more with absence of security."
Hodges disputed that, saying at least one of the photos she saw was not a Polaroid shot. Gierlach, the attorney, said he has a witness who has copies of some of the photos.
Fields said he was unfamiliar with the allegations involving the photos because Correctional Services Corp. was responsible for the daily operation of the prison.
The officer accused of taking the photos, who is named in one of the federal suits, wrote to the court to say he "never committed a crime or a sexual act" against any inmate.
"The reason the allegation is untrue will become clear as this case progresses through discovery," he said.
Another woman who was sent to the Oklahoma prison in 1998 alleged she was sexually assaulted by a maintenance worker at the prison on March 3, 2000.
The suit also alleges she was denied medical and psychiatric care after the alleged attack, and claims prison officials retaliated against her after she reported the incident.
Hawai'i prison officials responded with court filings that deny any wrongdoing in the case and said the maintenance worker passed a polygraph exam when interviewed about the incident in May 2000.
The inmate, who has since been returned to a correctional facility in Hawai'i, refused to take a similar exam, according to the state's response.
Stell said that is not what he was told. He said he discussed the polygraph exams with the official who administered the tests and said he was told the maintenance worker failed the exam. Stell said the official conducting the exams also told Stell the inmate was tested, but her results were inconclusive.
In the early 1990s, there were similar accusations of sexual misconduct involving female prisoners in Hawai'i. In a series of cases, about two dozen corrections workers were fired or charged with crimes. The state paid nearly $1 million to settle several lawsuits filed by female prisoners claiming they were sexually abused.
Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8070.
