Brooklyn Prison Supervisors Charged With Sexually Assaulting Inmates
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Version 0 of 1. As prison officials and reformers have stepped up efforts to reduce rape behind bars, they have looked to the supervisors who keep watch over prisoners — and prison guards — to help curb the scourge of sexual abuse. On Thursday, federal prosecutors charged two of those supervisors, lieutenants at a federal jail in Brooklyn, and another guard with sexually abusing female inmates. The prison where the three worked, the Metropolitan Detention Center, has long been regarded as a troubled institution in the federal Bureau of Prisons. Last year, a federal judge expressed reluctance about sending women there because the stories she had heard about the living conditions there made it sound like it was in “some third-world country.” In the case announced on Thursday, prosecutors say one lieutenant repeatedly raped an inmate shortly before she was scheduled to be turned over to immigration authorities and deported. Another lieutenant is accused of repeatedly sexually abusing inmates assigned to clean his office, or the hallway nearby. A third man, a rank-and-file corrections officer, who was also charged on Thursday, is accused of receiving oral sex from three inmates. In all, court filings by prosecutors mention nine victims, all female inmates. In one case, prosecutors wrote, “the defendant warned Jane Doe not to tell anyone what had happened, telling her that she could receive additional time in prison if anyone found out.” In court filings, prosecutors noted that the two lieutenants, Carlos Richard Martinez and Eugenio Perez, were responsible for educating their subordinates about their duties under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, a 2003 law. Prosecutors said that one of the lieutenants made light of the law, known as P.R.E.A., in a posting on Facebook. “Notwithstanding these responsibilities,” prosecutors wrote, Lieutenant Martinez posted a photograph of two men, most likely prison officials, “hugging each other at a bar with the caption ‘It’s only P.R.E.A. when you don’t like it.’” Bringing criminal sex crime charges against corrections officers is rare and difficult. Inmates, fearful of retaliation, often wait weeks, months or longer to make an allegation, if they do so at all. When an inmate delays reporting, physical evidence has often disappeared, making the allegation a matter of the inmate’s word against the guard’s. For example, inmates at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex made 131 allegations of sexual abuse against staff members in 2015, the last year for which data are available. Only one allegation was substantiated. This month, New York City agreed to pay $1.2 million to settle a lawsuit brought by two female inmates who accused a guard at Rikers Island of repeatedly sexually abusing them. That guard was never criminally charged and remains employed by the city Correction Department. In the past 15 years, there have been a few cases alleging sexual misconduct among staff at the Metropolitan Detention Center. The most prominent case involved a female correctional officer who was impregnated by Ronell Wilson, who received the first federal death sentence in New York City in more than a half-century for murdering two undercover police officers. The Metropolitan Detention Center holds some 1,800 federal inmates, many of whom are awaiting trial. Only about 3 percent of the inmates are women. Earlier this year, there were 58 women at the jail, according to prison officials. But in 2015 and 2016, there were twice or nearly three times that number. The women were held in two dormitory-style rooms with little access to fresh air, outdoor recreation or work opportunities. An article in The New York Times earlier this year examined the troubling treatment of three inmates who were pregnant while incarcerated. F.B.I. agents and investigators with the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General have been investigating sexual assault allegations by staff at the Metropolitan Detention Center for nearly a year. “By using their authority and power to prey upon and abuse female inmates in their care, these defendants violated their oaths of public service as well as numerous criminal laws,” the acting United States attorney in Brooklyn, Bridget M. Rohde, said in a statement. The three defendants were arraigned Thursday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn and entered not guilty pleas through their lawyers. Lieutenant Martinez was held without bail and a bail hearing was pending for Lieutenant Perez. The other guard was also held without bail. Prosecutors have accused Lieutenant Martinez, who served in the Marines, of “using physical force and fear to repeatedly rape” a female prisoner between December 2015 and April 2016, according to court papers. Prosecutors suggested that Lieutenant Martinez, 47, may have selected his victim in part because she was a foreign national who would be deported at the conclusion of her sentence, just five months after the sexual abuse began. “The defendant chose as his victim a sentenced prisoner who spoke minimal English, who he knew had virtually no visitors, and would be sent to I.C.E. custody following her release from B.O.P. custody,” prosecutors wrote. In court on Thursday, the prosecutor, Nadia Shihata, said that Lieutenant Martinez’s criminal behavior was not confined to the Metropolitan Detention Center. In April 2016, she recounted a “road rage incident,” in which, she said, Lieutenant Martinez had gotten out of his vehicle on Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive and punched a female driver twice before fleeing. Lieutenant Martinez was ultimately convicted of a minor violation, disorderly conduct, for that episode, according to prosecutors. As deputy marshals led Lieutenant Martinez from the courtroom after he was ordered held without bail, he could be seen blowing a kiss to family members and silently mouthing a reassuring message. |