Shocking story

Jay Weaver's story this weekend about an FDC prisoner being repeatedly raped by guards is a must-read.

The victim successfully sued the prison officials in federal court, but her case against the Bureau of Prisons was dismissed because of the statute of limitations:

A female inmate cooperating as a government witness was sexually assaulted numerous times by guards at the Federal Detention Center in Miami, but prison officials discredited her reports and did nothing to protect her over a four-year span, a federal judge has found.
Even the judge couldn't help the woman after she sued the U.S. government and four guards in 2007, accusing them of making her strip, touching her genitals and, in the case of one correctional officer, raping her repeatedly.
The victim, identified as ''S.R.'' in court papers, settled with three of the officers but lost her $5 million liability case against the government because of a technicality -- the two-year statute of limitations had run out.
But that didn't stop the judge from finding the U.S. Bureau of Prisons at fault.
''S.R. was sexually abused on numerous occasions by the individual defendants,'' Judge Cecilia Altonaga wrote in a November order. ``The BOP and FDC Miami did have notice of the illegal conduct taking place, and were woefully deficient in addressing it and giving S.R. protection.''

Although she was acting as a cooperating witness, the BOP falsely claimed that she was crazy and her allegations were made up:

According to court records, the Bureau of Prisons wrote off the inmate as ''mentally ill'' in an unsigned memo. A senior U.S. Marshals Service official said her allegations were ''fabricated.'' The Justice Department's Office of Inspector General -- which waited more than a year to question two of the three guards and didn't question the third -- said it couldn't substantiate her allegations in early 2005.

That's shameful, especially because the same government thought she was credible enough to use as a witness. The victim responded to Jay Weaver in a telephone interview:

S.R. said the prison system's dismissive response exacerbated her ordeal in the Federal Detention Center, which houses defendants awaiting trial and convicted prisoners cooperating with prosecutors.
''What they did to me they could never undo. I can't sleep at night. I've gotten to the point I don't trust anybody,'' said S.R., a 36-year-old North Carolina resident who was released from prison in 2006 after 10 years behind bars.
''The system took advantage of me,'' she told The Miami Herald in a phone interview. ``They knew when to pull me to testify. I was a very credible witness. I was competent. But then when I needed them, I was mentally ill. I was incompetent.''

What happened to the guards?

Prison authorities have fired two of the four guards named in S.R.'s lawsuit -- Antonio Echevarria and Damioun Cole -- for reasons unrelated to her allegations.
In 2005, Cole pleaded guilty to sexual abuse of female inmate ''B.P.'' at the Miami detention center and received a one-year sentence. Assistant U.S. Attorney Alejandro Soto said at the plea hearing that the government could have proved that Cole also sexually assaulted S.R., but Soto agreed not to prosecute Cole on that battery charge as part of the plea agreement.
The second accused guard, Echevarria, denied sexually assaulting S.R., according to investigative records. In 2006, he lost his job after pleading guilty to buying a firearm for a felon and was sentenced to five months in prison.
The third accused guard, Isiah W. Pollock III, resigned in 2003. He testified at S.R.'s civil trial that he resigned for family reasons, but prison officials testified he got caught playing cards with male inmates and bringing in contraband for female inmates.
Pollock's lawyer, Michael Pasano, vehemently denied his client ever sexually abused the inmate.
The fourth accused guard, Charles E. Jenkins, still works as a correctional officer at the detention center. He denied sexually assaulting S.R., records show.
After Justice Department investigators said they couldn't substantiate S.R.'s complaints against Echevarria, Pollock and Jenkins, federal prosecutors in Miami declined to file charges against them in 2005.