Repulsed by report of staff raping women at Florida federal prison, Rubio demands inquiry
Shocked by a Miami Herald report detailing allegations of systemic sexual abuse of female inmates by male staff at a federal facility, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio is urging the Bureau of Prisons to conduct a thorough review of Coleman Federal Correctional Complex.
The Herald story “reveals that the environment at FCC Coleman has enabled systemic and pervasive sexual abuse and misuse of authority by BOP employees over a number of years,” the senator wrote in a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr. “These allegations are simply abhorrent, and I urge you to take immediate action to ensure such behavior is neither happening, nor tolerated, at FCC Coleman or any other BOP facility.”
Last week, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of 14 women, ranging in age from 30 to 56, who say they were abused, in some cases regularly. The suit seeks compensation and prison improvements. Seven of the women, who are suing not as “Jane Does” but under their true names, are still incarcerated.
The litigation and subsequent fallout comes at a time when the Bureau of Prisons has faced intense scrutiny over its handling of Jeffrey Epstein, who was found hanged in his cell Aug 10 at a time when he was likely the nation’s most high-profile detainee. Staffers sat not far away, surfing the Internet. The acting BOP director was removed following Epstein’s death, which was termed a suicide.
During a DATE oversight hearing of the Federal Bureau of Prisons that focused on Epstein’s death as well as broader problems, Sen. Lindsey Graham commented, “...there has got to be either a major malfunction of the system or a criminal enterprise afoot to allow this to happen.”
Although it mentions one other prison, the lawsuit primarily focuses on Coleman Federal Prison Camp, which is located in North Florida’s Sumter County near Wildwood, and houses 500 women. It is a satellite facility, part of a much larger Coleman complex that in total holds roughly 6,000 inmates, most of them men.
The Coleman administrative office did not return a phone call seeking comment.
The complaint outlines in striking detail the coercion, threats and sexual abuse the women say they suffered at the hands of correctional officers, who control all aspects of their lives. One described an officer forcing one of the women to perform oral sex.
Another woman said she was taken to a remote trailer and assaulted by an officer. During the attack he said, “you know they’ve accused me before of rape, but they’re never going to believe you.”
A former Coleman inmate, Gina Hernandez, said the layout of Coleman — multiple buildings and plenty of wooded paths — makes abusing inmates easy. She said she and another inmate were forced to have three-way sex with one staffer and that inmates were goaded to sunbathe topless in front of officers.
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Another woman who saw the Herald’s story said she was in Coleman from 2014 to 2018 and it was a “known secret” that the guards would have sexual relations with the women.
The former inmate, who feared revealing her name because she is still on probation, said “you learn really fast to keep your mouth shut.”
She mentioned a specific officer — who, unbeknownst to her, was named in the suit and has since resigned.
She said the officer would break the rules by entering sleeping quarters unannounced and would “pull up a chair” and gawk if a woman was exiting the showers or getting dressed.
She was thrilled to see a group of inmates, past and present, band together to come forward.
“They need to see how many women have been impacted,” she said of the Bureau of Prisons. “This has been going on for years.”
Senator Rubio, a Republican, isn’t the only Florida politician to publicly comment on the lawsuit and the conditions at Coleman. The Herald reached out to U.S. Sen. Rick Scott and U.S. Rep. Donna Shalala, a Republican and a Democrat, respectively, whose offices released statements.
Scott’s office issued a statement milder than Rubio’s, reading: “Any allegation of abuse at a federal facility is deeply concerning and Senator Scott expects the Department of Justice to hold those responsible accountable.”
Shalala’s statement read: “The allegations made by current and former female inmates at Coleman Federal Correctional Complex are deeply disturbing. I intend to work with my colleagues in Congress to determine what happened and who is responsible, because no one in this country should have to live in fear of sexual assault.“
Florida state Sen. Dennis Baxley, who represents the district where Coleman is housed, spoke to the Herald on his views of the lawsuit.
“I’m appalled if that’s anywhere near what actually happened,” Baxley said.
Baxley, a Republican and vice chairman of the Florida Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said he’s visited about 25 prisons in the past five years trying to understand how they operate and what is the best way to “keep things safe for the inmates and corrections officers.”
“I know it’s a place where things can go terribly wrong,” he said. “I think they’ve done the right thing in filing a lawsuit. We can’t tolerate things like that happening in the prison system.”
Baxley says his next steps will be to talk with Senators Rubio and Scott on the issue, as well as talk to local Florida representatives. He expects a Department of Justice investigation to be conducted.
If an investigation is done and finds the lawsuit to be true, he wants to see corrections officers fired and charged.
“The corrections officers are in charge. They are answerable and accountable for their own behavior,” he said.
Before the lawsuit was filed, the Miami Herald sought to visit Coleman to talk to the inmates in person about their complaints. Despite a Bureau of Prisons policy encouraging visits by journalists, Coleman refused.
A Coleman public information staffer, Dale Grafton, said he would not process the request unless he was told the subject of the article and what purpose the statements of the women would serve, which the Miami Herald was unwilling to do out of concern that the inmates would face reprisals.
Grafton’s office was the one that did not return the phone call seeking comment.
This story was originally published December 9, 2019 at 6:00 AM.
