Rainey cover-up

As a psychotherapist who worked in the same psychiatric unit where Darren Rainey was murdered, I can tell you about the abusive, hostile environment that existed for counselors and inmate/patients alike.

Upper-level administrators and officers knew of men being starved, tormented, manhandled and beaten.

For the medical examiner to say that Rainey’s death was accidental is to ignore what was really happening in the unit and to accept, without any investigation, the guards’ version of events. In my experience, guards always presented a sanitized, fictional account of their actions absolving themselves of any blame. The guards’ account of Rainey’s killing read like a typical, “We put a man in the shower and — oh my goodness! — we came back later and he was dead! We just don’t know what happened.”

Add to that the many conflicting details between the preliminary autopsy and recent revelations in the final autopsy. “Cover-up” is too weak a phrase to describe events fostered by a culture of brutality and secrecy that existed in my former unit and the entirety of the Florida Department of Corrections.

This story was originally published February 9, 2016 at 10:15 PM with the headline "Rainey cover-up."