Two Women Sue D.C., Alleging Rape by Jail Guards

Contractor That Runs Facility Also Named

Two former female inmates at the D.C. Correctional Treatment Facility sued the District and jail officials last week, claiming that male guards took them to isolated parts of the jail and raped them.

The women are suing under the anonymous names Jane Doe and Jane Roe. They say the District and Corrections Corp. of America (CCA), the private contractor the city hired to run the jail, are responsible for the alleged rapes because of their failure to supervise and train guards and properly investigate allegations of sexual misconduct. The suit is also filed against the two jail guards whom the women allege raped them: Elry McKnight and John Gant.

The two women are alleging violations of their civil rights, emotional distress and battery, and are seeking compensatory and punitive damages.

Doe, a Maryland woman in her late 30s, alleges that McKnight raped her twice in April 2002 in a staff bathroom -- first while escorting her alone to her cell as she returned from a court hearing, and next when he pretended that he needed to take her to obtain a new identification badge. She was serving time for selling heroin.

Roe, a D.C. resident, alleges that Gant forced her to perform oral sex on him in a jail broom closet in December 2003. Roe said Gant was able to easily separate her from others by asking a female corrections officer to let him speak with Roe privately in the hallway. Roe, who was serving time on drug possession charges, was released in January 2004.

Doe, who has seven children and three grandchildren whom she hasn't told about the incident, said in an interview that she struggled over whether to sue the city. She said she worried about having to come forward and revisit an episode that has caused her panic attacks ever since, but decided to do so because her initial complaint was ignored. In the lawsuit, she alleges that she called 911 twice to get a police officer to come to the jail, but no one came.

"It's like they want to hide everything that happened," Doe said. "If you hide something, it will happen to a lot of people."

Beverly Young, a spokeswoman for the D.C. Department of Corrections, said the city agency and its personnel cannot comment on pending litigation.

A spokesman for CCA said the company was not aware of the suit and could not comment.

The suit claims that the corrections department and CCA treated the two women poorly in investigating their claims. Doe was taken to see CTF Warden Fred Figueroa, and McKnight was eventually suspended with pay during an investigation, according to the suit. Doe was given no information about the investigation for three months, until she complained in June 2002 to her sentencing judge that she had been raped in the detention facility, the suit alleges. The suit also alleges that McKnight eventually was fired for smuggling contraband to inmates.

"I couldn't believe they [paid] no mind to me. They thought I was going to be deported," said Doe, who grew up in the Dominican Republic but is a U.S. citizen. "They just didn't care. They thought I was a criminal. "

Doe said she has stayed away from drugs since her release and is trying to get a job as a construction apprentice. She said she knows she was guilty of her crime and had to pay by doing time.

"I'm not mad that I was put in jail. But I was so shocked. I didn't know you had to give them sex, too," she said.

Roe was not available to be interviewed, but her part of the suit claims that Gant told her she had to do what he said or he could use his power in the records office to lengthen her stay in jail. CTF officers offered to put Roe in a kind of solitary confinement when she asked for protection from Gant, the suit says, but he ultimately resigned from CCA rather than give a statement regarding the alleged rape.

Deborah M. Golden, a lawyer with Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, who is a lead attorney on the suit, said the District and CCA had a duty to set up procedures to reduce the risk that inmates at the CTF would be sexually harassed or raped and to take substantive action when inmates made rape allegations.

Golden, who is working on the case with pro bono counsel Thomas C. Hill, a partner at the Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman law firm, said the women's claims weren't treated with the seriousness they deserved.

"You can't train someone not to be a rapist," Golden said. "But you can set up procedures whereby lone women can't be taken out of their cells by a lone officer. You can stop officers from taking advantage of people who are incarcerated. You can train people to be alert to signs of trauma in the population."

The legal team said it hopes to get top-level officials to take action to address sexual exploitation, a problem that has long plagued jails and prisons around the country.

"Neither woman disputes their crime," Golden said. "But that doesn't mean rape was part of their sentence."