[Senate Hearing 117-538]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 117-538
SEXUAL ABUSE OF FEMALE INMATES IN FEDERAL PRISONS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS
of the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
----------
DECEMBER 13, 2022
----------
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
S. Hrg. 117-538
SEXUAL ABUSE OF FEMALE INMATES IN FEDERAL PRISONS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS
of the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
DECEMBER 13, 2022
__________
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
50-239 1ADPDF WASHINGTON : 2023
GARY C. PETERS, Michigan, Chairman
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona RAND PAUL, Kentucky
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
ALEX PADILLA, California MITT ROMNEY, Utah
JON OSSOFF, Georgia RICK SCOTT, Florida
JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
David M. Weinberg, Staff Director
Zachary I. Schram, Chief Counsel
Pamela Thiessen, Minority Staff Director
Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
Ashley A. Howard, Hearing Clerk
PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS
JON OSSOFF, Georgia, Chairman
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire RAND PAUL, Kentucky
ALEX PADILLA, California JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
RICK SCOTT, Florida
Sara Schaumburg, Staff Director
Dan Eisenberg, Senior Counsel
Brian Downey, Minority Staff Director
Patrick Hartobey, Minority Senior Counsel
Kate Kielceski, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Ossoff............................................... 1
Senator Johnson.............................................. 3
Senator Padilla.............................................. 17
Prepared statements:
Senator Ossoff............................................... 45
Senator Johnson.............................................. 48
WITNESSES
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
Carolyn Richardson, Formerly Incarcerated in the Federal Bureau
of Prisons..................................................... 5
Briane Moore, Formerly Incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of
Prisons........................................................ 7
Linda De La Rosa, Formerly Incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of
Prisons........................................................ 9
Brenda V. Smith, Professor of Law, American University Washington
College of Law................................................. 10
Hon. Michael E. Horowitz, Inspector General, U.S. Department of
Justice........................................................ 23
Colette S. Peters, Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons........... 25
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
De La Rosa, Linda:
Testimony.................................................... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 109
Horowitz, Hon. Michael E.:
Testimony.................................................... 23
Prepared statement........................................... 156
Moore, Briane:
Testimony.................................................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 103
Peters, Colette S.:
Testimony.................................................... 25
Prepared statement........................................... 167
Richardson, Carolyn:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 49
Smith, Brenda V.:
Testimony.................................................... 10
Prepared statement........................................... 112
APPENDIX
Staff Report..................................................... 174
Kevin Ring, President, FAMM Statement for the Record............. 242
SEXUAL ABUSE OF FEMALE INMATES IN FEDERAL PRISONS
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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2022
U.S. Senate,
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations,
of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Jon Ossoff,
Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Ossoff, Hassan, Padilla, Johnson,
Lankford, and Scott.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR OSSOFF\1\
Senator Ossoff. The Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations (PSI) will come to order.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Ossoff appears in the
Appendix on page 45.
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Today's hearing will examine the findings of our 8-month
bipartisan investigation into the sexual abuse of women in
Federal prisons.
Before we proceed, viewers are advised that this hearing
will discuss sexual violence and other deeply disturbing issues
that we are duty-bound to bring to light. Anyone seeking mental
health assistance can call the nationwide hotline at 988 to
connect with a trained counselor.
Eight months ago, as chair of PSI, I launched an
investigation into the sexual abuse of women held in Federal
prisons, and with Ranking Member Johnson's support, our
bipartisan staff reviewed extensive non-public Bureau of
Prisons (BOP) and whistleblower documents and conducted more
than two dozen interviews with senior BOP leaders,
whistleblowers, and survivors of prison sexual abuse.
Our findings are deeply disturbing and demonstrate, in my
view, that the BOP is failing systemically to prevent, detect,
and address sexual abuse of prisoners by its own employees.
The Subcommittee has found that Bureau of Prisons'
employees sexually abused female prisoners in at least two-
thirds of Federal prisons that have held women over the past
decade. We found that BOP has failed to prevent, detect, and
stop recurring sexual abuse, including by senior prison
officials.
At Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Dublin in
California, for example, both the warden and the chaplain
sexually abused female prisoners.
We found that BOP has failed to successfully implement the
Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). For example, two prisons
where multiple BOP employees were abusing multiple women over
an extended period, FCI Dublin and Federal Correctional Complex
(FCC) Coleman, nevertheless passed or were found to have
exceeded the PREA audit criteria, which are mandated by
Congress and intended to detect the risk of sexual abuse in BOP
facilities.
In the case of FCI Dublin, the PREA compliance officer--the
official specifically tasked with ensuring compliance with the
Federal law whose purpose is the elimination of prison rape--
was himself sexually abusing prisoners.
In the case of FCC Coleman in Florida, all female prisoners
had been transferred out of the facility 2 days before the PREA
audit, making it impossible for the auditor to interview female
prisoners despite the legal requirement that they interview
inmates as part of the audit.
Amidst more than 5,000 allegations of sexual abuse by BOP
employees, we found at least 134 against female detainees were
substantiated by BOP internal investigations or by criminal
prosecutions.
Given the fear of retaliation by survivors of sexual abuse,
the apparent apathy by senior BOP officials at the facility,
regional office, and headquarters levels, and severe
shortcomings in the investigative practices implemented by
BOP's Office of Internal Affairs (OIA) and the Department of
Justice (DOJ) Inspector General (IG), I suspect the extent of
abuse is significantly wider.
Indeed, we found there is currently a backlog of 8,000
internal affairs cases at the Bureau of Prisons, including at
least hundreds of sexual abuse allegations against BOP
employees that remain unresolved.
DOJ's inspector general has found that BOP fails, at times,
to properly credit allegations of sexual abuse brought by
inmates. Multiple BOP employees who would later admit in sworn
statements to sexually abusing prisoners have escaped criminal
prosecution, due in part to weaknesses in the process by which
BOP and the DOJ inspector general work together to investigate
such allegations. In fact, several officers who admitted under
oath to sexually abusing prisoners were able nevertheless to
retire with benefits.
Let me be absolutely clear: this situation is intolerable.
Sexual abuse of inmates is a gross abuse of human and
constitutional rights and cannot be tolerated by the U.S.
Congress. It is cruel and unusual punishment that violates the
Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and basic
standards of human decency.
In July of this year, the former Director of BOP testified
before this very Subcommittee and insisted that BOP was able to
keep female prisoners safe from sexual abuse by BOP employees.
We now know that that statement was unequivocally false.
The purpose of today's hearing is to understand what has
gone so badly wrong, and to establish and examine the facts
upon which we must build reform. Progress begins with the
truth. It requires a full and unflinching examination of
grievous failure.
On our first panel, we will hear from three survivors of
sexual abuse at the hands of BOP employees that occurred while
they were incarcerated in Federal prisons: Carolyn Richardson,
Briane Moore, and Linda De La Rosa. All of their abusers have
since been convicted.
The firsthand accounts of survivors are essential, and I am
deeply grateful to them for coming forward to testify before
the U.S. Senate. Their bravery will make it easier for others
to tell their stories.
Next, we will hear from Professor Brenda V. Smith of
American University, a national expert on sexual abuse in
custodial settings. We will ask her to put the survivors'
testimony in a broader context.
Finally, we will question two government witnesses: the
inspector general for the Department of Justice, Michael
Horowitz, whose office both oversees BOP and investigates
criminal misconduct by BOP employees, and the new BOP Director
Colette Peters, who began her tenure just 6 months ago, in
July.
The hearing today is part of a 2-year bipartisan effort by
this Subcommittee under my leadership to investigate conditions
of incarceration and detention in the United States. From
corruption at the U.S. Penitentiary Atlanta (USPA) to the
Department of Justice's failure to count almost 1,000 deaths in
custody across the country, to abusive and unnecessary
gynecological procedures performed on women in Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) custody.
Ranking Member Johnson, I thank you sincerely for your
assistance in these efforts and your staff.
Before I yield to the Ranking Member for his opening
statement, it is important to acknowledge that law enforcement
professionals working in our prisons have among the hardest
jobs in our country, and I believe the vast majority of BOP
employees share our goals of ending sexual abuse once and for
all in Federal prisons.
I also want to state for the record the Subcommittee
investigated sexual abuse of women in Federal prison because of
some of their unique considerations. Women are more likely than
male prisoners to have suffered from trauma and sexual abuse
prior to incarceration, and particularly susceptible to
subsequent abuse in a custodial setting. However, the
Subcommittee fully acknowledges that sexual abuse is not
limited to female prisoners.
Finally, the Subcommittee's findings, which form the basis
for today's hearing, are laid out in a bipartisan staff report,
and I ask unanimous consent that this report be entered into
the record.\1\
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\1\ The staff report appears in the Appendix on page 174.
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Ranking Member Johnson.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHNSON
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You pretty well
laid out the case, so I will just ask that my opening
statement\2\ be entered in the record.
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\2\ The prepared statement of Senator Johnson appears in the
Appendix on page 48.
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Senator Ossoff. Without objection.
Senator Johnson. I think it is safe to say, based on your
opening comments when you say that what we have uncovered is
deeply disturbing, and it is, that I do not think anyone is
looking forward to this hearing. I do not know about you but
any movie I watch where there is any kind of sexual assault, I
have to turn it off. I cannot watch it. That is fiction.
We are going to be hearing some pretty horrific testimony
today. It is the government's duty to incarcerate individuals,
to punish people for crime, for keeping dangerous people away
from the general public. I do not want anything in this hearing
to downplay that very serious responsibility of government. It
is not a pleasant responsibility. But it also the
responsibility of government to make sure when we do
incarcerate individuals that they are safe, that these types of
rapes, these types of assaults do not occur.
This is something that the Federal Government has
recognized has been a problem dating back to 2003. I would say
that was probably a pretty good-faith effort to try and develop
data, do audits, to try and prevent this. You will never
eliminate all of this, but I do not think there is any doubt
that the government can do more. Looking at the inspector
general's testimony, understanding what this Administration is
doing, it does appear that they are making good-faith efforts
to do more to try and prevent this.
As deeply disturbing and although I am not looking forward
to hearing any of this, I agree with you it is our
responsibility. We cannot turn our face from it. We have to
face this. We have to do everything we can to eliminate it,
recognizing what a difficult task that really is.
Mr. Chairman, thank you, and thank all of our staff for
doing a good job of looking into something that is not fun to
look at but that is our responsibility to look at and try and
fix. Thank you.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ranking Member Johnson.
We will now call our first panel of witnesses for this
morning's hearing. Ms. Carolyn Richardson was formerly
incarcerated in Metropolitan Corrections Center (MCC) in New
York City. Ms. Briane Moore was formerly incarcerated at
Federal Prison Camp (FPC) in Alderson, West Virginia. Ms. Linda
De La Rosa was formerly incarcerated at the Federal Medical
Center (FMC) in Lexington, Kentucky. Professor Brenda V. Smith
is a national expert on sexual abuse in custodial settings.
I appreciate all of you for being with us today. I look
forward to your testimony.
The rules of the Subcommittee require all witnesses to be
sworn in, so at this time I would ask all of you to please to
raise your right hand.
Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give
before this Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
Ms. Richardson. I do.
Ms. Moore. I do.
Ms. De La Rosa. I do.
Ms. Smith. I do.
Senator Ossoff. Let the record state that all witnesses
answered in the affirmative.
We are using a timing system today. Your written testimony
will be printed in the record in its entirety. We would ask
that you limit your oral testimony to approximately 5 minutes.
You will see a timer in front of you. Please confirm, if you
can, with the help of your counsel, if necessary, that your
microphones are on, as indicated by the red light, before
beginning.
Ms. Richardson, at your convenience we will begin with you
first please.
TESTIMONY OF CAROLYN RICHARDSON,\1\ FORMERLY INCARCERATED IN
THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS
Ms. Richardson. Hello. Good morning. I would like to first
express my sincere gratitude to Chairman Ossoff and Ranking
Member Johnson for the opportunity to testify before you today.
My name is Carolyn Richardson. I was incarcerated in Federal
BOP custody from August 2016 through October 2022, when my
motion for compassionate release was granted on the grounds of
extraordinary compelling circumstances I suffered while I was
at Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Richardson appears in the
Appendix on page 49.
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My testimony will focus on repeated sexual abuse that I
suffered for several months at the hands of former correctional
officer Colin Akparanta. While I struggle to speak about the
abuse, I am hopeful that my testimony will give voice to
survivors in similar circumstances and help prevent sexual
crimes in BOP facilities.
In August 2016, I was indicted for my participation in a
conspiracy to procure and distribute oxycodone. I am deeply
remorseful for what I had done, which was fueled by my own
addiction to oxycodone. I accepted a guilty plea and was
sentenced to 12 years in prison, knowing that I would miss so
many years with my six children. What I did not know was that I
would come to suffer neglect and abuse in BOP custody that will
forever change my life.
Prior to my arrest I had received an artificial iris
transplant for cosmetic purposes. When I was taken into custody
I had normal vision and was in good physical health. Shortly
after arriving in MCC New York, in August 2016, I began to
experience complications with my transplanted irises. BOP
personnel failed to provide me with timely medical care and
caused my eyesight to deteriorate beyond repair. When I was
finally taken to an eye surgeon in January 2017, I learned that
due to the delay I would be permanently legally blind and would
require extensive eye treatment.
Since then, I required periodic visits to outside
hospitals, including seven eye surgeries. Former correctional
officer Akparanta was the BOP correction officer tasked with
taking me to these hospital appointments. I was in an extremely
vulnerable state--physically, mentally, and spiritually--due to
my medical condition, and Akparanta preyed on this fact.
When he took me to doctors' appointments, Akparanta made
himself out to be someone I could trust. He talked to me about
faith and spirituality, which was of central importance to me
in coping with my loss of vision. He brought me food and
medicine that I needed, but that I could not otherwise obtain.
Right at my most vulnerable I believed that here was a person
who cared about me when no one else did. I was wrong.
After several months, and around May 2018, Akparanta began
to demand sexual favors in exchange for the food and medicine
that he brought. He switched from working the day shift to the
night shift, and came to my cell at night. I did not have a
cellmate. He told me that my cell was in a perfect area because
the security cameras could not see him coming or going. He was
the only officer working the night shift in my unit, which
consisted of approximately 40 female prisoners. He used a
flashlight to signal to me that he was coming to my cell.
I felt utterly powerless. I was a vision-impaired prisoner
who was relying on Akparanta for basic life needs and
transportation to medical appointments.
For about 6 months, Akparanta regularly demanded sexual
favors from me. He became increasingly rough and cruel in the
way that he treated me. I told him that I did not like it, but
he continued in his conduct.
Before the assaults he would act like he cared about me,
and would ask me what was wrong when I was looking down or sad.
After the sexual assaults began he stopped showing any signs of
caring, and all he wanted was sexual favors. I felt disgusted
with him but also with myself. I felt worthless, like I was
something less than human, that he could deal with as he
wished.
When I indicated that I did not like what he was doing,
Akparanta suggested that we would both get in trouble if I were
to tell. I believed him. I was terrified that he or other BOP
staff would retaliate against me or take away my privileges. I
was afraid of being questioned and doubted. I felt the officers
would stick together instead of believing me or caring for me,
especially after Akparanta manipulated me.
I felt that everyone had ulterior motives, but then I felt
ashamed and blamed myself for not speaking up about the abuse.
I felt like I should have yelled and screamed when he was
sexually assaulting me, even though at that time I felt that I
had no real voice.
Further details of these can be found in Exhibit A, a
complaint filed in my civil lawsuit.
Even though BOP has a zero-tolerance policy toward sexual
abuse, in reality it is extremely difficult for inmates to step
up and report the abuse. It feels that there is no real
protection from the guards retaliating against you under a
pretext, or harassing you with their authority.
Even when the abuse is reported, inmates are kept in the
dark about the progress of the investigation, and the repeated
questioning is jarring and emotionally scarring to relive the
trauma. I could personally gain a small measure of peace by
cooperating with the criminal prosecution with Akparanta,
resulting in his guilty plea, and by my civil lawsuit, which
allowed me to gain information and knowledge about what
happened.
However, my hope is that no other inmate will have to
suffer similar abuse and that safeguards will be put in place
to ensure that.
I am appreciative of this opportunity to share my
experience that I had at MCC. I stand here for other female
inmates who have experienced sexual abuse, many of whom may
feel that they are alone, without anyone to care about their
story, like I used to feel. I hope in sharing this we can
improve our system and prevent this from ever happening again.
Thank you.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you Ms. Richardson. Ms. Moore, you
may now present your statement.
TESTIMONY OF BRIANE MOORE,\1\ FORMERLY INCARCERATED IN THE
FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS
Ms. Moore. Good morning. Thank you for giving me the
opportunity to speak. I am not an activist or someone who would
normally use my voice like I am today. Speaking about my
experience in such a public setting is incredibly hard. I am
willing to do so because other women are still in prison and I
am out. I hope that they will not have to go through what I
went through.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Moore appears in the Appendix on
page 103.
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I grew up in Illinois. My grandmother raised me, supported
me, loved me. When I was 17 I had my daughter. I wanted to make
money to support myself. I made the wrong decision. I sold
drugs, crack cocaine to be exact. I was sentenced to 10 years
in Federal prison. I accepted that because that was my choice
at the time. I could have chosen to do something else and I
chose to do that.
I got 10 years in prison, and I accepted that as well,
because as a result of doing that, consequences happened. I
decided to take the time while I was in prison to improve
myself, do my time so that I could get back home to my family.
The prison guards tell you when you can sleep and when you
can eat, when you can go. People who are in prison do not get
to choose the location of the prison they are sent to. First I
was sent to Alabama. I was there for about 2 years. I was
transferred to FPC Alderson. Both prisons are about 12 hours
away from my home. It was difficult for my family to visit. Not
being able to see my daughter and grandmother was devastating.
I put in a request to transfer prisons as a closer-to-home
transfer so I could be closer to my family. BOP officials have
the discretion to grant or deny requests. But I was determined
to survive. I followed the rules. I took all the programs and
opportunities available to me. I hoped the transfer request
would eventually be granted. I knew that I needed to do my best
for a chance at a transfer closer to home.
Family is the most important thing to me. I was determined
not to let prison break me. I was determined to return home a
better mother.
When I was in Federal prison in Alderson, in 2017, a
captain began to target me. He took me to areas that were
isolated in the prison, where there were no cameras. He told me
that he knew I wanted to transfer to another prison. He said,
``The paperwork goes through me.''
In October 2017, the building officer ordered me to go to
the captain's office. The captain then summoned me into his
office. There was a secretary's office within the captain's
office. When I arrived there was no secretary. After the
captain had me alone he locked the secretary's door and closed
his door behind him. He reminded me that the transfer went
through him. He told me that if I did not follow his orders he
would interfere with my transfer. He then raped me.
To be clear, even before the captain spoke those words I
knew he had the power to prevent me from being transferred to a
prison closer to my family, closer to my daughter. He was a
captain with total control over me. I had no choice but to
obey. I always had to follow orders in prison. It is hard to
fully describe how this felt. The captain already had complete
control over my day-to-day life and was now unfortunately in
control over my body.
Using my desire to see my children, he threatened me to
stay silent. The captain made it clear that if I wanted a
transfer I had to accept the abuse. I felt powerless. The abuse
continued.
Before my request could go through for a transfer closer to
home I escaped the abuse when a prison close to home reopened,
which was Pekin. When they asked for volunteers I jumped on the
opportunity to save myself. I left Alderson in December 2017,
and before I left the captain knew I was leaving. He raped me
one final time. In total, he raped me five times, sexual
assault on other occasions.
After the abuse I could not sleep full nights for months. I
had reoccurring nightmares that played over and over like a
broken record. I woke up in cold sweats. I would wake up crying
after nightmares that the captain was trying to kill me for
reporting the abuse. I isolated myself from others. I developed
post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and had to seek mental
health treatment.
The captain abused his authority and power, and while he
was raping me he was raping other women in prison. We were not
protected. I had no power to stop the abuse. The captain had
total power over me and he knew that. He knew that I had no
control and could not say no. The captain knew that I knew
that. He made sure to make sure that I knew that. He made sure
that he could for me to know that he could make things worse
for me.
Even before this threat, I knew that if I reported him I
could be placed in solitary confinement or shipped to special
housing unit (SHU), shipped out to another prison away from my
family, which was something I did not want to do. I saw this
happen to other women in prison. They would tell their story
and they would be shipped, and the officer would still be
there.
I left Alderson in 2017. After the investigation began the
captain resigned and was prosecuted for sexually abusing me and
other women at the prison. He plead guilty.
I am here today 5 years later, and I want you to know that
I am still suffering. This has changed the course of my life
forever. I am a different person physically and emotionally
because of this. I am still in mental health treatment. I have
lost trust in the system. I knew prison would be tough--I
accepted that. I will do punishment for my crimes. It was not
easy doing time.
I was sentenced and put in prison for choices I made. I was
not sentenced to prison to be raped and abused while in prison.
This should not have happened to me, and it should not have
happened to anyone in prison.
Speaking about this is not easy. The day I started to hear
was the day I could talk about what happened to me without
being afraid. Thank you for your time.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Moore, for your testimony.
For the benefit of all of our panelists, you may hear various
sounds from the clock, and those have nothing to do with our
hearing but indicate to us what is happening on the Senate
floor. Please do not be alarmed.
Ms. Richardson, Ms. Moore, thank you so much for your
testimony.
Ms. De La Rosa, you may present your opening statement.
TESTIMONY OF LINDA DE LA ROSA,\1\ FORMERLY INCARCERATED IN THE
FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS
Ms. De La Rosa. Chairman Ossoff, Ranking Member Johnson,
and Members of the Subcommittee, I am a victim and survivor of
sexual abuse by a Federal correctional officer. That predator
is now serving a 135-month sentence in a Federal prison. In
2019, he sexually attacked me and three other women inmates at
the Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky, which is a
minimum-security prison. It took 3 years to arrest, prosecute,
convict and sentence him.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. De La Rosa appears in the
Appendix on page 109.
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On the one hand, I am grateful for the efforts of those in
the Department of Justice who did help me and who successfully
put my attacker away, in particular, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) Victim Specialist Cassie Young and
Assistant U.S. Attorney Tashena Fannin.
However, the Bureau of Prisons entirely failed. My attacker
stayed at his job for years, even though BOP management and
investigators knew he was a sexual predator. My life at FMC-
Lexington was a living hell.
I believe my attacker had been investigated on numerous
occasions for sex crimes against female inmates. FMC-Lexington
management and investigators were well aware that female
inmate-victims were reluctant to come forward because they
rightly feared retaliation, which took many forms, including
transfer to different facilities, solitary confinement, loss of
early release rights, detrimental write-ups, loss of work
privileges, and interference with vocational skills programs. I
witnessed many examples of punishments handed out to other
inmates that challenged or reported abuse by prison officials.
The ongoing threat of retaliation stopped me and other inmates
from filing complaints, let alone timely ones.
Let me tell you what happened to me. I was transferred from
Lexington. After reporting the sexual abuse that happened to me
in Lexington, I was sent back to that facility. When I returned
to Lexington, all of my belongings were missing. There were
photos and letters from my son and daughter's father, both of
whom had passed. They can never be replaced.
When I returned I also learned my attacker was still
working at that facility. Incredibly, FMC-Lexington management
granted my attacker unrestricted and unsupervised contact with
me on work details, which gave him one-on-one access to abuse
or threaten to abuse me. Because of his position, my attacker
could and did access my personal history files, recordings of
my telephone calls and personal emails, giving him additional
leverage to extract sexual favors and threaten my safety.
The system failed at every level, management from the
warden on down, repeatedly. They failed to monitor, supervise,
discipline, and remove male correctional officers, predators
sexually abusing female inmates. Special Investigative Services
officers supposedly charged with investigating staff misconduct
failed repeatedly to investigate known and suspected predators.
It is not enough to call this horrible. I believe the problem
is ``the old boys club.'' Prison staff--managers,
investigators, correctional officers--they all work together
for years, if not decades. No one wants to rock the boat, let
alone listen to female inmates. There is no effective,
independent oversight.
The mission of the BOP is ``to protect society by confining
offenders in the controlled environments of prisons . . . that
are safe, humane . . . and appropriately secure.'' The agency
failed me and my fellow inmates. We were knowingly confined in
a facility that was unsafe, inhumane and unsecure. Nothing was
done. That was wrong. It never should have happened.
Senators, I make one request: stop this from happening,
from repeating. Now. Nothing you are hearing today is new. You
have the power and authority to force the system to change.
Please use it. Thank you.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. De La Rosa.
Dr. Smith, your opening statement, please.
TESTIMONY OF BRENDA V. SMITH,\1\ PROFESSOR OF LAW, AMERICAN
UNIVERSITY WASHINGTON COLLEGE OF LAW
Ms. Smith. First, I want to say how privileged I feel to be
able to sit at the table with these survivors, because they are
the ones who are doing the work to actually bring these issues
to the fore. I thank you for your courage and for being willing
to tell what has happened to you in custody.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Smith appears in the Appendix on
page 112.
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Good morning, Chairman, Ranking Member Johnson, and
Committee Members. I am a law professor at the American
University Washington College of Law. I founded the Project on
Addressing Prison Rape in 1993, after successfully representing
a class of over 500 women who experienced physical, sexual,
medical, and psychological abuse as well as systematic
inequality of services and opportunities in D.C. correctional
facilities. I was appointed to the Prison Rape Elimination
Commission in 1994, by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Having sat on the PREA Commission for a decade, there is no
question that the Prison Rape Elimination Act standards could,
if followed, prevent the abuse of women in custody. At the same
time, we know that while the PREA standards outline a
successful approach to preventing, reducing, and punishing
sexual abuse in custody, agencies, as these witnesses testimony
has identified, often do not follow the standards.
Agencies complain that the standards are nitpicking and not
consistent with their lived experience of people in custody or
correctional settings. They also argue that women in custody
are trying to game the system by claiming that they were
abused. They claim that it would be too expensive or take too
much time to follow the standards that would protect these
women. They also argue that the standards are there, but you
really do not have to pay attention until there is an audit.
I am familiar with Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities
because many of the D.C. women I represented served their
sentences in Federal facilities and returned to the District of
Columbia after discharge from Federal facilities. These women
spoke of abuse they had observed or experienced in a number of
the Federal facilities that are the subject of this hearing
today. The most recent incidents involving FCI Dublin, MDC
Brooklyn, FPC Alderson, and FMC Lexington are instructive but
they are not unusual. In other words, this is not new behavior.
The abusers represent staff from a broad cross-section of
the workforce. We have a chaplain, correctional officers,
volunteers, and wardens. This points to abuse that is systemic
in nature. What is clear from these incidents is that staff had
unfettered, uninterrupted access to women. They abused with
impunity and at will. They abused women in their offices, in
corridors, out of sight of cameras, and in collusion with other
staff.
They also abused the authority of their positions. One of
the assailants was a chaplain, another a warden; these are
people who we should be able to trust.
These system actors and leaders had intercourse with the
women, took nude images of them, and threatened them, as we
have heard. One of the assailants ran the PREA training, for
preventing prison sexual assault, while he was actively
involved in abusing women prisoners.
Given the systemic nature of this abuse, I have three
recommendations that have the potential to provide women with
greater protection from abuse.
First, reform the audit process for the Prison Rape
Elimination Act. PREA audits are supposed to identify problems
or practices that affect the protection of people in custody
from abuse. The current audit structure is not well designed to
ensure its success. The requirements to become an auditor, and
the marketplace for auditors, make it very difficult for anyone
who does not work in corrections to become a DOJ-certified PREA
auditor. Having said that, we all know how hard it is for an
institution to investigate itself. Agencies hire and pay the
auditors who conduct the audit, so in reality, auditors work
for the very agencies that they audit, making independence
difficult. This creates a financial disincentive to identify
problems.
Next, another suggestion. Some agencies are audited through
consortia, which means that State corrections agencies from one
agency will send their staff to audit another State's
facilities in a round-robin arrangement. This has not
eliminated the potential for conflicts of interest in those
arrangements. There is a quid pro quo.
Finally, the cost of audits and the time that agencies or
third-party auditing bodies that employ auditors allow for the
conduct of audits do not adequately compensate auditors or
allow the time necessary to conduct the audit methodology laid
out by DOJ. If there were time, then what could happen is they
could actually go through and look closely at these
institutions, interview women, interview outside folks, and be
able to find problems.
Each of the facilities that are the subject of the hearing
passed their audits with only minimal issues identified. Again,
neutral auditors, from an independent external auditing
authority, diversifying the auditor pool to include individuals
with experience working with victims. There also needs to be
ongoing training for auditors with a focus on auditing
investigation standards and meaningful responses to
retaliation, because as we have heard, many of these women
experienced and feared retaliation.
I think the other thing that we have to do is address the
conditions of confinement that create vulnerability for women
in custody. Each of these women have identified common elements
of vulnerability that relate to their victimization.
Women, as you know, often bring multiple well-known
vulnerabilities into the correctional setting--past histories
of childhood and adult physical and sexual abuse, poverty,
involvement with powerful systemic actors like courts, child
protection, housing, and immigration authorities that control
their existence, their future, and their families. These
factors create the leverage of pressure that correctional staff
employ to ensure compliance with both legitimate and
illegitimate requests.
Given this inequality of power, women bargain, capitulate,
and comply, even as they fear for their lives, their freedom,
and often for their families. Though there are constitutional
limitations on cross-sex supervision, male staff still have
found ways to have unfettered, unsupervised access to female
inmates in their care.
Clearly, identifying and implementing better supervision
strategies are in order. These strategies include increasing
the number of female staff at every level, including leadership
at women's correctional facilities. They also include
decreasing the numbers of women in custodial settings. Women
inmates are still incarcerated for primarily nonviolent
offenses. Increasing the opportunities for supervision in the
community would also help keep women safe from the pervasive
sexual abuse culture we are discussing today.
Finally, we need vigorous prosecution of these cases and
enhanced penalties. The penalties for abusing a person in
custody should be commensurate with the harm and damage they do
to women in custody, their families, the community, and to our
ideals of the rule of law. The sentences that prison sex
offenders receive are not commensurate with the injury that
they inflict or the harm they cause. In my view, the penalties
should be comparable to the offenses for other individual
victims who have been framed by the law as unable to consent.
That would include people with developmental and other
disabilities, children, and individuals in institutional
settings, including prisoners.
Finally, what I want to say is that the abuse of women in
custody has created a stain on our society. It is a stain that
I do not believe can be cleaned. What I hope we can do is
repair our broken systems. I hope we can go forward and do
better for women in custody. We can create the conditions that
provide safety for these women, provide safety for our
communities, and actually improve the integrity of the
correctional system. As a community and country, we can provide
punishment where appropriate but also provide justice for
people who are abused in custody.
I thank you for this opportunity, and I look forward to
answering your questions.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you very much, Professor Smith, and
thank you to our first panel. Thank you Ms. Richardson, Ms.
Moore, and Ms. De La Rosa, in particular, for having the
strength to share these horrific ordeals that you endured with
the U.S. Senate and the American public.
I would like to begin, please, by discussing the imbalance
in power that underlies so much of this abuse. Ms. De La Rosa,
you made reference to this in your remarks, the power over
transfer, the power over all aspects of your life. How did that
feel, and how did that play a role in making you vulnerable to
this abuse?
Ms. De La Rosa. Senator, I felt trapped, powerless. There
were so many things that were taken from me or times I was
stuck in transit. I was held longer than I was supposed to be
because of not being at a facility that could file my
paperwork. I was imprisoned 6 months longer than I was supposed
to be, for this investigation. There is so much we need to work
on as far as being able to report it.
Senator Ossoff. Ms. De La Rosa, the officer who assaulted
you had previously been investigated----
Ms. De La Rosa. Yes, sir.
Senator Ossoff [continuing]. For sexually abusing other
female prisoners.
Ms. De La Rosa. Yes, sir.
Senator Ossoff. But was still on the job.
Ms. De La Rosa. Yes, sir.
Senator Ossoff. You are in a Federal prison, supervised by
a male officer who had complete control over all aspects of
your life.
Ms. De La Rosa. Yes, sir.
Senator Ossoff. Unrestricted access to you while working.
Ms. De La Rosa. Yes, sir.
Senator Ossoff. Who eventually pled guilty to sexual abuse
and was sentenced to 135 months in prison.
Ms. De La Rosa. Yes, sir.
Senator Ossoff. While that abuse was ongoing, did you have
any safe outlet to report it? Did you feel you had any safe
outlet to report it?
Ms. De La Rosa. No, sir. In Lexington they have something
called the ``penalty box,'' which is if an officer is under
investigation they put them in the phone and email room. They
listen to your phone calls and read your emails. Inmates would
call it the ``hot box,'' but all officers called it the
``penalty box.'' Any way that you can report something to
outside staff on the PREA signs throughout the prison is an
email or a phone number, but you would not feel safe reporting
it when the officer you want to report is in the penalty box,
listening to all of your phone calls and reading all of your
emails.
So no, at Lexington I did not feel safe reporting.
Senator Ossoff. What kind of retaliation did you fear?
Ms. De La Rosa. All of the retaliation that I got. I was
working on an 8,000-hour welding apprenticeship. I got
transferred to a prison that did not have that program. I was
46 hours from completing that program. I was transferred to the
prison that I was scared to be at. I got transferred straight
back there after reporting it. I got put back at the prison
that I had reported.
All of my belongings ended up missing. There were letters
from my son, my grandpa, my Paw Paw that passed, pictures over
the last 9 years that I was incarcerated, of my child coming to
see me, and he passed away. I cannot ever get those things
back, letters he wrote me since he was 10 years old. I will
never get those things back, and they came up missing.
They tell you that whenever you tell on an officer that it
is completely confidential, but all of those things that
happened to me afterwards were not coincidence. They were not.
Senator Ossoff. Access and proximity to your family. How
did they play a role in your fear of retaliation and the
retaliation that you experienced?
Ms. De La Rosa. Not being able to make phone calls,
constantly being put in, once Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-
19) started, ``quarantine.'' They would restart your
quarantine, 21 days, with no phone calls, no anything. Every
time they move you, you have 21 days, not being able to contact
your family, not being able to have video visits with your
kids, and for 9 years that is what my kids looked forward to
every week. They can do anything they want, and they do.
Senator Ossoff. Ms. Moore, I would like to ask you the same
question, how access to family, proximity to family play a
role. If you would not mind, Ms. Moore, just ensure your
microphone is on. Thank you.
Ms. Moore. Like she said, the same fear of getting incident
reports for nothing, not being able to call home, not being
able to have contact with those video visits. I did not
necessarily have that happen where I was but I did fear
retaliation, which is why I never reported it while I was still
at the prison.
My whole goal was to try to get closer to home. I put in a
near-home transfer before I went to Anderson, and because
Alderson needed head count I had to go there. That is how I
ended up at Alderson.
Again, here I am trying to fight to get closer to my family
so that I can have visits, because I had one visit while I was
there, for my daughter's birthday, and I did 7 years in prison.
Being able to talk to my family and my grandmother, because she
is older and sick, was very important to me. My daughter was 7
when I went to prison, so that was very important to me.
Like she said, the officers have a lot of control. They
have a lot of control, and we really do not have a say-so. I
had already been in prison with women who had reported stuff
and been sent to county jails where the food is moldy and they
are wearing underwear that had been previously worn. It is
like, nobody wants to be uprooted from a prison that you have
taken time to do programs in and be sent to another prison
because you report this stuff. I am sure that is why a lot of
people do not report, besides the retaliation.
I had already heard that he had been under investigation
before, but nothing was done. Who was I to report someone,
thinking that something was going to happen, and I did not
report it. They called me after I transferred prisons. I was at
another prison before they called me to ask about it.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Moore. Ms. Richardson, I
will have a question for you in the next round. At this time I
am going to yield to Ranking Member Johnson for his first round
of questions.
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think Ms. Moore
is really highlighting the most difficult aspect of this is the
inability to report, the power that prison guards have over the
prisoners, and how certainly some of them peripherally abuse
that power.
I want to quickly go down the table. We know, Ms. Moore,
you never did report the sexual assaults. Correct?
Ms. Moore. Correct.
Senator Johnson. How did they ever come to light? Why are
you sitting here before us? At what point in time--was it
during the prosecution of your abuser?
Ms. Moore. No. I guess the day after I transferred, they
day after I left to go to Pekin from Alderson, he got walked
off. Maybe a week or two later, they called me at the prison I
was at. They called my counselor and he came down and got me,
and said somebody was investigating. I do not know how they got
my name, but they wanted to know what happened. At the time----
Senator Johnson. Somehow somebody heard about your abuse.
You might have talked to other fellow prisoners? Did you ever
talk to anybody about it?
Ms. Moore. Not really, no.
Senator Johnson. Somehow the investigators found out that
you may have been abused so they contacted you and then you
told your story to the investigators.
Ms. Moore. Yes. They asked if I wanted to tell my story,
and at first I said no. Then they gave me a couple of days to
give them a call back. I do not know. I know they have cameras
in the administration building, so I do not know if maybe they
went through the cameras and saw that I had been there.
Senator Johnson. Ms. Richardson, what about you? Did you
ever report this to anybody when you were in prison?
Ms. Richardson. No, sir, I did not. Actually, I found out
through a former inmate that Akparanta had been arrested and
that empowered me to come forward. But prior to that I would
have never told anyone because I was mandated to be there in
MCC because I was on medical hold for my eyes, and I had
already been sentenced.
Senator Johnson. What about you, Ms. De La Rosa? Did you
ever report this when you were a prisoner?
Ms. De La Rosa. I was moved from Lexington to Bryant,
Texas, to complete a program there, and when I was in Bryant,
Texas, someone came and spoke with me and asked me about it. I
was reluctant to talk to them at first, and I ended up
reporting it while I was in Bryant, and shortly after that I
was moved back.
Senator Johnson. The only reason any of your situations
came to light is because somebody investigating abuse came and
talked to you.
Ms. De La Rosa. Yes.
Senator Johnson. Ms. Smith, being an expert in this area--
and again, I am not looking for a hard and fast answer. I doubt
this has been researched. But it would seem that probably most
cases of this kind of abuse go completely unreported.
Ms. Smith. I think these cases are like sexual abuse in the
community as well. Often those cases go unreported as well. To
be victimized means that you do not have power, and I think it
is that sense of powerlessness that makes you think that
either: you cannot report; nobody is going to believe you; or
that nothing is going to happen to help you. You believe you
will not be protected because you were not protected in this
situation.
Senator Johnson. Chances are, based on the statistics we
have, it is something like 8,000 complaints that have not been
filed. That may still be the tip of the iceberg.
Ms. Smith. Absolutely.
Senator Johnson. Obviously, PREA, those audits, have not
worked. Maybe they have in some cases, but they certainly have
not eliminated sexual assaults.
Ms. Smith. So, let us say with PREA, some aspects of it
have worked, but some of the procedures have not. What I would
say is that the audits, as I have testified, need a tremendous
amount of work.
Senator Johnson. Can any of you think of any process of
reporting where you might feel safe enough to actually try and
report it? I have a hard time thinking of one, quite honestly.
It is a devilish problem. Ms. Smith, can you think of some kind
of reporting? I mean, you find out a chaplain is doing the
abuse of this, you would think that would be a place for
somebody to go. If somebody set up inside the prison, in a
position of power could be abusing. Where does the solution lie
here?
Ms. Smith. I think there are a number of issues. OK, so
first of all you start with being able to report outside of the
institution.
Senator Johnson. Correct. Where would you go outside, and
how would that be done when they are monitoring phone calls and
email messages, that type of thing?
Ms. Smith. The fact is that there should be a phone line
that you can use that is not monitored, right? There should be
a way to report out to a rape crisis center or an inspector
general's office.
Senator Johnson. But the prison guards are going to know
that you are using that phone, right?
Ms. Smith. Yes. But the fact that there is a potential for
abuse, as there currently is already, does not mean that you do
not take those steps.
I think you also have to protect people from retaliation.
What you are also hearing here is that these women did not
report because they actually had no confidence at all that they
would be believed----
Senator Johnson. No, again--yes, the retaliation, the power
is real.
Ms. Smith. Exactly.
Senator Johnson. The power is real, to transfer you away
from your family. The power is real. It really does come down
to, if we are going to really prevent this, there has to be
some method of an anonymous reporting system that cannot be
abused for other things prisoners may be doing from inside the
prison. There is the real devilish problem here.
Ms. Smith. Yes. Agree.
Senator Johnson. Any of the three witnesses, can you think
of a reporting system that you would have had confidence in?
Can you think of one? I will start with you, Ms. De La Rosa.
Can you think of something that, if it would have been
available you might have used to try and report this, or is the
power just such overwhelming and the threats of retaliation are
so horrific that you just had to bear it?
Ms. De La Rosa. I honestly cannot think of a way that you
can report it that the staff will not know about.
Senator Johnson. Ms. Moore, can you think of one?
Ms. Moore. No.
Senator Johnson. Ms. Richardson?
Ms. Richardson. No, sir, because one thing is for sure is
that wrong or right does not matter. They all stick together.
Senator Johnson. Mr. Chairman, to me there is the crux of
the problem that needs to be solved. How can people inside
prisons report without having a very high probability of being
retaliated against, against the very people that are abusing
them? I think our next panel, that will be the main line of
questioning I will be pursuing there. But thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you very much, Ranking Member
Johnson. Senator Padilla.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PADILLA
Senator Padilla. Thank you, Mr. Chair. As you have so well
laid out, the purpose of today's hearing is to address the
sexual misconduct that plagues U.S. Federal prisons and the
irreversible harm that it causes victims. While the various
investigations tell us that abuse and exploitation has run
rampant, there is no misconception that incidents are isolated
to only the facilities explicitly mentioned.
The horrendous reality is that detainee abuse is pervasive
in facilities across the country. My office has received far
too many reports about California facilities suffering from
dangerous living conditions, year-long delays in providing
adequate health care in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and
yes, claims of sexual abuse and assault.
Yesterday, Senators Durbin, Feinstein, Grassley, and I sent
a follow-up letter to our original letter requesting more
information from BOP concerning sexual misconduct allegations
by its personnel. We reiterated that the Department of Justice
must take immediate action to root out staff misconduct at BOP.
This behavior cannot continue. The Bureau must act urgently
to make meaningful, systemic improvements in facilities across
the country.
Now it has been reported that incarcerated individuals who
are victims of sexual misconduct and abuse may become
overwhelmed with crippling anxiety and fear of retaliation of
incidents are reported. Correctional facilities should not be
contributing to an environment where victims are terrified of
reporting abuse due to fear of retaliation.
Now one detainee in Dublin said that she was, and I will
quote, ``overwhelmed with fear, anxiety, and anger, and cried
uncontrollably'' after enduring abuse and retaliation for
reporting it.
Ms. Richardson, Ms. Moore, and Ms. De La Rosa, I want to
thank you as well for being here today and for your courage to
share your stories. No one should have to suffer what you have,
and your testimony today is invaluable as we work to ensure
that these abuses are prevented in the future.
Would you each be willing to share a little bit about your
mental health journey, how you have been able to manage, how
you have been able to cope? Again, it has taken courage for you
to be able to tell your story, to tell your story publicly, and
to be here today to participate in this hearing. If you can
talk a little bit about what the impacts have been, what
resources or support you have been able to access to help.
Ms. Richardson.
Ms. Richardson. I was diagnosed with PTSD and I believe it
is called persistent anxiety disorder. Since that diagnosis I
have been on medication. Also my spirituality comes into play
and keeps me grounded somewhat.
Senator Padilla. Thank you. Ms. Moore.
Ms. Moore. I continued to see a therapist at the prison
that I was transferred to, and then the prison after that, and
then when I got home. I have been out 3 years and I continue to
see a therapist. I have not really had anxiety since I have
been out of prison because I feel like I am not contained
anymore, and so the retaliation is not as scary as it is in
there.
But with this, like before when they asked me if I wanted
to do it, at first I was afraid because I felt like, what kind
of retaliation can I get from this? My anxiety has been high,
knowing that I am coming here to do this. But as I told my
attorneys, I am not the only one who has went through this, and
if my story can help somebody else, then maybe going through it
or could potentially go through it, I decided to put my anxiety
to the side. And like she said, my faith helps me.
I have two children, and I work every day. I am trying not
to use it as a crutch and let it control my life. I am trying
to keep control of my life, keep the control of my life since I
have it back after what happened, and I am trying to move on
with my life. But part of this is a part of me healing by doing
this today.
Senator Padilla. Thank you. Ms. De La Rosa.
Ms. De La Rosa. Anxiety has definitely been my biggest
struggle. I was a lot more anxious prior to his incarceration.
During his trial they did not even have him incarcerated. He
got a bond and he was out, and my anxiety was so high during
that time. But since he has been incarcerated I feel much
safer.
Senator Padilla. Thank you. Thank you all for again being
able to speak about that publicly, because we know there is
still a lot of stigma around mental health and accessing it,
whether it is seeing a counselor, a therapist, or medication,
that we have to overcome, because it is OK. It is OK to not
feel OK.
Professor Smith, I wonder if, in the brief time we have
left, you can begin to discuss more generally the mental health
impacts of correctional officer abuse on detainees, both while
they are in custody and when they are no longer incarcerated.
Ms. Smith. What we know is that a significant number of
women who come into custodial settings come in with past
histories of abuse and trauma, and that abuse, the abuse as
these women have talked about, in custody actually deepens that
existing trauma that they already have. As we know, there are
not a lot of resources available for women in custody to
actually deal with the trauma that they are experiencing, that
they experienced before they were in custody, while they are in
custody, and also that they will experience upon their return.
I think that it is really important that we enhance those
services in custodial settings and actually after women return
to the community.
Senator Padilla. OK. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Senator Padilla.
Ms. Richardson, you stated in court, you described a
meeting in 2017, where a BOP supervisor told you and other
assembled female prisoners, quote, ``I don't want to hear
nothing about my officers touching you.'' Another officer who
ignored pleas for help from a group of female prisoners and
said that your abuser, quote, ``will eventually get caught.''
What was it like to hear those things, and what, in your view,
was it about MCC New York and the environment there that
contributed to that culture?
Ms. Richardson. Two of those statements were not actually
made by me. It was made by the other ladies on the complaint.
But I did hear one of the statements by Counselor Lewis, and at
the time it did not register to me what it actually meant. But
the dynamics of that place, like I said before, wrong or right
does not matter. They all stuck together.
Senator Ossoff. Unpack that a little bit for us please, Ms.
Richardson.
Ms. Richardson. Just like you said the statement that was
Counselor Lewis. She is saying, ``I don't want to hear anything
about what my officers are doing to you ladies.'' Everybody
wants to cover their own butts so they basically--they do not
do anything about what they hear. They sort of sweep it under
the carpet.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Richardson.
Ms. Moore, you explained how the captain would take you to
isolated areas where there were not security cameras. Talk a
little bit about the presence of cameras in the prison, the
lack of coverage of certain areas in the prison, and how that
contributed to an environment where you and others were
vulnerable.
Ms. Moore. I was at a camp so there are not very many
cameras at a camp. Maybe they have some in the buildings, but
Alderson, if you have ever been there, is really big, and 75
percent of the place is not covered by cameras.
In his office, of course his office does not have a camera
in it. Certain parts of the building where we slept, where the
counselors and the case managers worked, did not have cameras
in those areas. Being at a camp, they say it is supposed to be
low security, so I am assuming that is why they do not have as
many cameras. But for things like this I feel like there could
be more, even if it is just some outside, just more.
What can you do about a camera in his office? He is the
captain. Of course, they are probably not going to put a camera
in his office. It was like he had the perfect opportunity to be
in there with little visibility for anyone to see.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Moore.
Professor Smith, let us talk a little bit about the Prison
Rape Elimination Act, and it is perhaps obvious given the
title, but what is the purpose of the Prison Rape Elimination
Act?
Ms. Smith. The purpose is not only prevention but also
detection, punishment, and to create the conditions, whether it
is the law, whether it is policy, whether it is related to
prosecution to end sexual abuse of people in custody. That is
the aim.
Senator Ossoff. Professor Smith, one of the most concerning
aspects of our investigation is that we found these PREA audits
were conducted during times when there was ongoing sexual abuse
inside Dublin, inside Coleman, and yet the auditors found and
stated in these reports that both facilities met or exceeded
every PREA standard. Talk a little bit about that, and I have
to ask the question, do these audits work?
Ms. Smith. I think, as I testified, there are significant
problems with the audit, and there need to be substantial
improvements. Currently, as I mentioned, we have the people who
are supposed to be being audited, auditing themselves,
essentially. What happens, there is not a great deal of
diversity. What we have is auditors who formerly worked as
wardens. We have agencies who audit each other, and so there is
a disincentive for them to actually find another agency out of
compliance, because they are concerned that when they are
audited that they will be found out of compliance.
I think that what is really important is having neutral
auditors, to have people who are clearly not a part of that
system, and also to have audits of the audits, to actually go
behind the audits in the same way that you did in your report,
to actually identify, yes, there were zero complaints here but,
we looked at case law and we looked at actual criminal
complaints, and this does not match up with what you--the
correctional agencies--are reporting.
I think that it has to be more than the actual audit, but
there actually has to be some other independent verification of
that audit, which would include, as the Committee has done
here, looking at whether there are complaints, looking at
litigation, talking to external organizations, talking to
people who are outside of the system.
Senator Ossoff. My time remaining is brief, if you can
attempt this one. Do you think it would be helpful to have more
women working in facilities that incarcerate women?
Ms. Smith. Absolutely, and I testified to that as well. The
presence of female staff--in fact, one of the huge issues that
come to bear in each of these situations is how did these male
staff actually have unfettered access to women inmates? A door
should have been open when they were alone with a female
inmate. Female staff should have been walking through. In many
places, what has happened is female staff are the only ones who
are allowed to perform certain services or perform in certain
ways with female inmates.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Professor Smith.
Ranking Member Johnson, do you have further questions for
this panel?
Senator Johnson. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As Professor Smith pointed out earlier, obviously rape and
sexual assault occur throughout society. You could actually
argue inside the walls of a prison might be one place where you
could actually prevent it from happening. There are guards.
There are people there to enforce the law. You could argue that
it should not happen.
I think with my last round of questioning here I wanted to
try and get some sense of how pervasive it is within prison.
Obviously, in society there are so many reasons why rape
victims do not come forward. You have those same dynamics
occurring with prisoners, plus you have the even more horrific
power and fear of retaliation, which would prevent victims from
coming forward and blowing the whistle.
What I would like to ask the three witnesses is, within the
spectrum of isolated to pervasive, having talked to fellow
prisoners, do you have any sense whatsoever? Were you
unfortunately a victim of an isolated problem? Maybe it is
different for every facility. It probably is different for
different facilities. But do you have any kind of sense
whatsoever in terms of what kind of problem we are dealing with
here, that you were the unfortunate victim of an isolated case
or you are unfortunately the victim of something that is
pervasive within the prison population, of women's prisons?
I will start with you, Ms. Richardson.
Ms. Richardson. I was one of seven victims from MCC that
the officer pled guilty to, and that was in the pretrial
facility that I was housed in for 4\1/2\ years. When I was
transferred to Tallahassee, Florida, prior to me leaving in
October, there were three inmates there who were sexually
assaulted by an officer, and one officer was walked off the
compound. It seems to be in all of the facilities.
Senator Johnson. Yes. It is occurring. I am trying to get
some sense. What is the total prison population of women,
something like 17,000? Is that from my briefing? I will go to
Ms. Moore. What is your sense, isolated or pervasive throughout
prison systems?
Ms. Moore. I think it is throughout the prison system as
well. The captain abused more than just me. I never knew the
ladies but there were other women on his case as well that came
forward, for him to be prosecuted. It is not isolated.
Senator Johnson. You are dealing with the same information
we are looking at right now in terms of what has been in the
end prosecuted, what has come to light. I am trying to get some
sense, through conversations with fellow prisoners, do you have
any sense whatsoever?
I will go to Ms. De La Rosa for that.
Ms. De La Rosa. Pervasive throughout. It is way more than
just the people who have reported. It is throughout the system.
Senator Johnson. That would also imply there are a lot more
perpetrators.
Ms. De La Rosa. Yes.
Senator Johnson. Again, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate you
forcing us to look at something we have to look at. We just do.
We really do need the Department of Justice to step up to the
plate, examine this carefully, utilize different tools,
recognize that the PREA Act certainly has not eliminated this.
We need more of a sense to figure out, really, how pervasive
this is and what we can really do. I will, again, point out
that the real problem is how can prisoners have any confidence
to report?
The other thing that I found bizarre, and we will cover
this with our next panel too, is the strange situation if the
Office of Internal Affairs compels a guard to do an interview
and they find out that wrongdoing has occurred, that is a Get
Out Of Jail Free card. I think we are going to have to
obviously look to the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to step
up their investigations, because I think the Supreme Court has
ruled on that. That is the way it is going to be, compelled
testimony.
We are going to have to figure out a better way to
investigate because that is one of the ways you reduce this, at
least, would be more consistent prosecutions and very severe
penalty, which, by the way, penalty includes incarceration. But
even those perpetrators deserve to be in a prison that is safe
and where they are not abused as well.
This is a big problem, and as I said at the outset, it is
not a fun problem to look at. It just is not. But it is one
that we have to, and I appreciate the fact that you are forcing
us to look at it.
Senator Ossoff. Ranking Member Johnson, I very much
appreciate your consistent support and engagement in this
investigation and that of your staff. I think it sends a
powerful message to the Department that there is strong
bipartisan will to address this crisis, and we will have the
opportunity to question government witnesses in the next panel.
I want to take this opportunity to thank each and every one
of you. I want to thank, in particular you, Ms. Richardson, Ms.
Moore, and Ms. De La Rosa, for coming forward, for having the
strength and courage to address the U.S. Senate in this
setting, to speak publicly about what you endured, to help
Senators and the entire Congress to understand the dynamics
that led to this exploitation, that led to the horrific ordeals
that you suffered. Please know that we will continue to work on
the basis of what you shared with us, and I believe that the
courage you have demonstrated today will inspire and empower
others as well to share their stories.
It is with gratitude and admiration for your courage that I
thank you, and Professor Smith, thank you for lending your
expertise to the Senate today, and I hope that as Senator
Johnson and I continue to work together to identify solutions,
either at the administrative or legislative level, that you
will remain engaged with us.
At this time we will excuse this panel. Thank you again for
your contributions. We will take a brief recess and set up for
the second panel of government witnesses.
[Recess.]
We will now call our second panel of witnesses for this
afternoon's hearing.
Michael Horowitz serves as the Inspector General for the
Department of Justice. Colette Peters serves as the Director of
the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The rules of this Subcommittee require all witnesses to be
sworn in, so at this time I would ask you both to please stand
and raise your right hand.
Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give
before this Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
Mr. Horowitz. I do.
Ms. Peters. I do.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you. You may be seated. Let the
record show that both witnesses have answered in the
affirmative.
Your written testimonies in full will be printed in the
record, and I would ask that you seek to limit your oral
testimony to approximately 5 minutes, as indicated by the
clocks in front of you.
Mr. Horowitz, we will hear from you first.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE MICHAEL E. HOROWITZ,\1\ INSPECTOR
GENERAL, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Mr. Horowitz. Thank you, Chairman Ossoff, Ranking Member
Johnson, and Members of the Subcommittee.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Horowitz appear in the Appendix
on page 156.
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During my tenure as inspector general I have identified for
each of the five Attorneys General and Deputy Attorneys General
that I have worked with that the safety and security of the
Federal prisons is one of the most important and compelling
issues facing the Department of Justice, so I am particularly
pleased to be here today to talk about these issues and to work
with the Committee on how to address them. I also want to thank
you for the important and impactful report that was released
today through the bipartisan work of the Committee.
I also want to take a moment to thank Ms. De La Rosa, Ms.
Moore, and Ms. Richardson for their courageous and compelling
testimony that we heard in the first panel and for their
bravery in cooperating with my office as we pursued the
wrongdoers who committed the heinous acts that they described.
Because of their assistance, those corrupt employees were held
accountable in Federal court and are no longer able to
terrorize other BOP inmates.
No inmate should ever suffer sexual abuse in prison, and as
your report details, female inmates are particularly vulnerable
to such assaults. We must do everything we can to eradicate
such behavior, and you have my commitment that the OIG will
continue to make this fight against sexual assault one of our
highest priorities.
Indeed, our office regularly commits about 50 percent of
our investigative resources to addressing criminal
administrative wrongdoing by BOP employees, an outsized
percentage of resources given that the BOP accounts for about
30 percent of the Department's employees. However, I only have
about 113 agents nationwide, which means I have the equivalent
of 56 agents available to handle the thousands of allegations
we receive across the 123 Federal prisons.
It is clear that more independent oversight is needed, and
that is why we have asked Congress, and I am working with
Congress, to try and get more resources to do that kind of
work.
We continue to see widespread instances of sexual assault,
most recently, as was discussed earlier, at the BOP's prison in
Dublin, California, an all-female prison. Last week, the jury
convicted the former warden of sexually assaulting eight
inmates at the prison. The investigation that we have conducted
with the FBI has also identified other Dublin employees and
charged other Dublin employees, including the former chaplain,
and we have a very active and ongoing investigation there.
These problems did not happen overnight, and the BOP must
do more to prevent and detect them before they become endemic
at other institutions, as we have seen in Coleman and others,
as we heard in the first panel.
In short, these are substantial problems that need
immediate attention and action, and the Subcommittee's report
and the recommendations in it are going to be very valuable as
we move forward to address them. We are also pleased by the
recommendations contained in the Deputy Attorney General's
recent report by her Task Force on Sexual Assault. Those
recommendations need to be implemented promptly. I have also
had several positive discussions with Directors Peters since
she became the director in July of this year.
Let me mention some additional issues that I am hoping the
Committee will consider. First, the BOP needs to be, and take
more timely and effective action at holding accountable corrupt
BOP employees. Second, the BOP needs to rely on credible inmate
testimony in its administrative misconducts proceedings. Third,
the BOP must repair and improve its camera systems.
Fourth, the BOP needs to implement an effective staff
search and contraband policy. One of the things that I am
hoping that the Committee will consider is a potential increase
in the penalties for contraband smuggling. In some instances,
those are merely misdemeanors, when contraband is smuggled into
BOP prisons to provide contraband to inmates that they are
grooming for their sexual assaults. That should be addressed.
I am also taking several steps within the OIG to ensure
that we can do a better job in our office, investigating and
pursuing these allegations. I have included them in my
testimony. Among them, using data analytics to identify
problems early on, like you have recounted in FCI Coleman and
what occurred there. We will take more action, and I am
assuring this Committee that we will take those steps.
I appreciate the support of this Committee and of the
Congress in pursuing our work and allowing us to conduct our
investigations. We will use all the tools you have provided us
to take action to prevent this scourge from occurring.
I look forward to answering your questions today, and thank
you again for the important work that you have done.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Inspector General Horowitz.
Director Peters.
TESTIMONY OF COLETTE S. PETERS,\1\ DIRECTOR, FEDERAL BUREAU OF
PRISONS
Ms. Peters. Good morning, Chairman Ossoff, Ranking Member
Johnson, and Members of the Committee. I am honored to appear
before you as the Bureau's 12th director and to provide
leadership to corrections professionals in the largest
corrections agency in the country.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Peters appear in the Appendix on
page 167.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
After 30 years in public safety, working in roles from
victim advocate and inspector general to serving as the
director of the Oregon Department of Corrections, I can tell
you that the topic of this hearing is of immense importance to
me, I thank the Committee for their years of work, and I
especially thank the victims who are here today, bravely
sharing their heartbreaking and compelling stories.
I welcome accountability and oversight, and I welcome this
hearing. We must come to this work with our arms wide open. Our
work with Congress, the Office of the Inspector General, and
the Government Accountability Office (GAO), among others, has
helped us identify and address areas of concerns within our
agency. Sexual misconduct by Bureau employees is an issue of
critical importance, and I also appreciate this Committee's
support in this area.
With your oversight I see this moment as an opportunity to
work together to make our facilities safer for the people in
our care and custody. I believe we all want the same thing: a
safe, humane, and effective Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Any kind of misconduct, especially sexual misconduct by
Bureau employees, is always unacceptable and must not be
tolerated. The vast majority of our employees come to work
every day ready to serve in complex and challenging jobs that
can also change lives and make our communities safer. I join
these dedicated employees in being horrified by the small
number of employees who engage in inappropriate, egregious, and
criminal behavior. We must hold accountable those who violate
that public trust, and we are strengthening our processes,
realigning resources, and clearly communicating those
expectations.
Our work is to combat sexual misconduct, and that work is
complex and must include prevention, reporting, investigation,
discipline, and also prosecution. We must begin with assessing
and then changing the culture and the environment in our
facilities where need be. At all women's facilities, we want to
ensure that gender responsive, and trauma-informed practices
are being followed. We must train all Bureau employees on their
obligation to report misconduct.
Since leadership is essential to creating the appropriate
culture, we are also examining how we select, supervise, and
support wardens in our women's facilities. I believe that
detection and accountability is critical to deterrence. We will
leverage both technological and human resources (HR) to better
detect and prevent sexual misconduct.
On the technological side, we are working on upgrading
camera technology and usage.
I have also been very clear in my communication to Bureau
employees that while I am proud of those who come to work every
day dedicated to our core values and mission, for those that
are not we will fetter them out and hold them accountable, up
to and including termination and conviction. We will also not
tolerate any acts of reprisal.
There is no and should be no limitation on who may submit
allegations of misconduct, and our Office of Internal Affairs
works closely with the Office of Inspector General and other
entities to ensure all obligations are reviewed. In this vein,
we are looking into collaborating with formerly incarcerated
individuals and using the lessons learned from their
experience. Myself and other Bureau employees have already
participated in two very powerful listening sessions, which
included formerly incarcerated individuals.
We too are bolstering and reorganizing investigative
resources and personnel to support the Office of Internal
Affairs in conducting timely, thorough, and unbiased
investigations. This includes adding more than 40 employees to
the OIA team, realigning reporting structure for those agents,
and training investigators in trauma-informed techniques.
When criminal misconduct is uncovered it is important that
people are held accountable, either administratively or
criminally, if legal action is warranted. That is why I would
like to publicly thank the Inspector General for his commitment
to ensuring the Bureau's success through the timely
investigations, and I would like to thank the Deputy Attorney
General for giving very clear direction to all U.S. Attorneys
on prioritizing prosecution of criminal misconduct in the
Bureau.
As I have said many times, and I will repeat here today, I
believe in good government, I believe in transparency, and I
know we cannot do this work alone. We must come to this work,
as I have said, with our arms wide open.
Chairman Ossoff, Ranking Member Johnson, and Members of the
Subcommittee, I am honored to speak on behalf of the Bureau and
its dedicated employees. This concludes my opening statement
and I look forward to your questions.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Director Peters, and I will
begin.
Director Peters, you were appointed over the summer. You
have been on the job about 5 months. Correct?
Ms. Peters. That is correct.
Senator Ossoff. I think it is important to acknowledge--and
I know Ranking Member Johnson and I, both acknowledge you are
new in this post--the overwhelming majority, if not all, of the
events presented in our report occurred prior to your tenure.
Nevertheless, as you and I discussed in your confirmation,
or your first hearing, rather, in the Judiciary Committee, the
buck now stops with you. One thing I wanted to state at the
outset of your responses to our questions today is that while
we are deeply interested in your plans for reform, and you will
have every opportunity to present them, the purpose of this
hearing as well is to examine what happened in the past, what
went wrong, and what has been broken at the Bureau of Prisons.
You, in your capacity, leading the BOP, today are here to help
us understand that. I hope that is clear, Director Peters.
Ms. Peters. Very clear, Senator. Thank you.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you. I appreciate that. Same to you,
Mr. Horowitz.
Mr. Horowitz. Yes.
Senator Ossoff. Ranking Member Johnson made reference to
this in his questions to our prior panel, defining the scope of
the problem. We agree that is vital. What we found in the
course of this investigation is that in two-thirds of the
Federal prisons that have housed women in the last 10 years,
there has been sexual abuse of female prisoners by BOP
employees. I believe this number is likely significantly
higher, both in the number of facilities and the number of
cases, in part because of the severe deficiencies we have
identified in terms of how, Director Peters, the Office of
Internal Affairs handles investigations of allegations of
sexual abuse, the limitations that you have acknowledged,
Inspector General Horowitz, in your office, as well as the
widespread fear of retaliation and a culture of impunity that
we have seen prevail in multiple of these cases.
We start with Dublin. It was widely known, before it broke
into the official record, that there was a serious problem at
Dublin. There have been multiple convictions. There are over a
dozen ongoing criminal investigations. This went on for years.
The warden and the chaplain were sexually abusing prisoners.
Before Dublin, multiple officers abusing multiple female
inmates in other facilities--MCC New York, Metropolitan
Detention Center (MDC) Brooklyn, FCC Coleman. Every few years,
despite the culture of impunity, despite the fear of
retaliation, it has broken into the public consciousness that
there is a serious problem, and yet nothing systemic has been
done to address it. In fact, when we asked senior BOP
personnel, ``What was done after the Brooklyn facts came to
light?'' ``What was done after the Coleman facts came to
light?'' little or nothing in the way of a systemic attempt to
address the issue.
I want to understand from you, Director Peters, why. You
have been in the job now for 5 months. Presumably you have
debriefed senior leadership that is outgoing. Yes?
Ms. Peters. Yes, Senator.
Senator Ossoff. You have inspected prisons?
Ms. Peters. Yes.
Senator Ossoff. You have discussed these issues with
regional directors, with wardens. You have, I assume, done your
best to understand this so that you can be effective at
addressing it.
Before we get into what you are going to change, why is it
that for 10 years, despite being known to BOP leadership that
there was a serious problem, nothing was done to address it in
any kind of systemic or effective way?
Ms. Peters. Senator, I wish I had a good answer to that
question. What I can tell you is that when you look at the
institutions that you are highlighting--the Brooklyn, MCC New
York, Dublin--and you see an institution that has been riveted
with cases, it is hard to explain. It is hard to understand how
systemic changes were not implemented.
When you look at the power differential inside an
institution there is no ability for an individual who is
incarcerated to consent to any form of sexual relations. Then
when you look at individuals like a warden and like a chaplain,
there is something even more exponential there in terms of that
power differential.
I find that that situation is absolutely egregious, and it
is about the systemic change. That is what we need to look at,
Senator. We need to be able to look in all of the categories
that I mentioned in my opening statement. We have to figure out
how to prevent this. We have to figure out how to better
investigate, streamline resources, hold people accountable, and
work to prosecute those who deserve prosecution.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Director Peters. I appreciate
that. Again I want to stipulate, I think it is important for
the public to be reminded that the events that we are
investigating predated your tenure. Nevertheless, I think you
have to understand why systemic change was neither attempted
nor did it succeed. Because for you to reform this vast
bureaucracy, which is diseased--and this Subcommittee has done
other work looking at the BOP in the last few months. We looked
at corruption and misconduct in Atlanta, for example, and we
examined, in the course of that hearing, a lack of
accountability from the very top. You need to understand that
in order to change it.
Here is something I want to put to you and get your
response, Director Peters. We, in the course of conducting this
investigation, heard different things from folks at different
levels of your organization. For example, we interviewed a
former warden at Dublin, not the one who has been convicted but
a former warden at Dublin, who described this as--and this is a
quote from his interview--``bad people making bad choices.'' He
identified it and I am now paraphrasing, but the gist of it was
a few bad apples, people making the wrong choices, not so much
systemic. He denied there was a culture of abuse.
But we spoke with your chief of Internal Affairs, who
described a culture of abuse, who described it as systemic at
that facility.
Have you, for example, talked to the regional director who
was in charge at the time, to understand how it could have
evaded their attention that this was ongoing at Dublin for so
long, and how is it that there are these different views within
your own bureaucracy? You have a former warden saying just a
few bad apples, and your own Internal Affairs folks saying it
was culture of abuse.
Ms. Peters. Thank you, Senator. I have a tough time
understanding how the warden drew that conclusion based on the
facts as I observe them today. I have not spoken to that
warden. I have had lengthy conversations with the administrator
responsible for our Office of Internal Affairs, and we agree,
that is a culture of abuse, that is a culture of misconduct,
and that culture needs to be reset in order to ensure the
safety and security of those in our care and custody. I think
we do have systemic changes in the works that will help us
reset that culture there and throughout the Federal Bureau of
Prisons.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you. Ranking Member Johnson.
Senator Johnson. Director Peters, how do you determine
whether it is a few bad apples versus a culture of abuse? How
do you make that determination systemically? Obviously, when
you have the warden and the chaplain, you kind of figure that
is probably a culture. But again, you have a number of
facilities. How do you make that determination?
Ms. Peters. Thank you, Senator. I think the Bureau is now
putting together cultural assessments where we have teams who
are trained to come in and assess that culture. I think some of
the signs are absolutely, Senator, like you said, when it is
high-level officials engaging in these egregious criminal acts,
there is clearly a culture.
But also when you find those who are incarcerated who
openly tell our cultural assessment team that they do not feel
comfortable coming forward, they do not feel like there are
avenues to report in a way where they can report without fear
of reprisal. It is those sorts of warning signs that we want to
be able to find during these cultural assessments so that we do
not have a Dublin repeat again, and so those individuals in our
care and custody are safe.
We look forward to continuing those cultural assessments
and ensuring that we are taking all of that data into account.
Senator Johnson. Do you have any idea, in terms of how
somebody is being sexually abused inside a prison, can report
that without having a very legitimate fear of retaliation or
reprisal? Can you think of anything--understanding you have a
hotline. They will know they are using the hotline. You provide
confidential communication. That will be abused by drug
traffickers. It is a tough nut to crack. Do you have any
possible ideas of what might work?
Ms. Peters. Thank you, Senator, and I appreciated those
questions directly to those who were formerly incarcerated and
now victims of these egregious acts that you asked earlier this
morning.
I think the answer is there has to be many avenues. First,
we have to create a culture where they have developed
relationships with the frontline officers and they do feel
comfortable talking to them. Absent that, we have to develop a
culture where family members and loved ones know that they too
can report, internally or externally. I think the key--and as
we listened to the women talk this morning--that ability to
report independently, without any tracking from the Bureau,
directly to the Inspector General's Office is a key component
of being able to crack that nut.
Senator Johnson. But again, they are in prison. How can
they report without people knowing? Then, let us face it. They
report it, and after a certain amount of time all of a sudden
people are asking questions?
Ms. Peters. That is right. Right now the way they can
report directly to the Inspector General without us knowing is
through Trust Fund Limited Inmate Computer Systems (TRULINCS).
They are able to send an email directly to the Inspector
General, outlining their allegations and their concerns.
You are absolutely right. Then investigators come, Senator,
and questions are asked. The information is inside the
institution. It cannot just be reporting alone. It has to be
things like the convictions that we are seeing out of
California, so that our Bureau employees know that if they
engage in this type of behavior, or engage in acts of reprisal,
that they will be held accountable. I think that level of
prosecution and accountability will allow us, over time, to
develop an environment where individuals can come forward
without that fear of reprisal.
Senator Johnson. In the PREA audits, what percentage of the
inmates are questioned during those things in a confidential
manner?
Ms. Peters. Senator, I do not know the answer to that
question.
Senator Johnson. OK. That would certainly be one way, a
more all-inclusive survey, surveillance audits, that type of
thing.
How many personnel do you have in the Office of Internal
Affairs?
Ms. Peters. I do not know the total number, but I do know
that we added more than 40 positions to the Office of Internal
Affairs in order to help us----
Senator Johnson. It is probably in the hundreds?
Ms. Peters. Yes.
Senator Johnson. Inspector General Horowitz, do you know?
Mr. Horowitz. I do not know the exact number in the BOP's
operations. I do think it is--I would be guessing. I am not
sure exactly how many they have in their internal affairs. As I
said, we have about 113 agents around the country devoting
about half their time to this.
If I could answer, I think you have hit on, as you talked
about in the first panel, a critically important question. As
Director Peters said, there is this ability to send an email
directly to us that is anonymized, that cannot be traced. The
question, of course, is who is watching over people's shoulders
when that occurs, where is the terminal, what happens when we
respond, because obviously we want to respond, so that has to
be addressed.
But I think one of the things that is critically important
is the culture question we have been talking about, because as
you know from having run a business, the question is why are
the employees not stepping forward? Why do we need the inmates,
and only the inmates, to step forward?
It is a very serious problem. We have the warden, a
chaplain, and many other employees at the Dublin prison. We
could talk about Brooklyn, MDC Brooklyn. We could talk about
MCC New York. We could talk about FCI Atlanta. We could talk
about Thompson Prison. We can keep going, right? Why are those
employees not coming forward, when they have a predator among
their fellow employees? They are the eyes and ears, along with
the inmates. They are the ones who need to come forward. There
needs to be that ability and accountability for people who are
responsible and for people who should have come forward,
including supervisors.
Senator Johnson. Director Peters, I know local law
enforcement, for a host of reasons, are having a very difficult
time recruiting. The Defund the Police movement, the blame cops
first, that type of thing. What kind of recruitment issues are
you having within the Bureau of Prisons?
Ms. Peters. Thank you for that question, Senator. First, I
cannot agree more with what the inspector general just said.
Our employees have an obligation to come forward. I think it
ties directly into your next question, which is how do we hire
the right people to come in, who want to change hearts and
minds, who want to do the right thing, who have those core
values, who have those ethics?
If ever there was a time where it was difficult to hire at
the Bureau of Prisons, it is now, for all the reasons you just
mentioned, Senator. It was difficult to hire before the
pandemic. Then the pandemic hit and made these jobs even less
attractive, as well as the other issues that you just raised,
in the field of law enforcement.
One of our top priorities is recruitment and retention
strategies, and we have been working diligently, internal with
the Bureau, but we have also reached out to two organizations
and contracted with them in hopes that we can rely on their
expertise to improve our ability to hire not just people but
the right people for this business.
Senator Johnson. If you will indulge me for one more point,
maybe question. There is a real problem of false reports.
Correct? Do either of you have any indication of how
significant a problem that is? Let us face it. You are talking
about people who have committed crimes. Some of them maybe are
not the most honorable or most honest, and it is not a bad way
to retaliate against a guard either.
How does Bureau of Prisons, how does the Office of Internal
Affairs, how the Office of Inspector General try and sift
through the true claims versus the fraudulent ones?
Mr. Horowitz. Yes, it is an excellent question, Senator. It
is something, actually, having done police corruption cases
back when I was a Federal prosecutor in New York, was one of
the key questions also, which is you had a lot of allegations
against the bad cops, but you had allegations against the good
cops because the drug dealers knew that was a convenient way--
or thought it was, at least--to impact them.
You have to be very careful as investigators to understand
that. Frankly, the only way you do it is by getting the
complaints, carefully vetting them, and not jumping to a
conclusion, and that is one of the challenges we face also,
particularly because it is so challenging to get into the
prison to see if there is corroboration, and this is where
cameras come in. I could talk about this for days. It is not
only on sexual abuse, it is on assaults in prison. How many
times do we get a complaint that an inmate was assaulted by
another correctional officer? A lot of those are false, because
they had an injury and it was their own doing. We do not have a
camera. There is no excuse for that, none whatsoever.
Senator Johnson. By the way, I completely agree with that,
and that is just table stakes. That has to be fixed. The
cameras have to be fixed. They have got to provide, as much as
possible, 100 percent coverage. That would take care of an
awful lot of this. In the scheme of things, probably one of the
most cost-effective ways of really addressing this.
Mr. Horowitz. You are a thousand percent right.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ranking Member Johnson. I would
note, as a point of personal privilege, Senator Lankford, that
Senator Grassley and I have the Prison Camera Reform Act. It
has passed the Senate unanimously. Any help that anybody in
this room can muster to get that through the House before this
Congress ends would be deeply appreciated.
Senator Lankford.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD
Senator Lankford. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Thank you to
both of you for your work. I have several questions on this
topic and a couple of other questions because it is unique to
be able to sit down with both of you on that. I want to take
advantage of that moment.
I want to pick up, Director Peters, in this discussion
about cameras. That was actually my first question. A common
story on the sexual assault that we have heard already was that
the assault was happening with staff members in the locations
where they were not monitored. How do we get that fixed? In the
meantime, how do we make sure that, until we get cameras and
monitoring in those locations, we get additional staff eyes and
ears in those locations, or certain policies that if you are
passing through these certain locations you cannot do it one-
on-one? What is in process right now?
Ms. Peters. Thank you, Senator. I could not agree more with
your sentiments or that of the Inspector General. In my 30
years in public safety, having formerly been the Inspector
General of Oregon and the Director of the Oregon Department of
Corrections, technology and camera usage is key.
You are absolutely right. The stories we heard this
morning, people know where those cameras are, both my employees
and those in our care and custody, and probably more
importantly, they know where those cameras are not.
Senator Lankford. Right.
Ms. Peters. The more that we can improve that technology
inside, in my experience I have seen this type of behavior and
other non-sexual behavior decrease dramatically with the
introduction of cameras, both static cameras inside the
institution and also the usage of body cameras.
One of the concerns I have today, as the new director of
the Bureau, is the lack of resources that we have for the
camera installation. The time it is going to take to install
these cameras that have been approved, based on the resources
we have, is concerning to me. I always appreciate the support
of Congress in establishing those resources so that we can
ensure that those institutions are safe and secure, with the
most upgraded technology possible.
Senator Lankford. Thank you. We appreciate that. We look
forward to getting a chance to track what facilities were
chosen first, what the process was for the rollout of that.
That will be important to see, as well, how that actually
happens, and how those priorities are actually set.
While I am on the technology conversation, different
subject on this but still technology related to this has been
the microjammers in the managed access. That is a security
issue not only within the prison but outside the prison for
individuals to not be basically stalked from inside the prison
or to use contraband cellphones to be able to communicate with
other prisoners, to coordinate activities within the prison as
well.
This has been one I have worked on for years. I have
continued to be able to push. There have been pilot programs,
but we have not seen wide distribution. The technology
currently exists to do managed access or microjamming in all of
our facilities, but it is not being rolled out quickly. What is
needed to do that? Where does that land on your priority list?
Ms. Peters. I could not agree more, and the Inspector
General alluded to this in his opening comments. Contraband is
the beginning of sexual assault, and so eradicating the use of
cellphones inside our institutions for the various reasons that
you just talked about, addressing this issue of drones, which
is the new way to introduce contraband inside our institutions,
and really figuring out how to ensure that that type of
technology is not the introduction of further criminality.
At the core of the Bureau has to be safety and security,
and this issue is really important to me. To answer your
question, it is about resources. It is about funding and being
able to ensure that that technology is kept outside of our
institutions. Absent that funding, we are relying, in some of
our institutions, on local law enforcement to come in with
their cell dogs, if you will, their cellphone dogs, to help us
figure out where those cellphones are and how to ensure that
the least amount of contraband is being introduced into our
institutions.
Senator Lankford. Mr. Horowitz, do you want to comment on
that as well?
Mr. Horowitz. It is something, Senator, I know you have
been working on and something we have been writing about for 10
years now. Other States are doing it. Long ago, finally the
BOP--and I appreciate them--finally taking that effort. But as
Director Peters said, cellphones in a prison are a deadly
weapon.
Senator Lankford. Right.
Mr. Horowitz. We did a case in Puerto Rico where it was
used to put a hit on a correctional officer. They run drug
businesses. They are used to groom future abused inmates. You
know what? Smuggling a cellphone into prison is a misdemeanor.
Senator Lankford. Right. Yes. There are several issues that
we have to resolve here, both the disincentive to be able to
bring that in, the consequences for smuggling that into,
whether that be a drone or whether that be a staff member,
however they may get that in, a contractor may get that
cellphone in.
But for the longest, States, local entities could not do
this jamming because it was blocked in Federal law. This is
still a big issue for us, and we are still blocking the
microjamming, that the technology is there. We are acting like
this is 20 years ago, but the technology is there and the
managed access where it is being used is being used effectively
to deter future crimes that are there.
I appreciate the engagement. This is an area that we have
to continue to advance on to make our prisons more secure and
our staff that are there, that the vast majority are good
actors in that, to continue to protect them as well.
Director Peters, I want to ask you, as well, about the
First Step Act, and I am going to make a quick comment and move
on to other things. One of the aspects of the First Step Act
was actually outside groups being allowed to do the annual
recidivism work. This has always been very difficult for the
Bureau of Prisons to allow outside entities to come in and do
this. It is very common in State and county facilities. There
are very popular programs that are done in State and county
facilities on recidivism.
But the Bureau of Prisons has continued to lock them out.
Even after the First Step Act is passed, many have applied and
few are actually getting in, to do that work. Faith-based
entities and others are trying to step in and they are being
blocked out to do that. I would like to have a follow-up
conversation with you and your team on this. I met with the
previous director on this, and what I really got was a ``We are
thinking about it. We are working on it. There is no
requirement to many.'' But it was very clear from Congress,
start allowing some outside groups to work on recidivism issues
within our Federal Bureau of Prisons as we do in State and
Federal.
Will you commit to meet with me on that so we can get a
chance to talk about it?
Ms. Peters. I look forward to the conversation.
Senator Lankford. Thank you. We do want to help in that
area, and Congress has spoken clearly on this.
We have talked a lot about staff-to-inmates assaults. This
continues to be an issue within inmates as well. I have a
culturally difficult area that you have to deal with all the
time on this, and that is the transgender population that is
now in the Bureau of Prisons care.
As of June of this year, the best numbers that I have, we
have 1,427 individuals in Bureau of Prisons custody who are
transgender. Of those, 72 percent of those are male. Of those,
47 percent of those male individuals are currently incarcerated
for sex crimes.
My question is, how are we protecting other inmates where
we have individuals that have a sex crimes conviction? They
have currently transitioned already and they are in another
facility where they are biologically male in a female prison or
biologically female in a male prison. Based on that, what
policies are in place to protect other inmates? I have read
through some of the areas on the policy to honor those
individuals and the gender that they have chosen, but what
about for other individuals that are in that prison as well,
and what are you seeing?
Ms. Peters. Thank you, Senator. This has been an issue that
I have been personally working on as the former Director of the
Department of Corrections and, of course, now as the Director
of the Bureau of Prisons. The bottom-line answer is safety and
security and individualized case management, not making
sweeping decisions around our trans population but really
looking at that individual sitting in front of you, what their
situation is, what is the safety and security of the
institution we are considering assigning them to, and then
training our employees to understand the complexities of
housing individuals who are trans inside of our institutions,
and ensuring not just their safety but as you said, Senator,
the safety of those who are incarcerated and the safety of our
employees.
Senator Lankford. Right. I appreciate that. Mr. Chairman,
thank you for the little bit of extra time on this. Can I make
one more follow-up statement on that?
When I read through the Bureau of Prisons transgender
policy it has a section there where it says, ``Transgender
inmates shall be given the opportunity to shower separate from
other inmates when individual shower stalls are unavailable.
The agency shall not place transgender or intersexed inmates in
dedicated facilities units or weighing solely on the basis of
such identification or status.''
That gives some rights to them. Is that also extended to
other individuals? If a biological male is placed in a female
prison, do the other prisoners there also have the same rights
on protecting themselves as well, to saying, hey, this is also
our preference, to not be housed with an individual that is a
biological male, especially one that is currently incarcerated
for sex crimes?
Ms. Peters. Senator, I think that obligation and that onus
is on us, not those who are incarcerated. It is our obligation
to ensure that we are placing them on units where they are safe
and the people on those units are also safe. I would not want
to put that ownership on the adults in custody to determine
their safety and security. That is an issue that lies with us.
Senator Lankford. Right. But based on this policy, a
transgender inmate is given the opportunity to be able to
choose. What I am asking is, do the individuals that they are
housed with, do they also get that same opportunity, or is that
opportunity for choice only given to the transgender inmate?
Ms. Peters. The opportunity to provide input is only given
to that transgender inmate. The choice of placement is not up
to the individual that is incarcerated. That is on us to make
that security and housing placement.
Senator Lankford. The opportunity to give input is not
given to the other folks that they are placed with that are not
transgender?
Ms. Peters. That is correct.
Senator Lankford. Why?
Ms. Peters. I think that it is really important for us to
own that safety and security and that placement decision. We
are the experts in corrections. We are the ones that need to
determine where those individuals can be appropriately housed.
Senator Lankford. You have also got a situation where some
people get input and some people do not on that, and I think if
you are going to give input to individuals on housing and
safety and what they feel secure, their own background and
perspective, I think that should be given to all in that
situation.
Ms. Peters. Thank you.
Senator Lankford. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Senator Lankford.
Investigating the abuse of incarcerated women by BOP
employees, I want to return to some questions about management,
accountability, what has gone wrong for the last 10 years such
that there has been no systemic effort to address this crisis
despite acknowledgment today from the inspector general that it
is widespread.
Let me begin by saying we found approximately 5,200
allegations of sexual abuse targeting inmates by BOP employees
over the last decade. As the Ranking Member noted, not all of
them will be valid. We also heard, however, from three
survivors in the first panel, none of whom themselves made a
complaint. Given the fear of retaliation, given the power that
BOP employees have over the lives of those in their custody, it
stands to reason that there are a substantial number of
incidents where no complaint is made.
We also found, to our shock, that the Office of Internal
Affairs, Director Peters, has an 8,000-case backlog, including
at least hundreds of sexual abuse allegations. The first
question for you this round is, how and by when will you clear
it?
Ms. Peters. Thank you, Senator. I spoke earlier. We have
added more than 40 positions to the Office of Internal Affairs
to help shore up that backlog. I think when you talk about,
Senator, what has gone wrong over the last 10 years it has been
lack of resources. It has been a lack of accountability. When
you have investigations open for as long as we have had it is
hard to hold people accountable at the end of those
investigations.
It is my hope that those additional positions will help
shore up that backlog. But as you know, and from the testimony
of the administrator to you from our Office of Internal
Affairs, even those additional resources, it is going to
require us 2 years to clear that backlog.
Senator Ossoff. Two years. Understood, Director Peters. I
hope that those sexual abuse allegations will be prioritized as
you work through those 8,000 cases. I recognize the resource
constraints but I think, Ranking Member Johnson, it is fair to
say we hear pretty consistently that the solution to
intractable bureaucratic deficiencies is more funding and more
personnel, and sometimes that is true, but there are deeper
management problems here.
Director Peters, I want to discuss a little bit about how
you are approaching this, again, with the stipulation that you
have been on the job for 5 months, you are new to this role,
you are taking charge of the institution and these events
predated your tenure, how you are going to handle ensuring that
you have all of the information about what is happening within
your facilities, that the regional directors have all of the
necessary information about what is happening in their
facilities.
How could it be, based upon your experience thus far in the
role and your experience managing this organization the last 5
months, for example, that the regional director responsible for
Dublin would have been unaware that the chaplain and the warden
and other employees, now over a dozen investigations, were
abusing inmates, such that it spilled out into the Associated
Press (AP) reporting that it dubbed ``The Rape Club''? Why was
the regional director unaware?
Ms. Peters. Thank you, Senator. In my 18 years in adult
corrections this is one of the biggest questions I have been
faced with since I have taken on this new role. Having been in
institutions countless times, understanding how corrections
works, the warden cannot leave his or her office without people
knowing, so how this type of behavior happened, unaccounted
for, without people stepping forward, I do not understand it.
But what I have been working on is sending very clear
messages to every member of my executive team and the wardens
that I must know about the good, the bad, and the ugly that is
happening inside this organization, which means they too need
to know. They need to have a pulse on what is happening in
their regions and in their institutions.
Going back to the previous question, it starts with the
investigators. One of the changes that we made was to ensure
that the investigators that are handling these very significant
sexual abuse cases report to headquarters. There needs to be
more accountability in headquarters. There needs to be more
accountability in the Director's Office. We are going to ensure
that that reporting authority is changed, and then myself and
the Deputy Director will be meeting with the administrator of
OIA and our HR division Assistant Director regularly to review
those cases.
Also as it relates to the broader leadership structure, we
are really looking at how those appointments are made, how we
recruit for those positions, who fills those positions. But I
have also sent a very clear message to the organization that we
are going to be transparent and that we need to be aware of
what is happening inside our institutions.
Senator Ossoff. All well noted, Director Peters.
Returning to the question--and I think it is important that
the Congress and you personally have answers to these specific
questions--how is it that the regional director, with direct
responsibility for FCI Dublin, did not know the extent of
ongoing abuse in a facility for which they were directly
responsible? If you have not, will you seek to speak with that
person to understand how they possibly could have been blind to
that severe abuse happening on their watch?
Ms. Peters. Yes, Senator.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Director Peters.
One of our courageous witnesses from the first panel, Ms.
De La Rosa, who was assaulted at Lexington, described the
culture of the institution as an ``old boys' club.'' What do
you think she meant by that?
Ms. Peters. I would not want to surmise what she meant by
that, Senator.
Senator Ossoff. I think you probably have an idea.
Ms. Peters. Senator, I think the notion of an old boys'
club, as I have seen and experienced in my career, is one where
decisions are made often behind closed doors, they are often
made without women in the room, and I assume that is what she
is speaking to.
Senator Ossoff. Inspector General Horowitz, you made this
point in the previous round of questions, not just that BOP
employees are not reporting when they are aware of abuse that
is perpetrated by their colleagues, but, in fact, what we heard
from the survivors who testified in the first panel is a
culture of mutual protection. Talk a little bit about that
please, Mr. Horowitz.
Mr. Horowitz. That is one of the biggest challenges we
face. These are not secrets. The warden taking these actions,
the chaplain taking these actions, other inmates taking these
actions, they are not secret. You mentioned Atlanta, the
Federal prison there, that was essentially closed for a period
of time. When they tossed the prison to go look, we had been
doing case after case there. Dozens of phones found. Other
contraband found. It is not a problem that happened overnight.
In fact, we looked at the past audit reports. They got passes.
But if you read those reports, you could not miss the problem.
There needs to be more ownership at the director and senior
levels of the BOP, at the regional levels of the BOP, and there
has to be put in place a process by which the good actors, the
people who do not want to be working next to a predator--and I
think that is probably most employees--are comfortable coming
forward and reporting it, knowing they are not only not going
to get retaliated against for doing that but they are going to
be held on a pedestal and supported by the organization, rather
than have the people who are engaged in the wrongdoing
promoted.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Horowitz. Senator Johnson.
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, I am very
mindful of the fact that this hearing really is about prison
personnel preying on prisoners. I got that. But I think Senator
Lankford brought up a pretty relevant point as well that,
certainly coming into this hearing I was thinking about to what
extent are there sexual assaults occurring between prisoners?
Director Peters, how many biological males are being housed
with biological females in Federal prisons?
Ms. Peters. Senator, I do not have an answer to that today.
Senator Johnson. Do we have some?
Ms. Peters. Yes, Senator.
Senator Johnson. I will go on the record and I will not
belabor this point. Let me go on the record, when we are
incarcerating somebody because they have committed a crime, we
have taken away their right of moving freely around society, I
would say they have no right to determine, if you are a
biological male, to be housed with biological females. They
have no right. That is insane policy. When we are talking about
sexual assaults, to have the Federal Government engage in a
policy that allows biological males to choose to be housed and
come in close proximity with female prisoners. That is insane.
That is something Congress probably ought to address if the
Administration is not smart enough to reverse this policy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Senator Johnson.
Director Peters, let us talk about how the BOP implements
the Prison Rape Elimination Act, whose purpose is indeed in the
name of the legislation. It is to eliminate prison rape. We
must dispense of any notion that there is any inevitable level
or any acceptable level of sexual abuse of inmates by BOP
employees. Our objective, our imperative, our moral obligation,
and your moral obligation, Director Peters, as I believe you
know and have stated you accept, is to eliminate sexual abuse
of those in your custody.
I was pleased to hear you describe the possibility that
this hearing could be a turning point. Those were your words, a
turning point. Because again--I am repeating this so that the
public viewing this hearing understands this because it is
important--you are new to this job, and the events that we are
describing did not occur under your tenure.
But now that you are in this role, I want to respectfully
tell you that I believe your tenure will be judged by whether
you succeed in eliminating the sexual abuse of those who are in
your custody. I think this is your highest and most immediate
moral imperative in this position.
Prison Rape Elimination Act, audits are conducted
periodically to assess the compliance of BOP facilities. It is
correct, is it not, that those audits are viewed, and they have
testified to it in a recent subcommittee by BOP leadership as
an essential tool.
Ms. Peters. That is correct, Senator.
Senator Ossoff. Help us to understand--again, you were not
in the role at the time, but you need to understand this--help
us to understand how it is that, let us take Dublin and
Coleman, two facilities with widespread, in the case of Dublin,
high-level, ongoing sexual abuse, months, in some cases years,
could both pass their PREA audits during the period in
question?
Ms. Peters. Thank you, Senator, for the question. I was
with the Oregon Department of Corrections when the Prison Rape
Elimination Act was passed. I was the inspector general as we
implemented those recommendations. It is an issue with every
corrections agency. We had hoped that those standards would
eliminate sexual misconduct, as you mention but what we have
learned is that is only one tool in our toolbox. Those audits
come in and ensure that the institution is compliant with the
Federal standards that were created. It does not address
cultural issues. I think there are, back to my opening
statement, other avenues and other tools that we need to rely
on in order to work toward eliminating sexual misconduct inside
of our institutions.
I heard the professor speak earlier. There are concerns
about how audits are conducted. In some State correctional
systems, as she alluded to, some audit themselves. Some rely on
other jurisdictions to audit their jurisdiction and then vice
versa. At the Bureau we do hire outside contractors to come in
and conduct those PREA audits, so I think that is a step in the
right direction.
But again, Senator, I think the bottom-line answer to your
question is the PREA audits are just one tool in our toolbox.
Senator Ossoff. I think we need to understand how this tool
can be so ineffective that at Dublin, for example--and here is
the 2017 Dublin audit--it was found that the facility met the
standard of ``zero tolerance of sexual abuse and sexual
harassment.'' It says that the facility ``meets the standard.''
The warden, the chaplain, others who have been convicted,
allegedly over a dozen who may be under investigation at this
time, were, in fact, engaged in sexual abuse.
Here is what really stands out about this. It cites the
PREA coordinator as the key source for making that finding. The
PREA coordinator was sexually abusing inmates.
I understand the intent of these audits, and you and your
team believe it is a key tool. It is clearly not working,
right?
Ms. Peters. That is correct, Senator. It has not eliminated
prison rape.
Senator Ossoff. I think it is not just that it has not
eliminated prison rape, it is that it is generating false
negatives at facilities where, as the inspector general said--
and Mr. Horowitz, if I am correct, your comments to the effect
that if the warden and the chaplain are engaged in widespread
sexual abuse of inmates, there is no way that is a secret. Mr.
Horowitz, is that----
Mr. Horowitz. Yes.
Senator Ossoff. You have abuse occurring at this facility
that is so severe and so high level that it must have been
widely known. In fact, as I said, it eventually spilled out
into the public. The place was called ``The Rape Club,'' but
the PREA audit found that it met the standard of zero
tolerance.
In Coleman--again, predates your tenure--two days before
the PREA audit was executed, every female inmate had been
removed from the facility. Now I am not saying there was or was
not foul play involved there, but it is true, is it not,
Director Peters, that interviewing inmates is a core part of
the process of conducting a PREA audit. Yes?
Ms. Peters. Yes.
Senator Ossoff. If every female inmate had been removed
from the facility 2 days before the PREA audit, those
interviews could not have been properly conducted, could they
have?
Ms. Peters. That is correct.
Senator Ossoff. Director Peters, this was before your
tenure. My point is this process is badly, badly broken, and as
a result the tool that you are going to have to rely on--and I
know you are also implementing these cultural assessments, and
I am eager to see how effective they are--to know what is
happening in your own facilities is not currently functioning
to give you the visibility that you are going to need. If you
lack that visibility, with you as the leader of reform, we are
not going to be able to implement change.
Let us talk a little bit about OIA processes, the Garrity
precedent, Inspector General Horowitz, when prosecutions are or
are not brought, what the consequences of those are. Looking
into Coleman, multiple BOP employees who eventually admitted,
in sworn statements, compelled by Bureau of Prisons Office of
Internal Affairs, admitted, in graphic and explicit detail, to
sexual abuse of prisoners. All or most of those cases had been
referred to your office as candidates for criminal prosecution.
The outcome is that none of them were criminally
prosecuted, and in fact, many retired with their benefits
intact. How did that happen?
Mr. Horowitz. I have looked at those cases and there are
multiple reasons for it. First and foremost, we need to do, as
a general matter, and are doing a more effective job at looking
at these cases when they come back to us. Initially, remember,
we are essentially in a triage business. We get thousands of
complaints every year. We have a dozen agents, for example, in
the Florida region, in our Miami field office, to cover a
number of prisons throughout the Southeast.
We are doing triage initially, keeping the ones that look
like they need independent oversight by us, and we are
returning the vast majority to the BOP for their internal
affairs to handle. It is very simply a resource question. There
are only so many cases a dozen agents, spending half their time
on BOP work, can take. We are looking for those at the outset.
BOP then investigates, and they, on occasion, when they
find things, come back to us and say, ``We have found
additional evidence.'' It is particularly at that stage that
many of these cases came back that we probably could have
done--and most of the people, by the way, are no longer in the
organization because many of these happened years ago, so I
have not been able to talk to the actual decisionmakers--but it
appears, looking at the file, that in most cases we could have
taken several steps to further investigate those, before
deciding to send them back to the BOP again.
It was at that stage that the BOP sought to compel the
officer, and of course, as has been alluded to, once an
employee is compelled to speak it means they cannot invoke
their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and
anything they say is tainted from a prosecution, which is how
they ended up not being prosecuted.
We need to both look at those cases that come to us with a
more stringent review. We also need to make sure we are well-
coordinated with the Office of Internal Affairs at BOP and
sharing insights, including what we are now doing with data
analytics, which is looking for trends at prisons so that we
cannot look at these anymore as one-offs, but do they reflect a
broader problem, suggesting that we might have more witnesses
out there if we go in and talk to inmates.
Because what we have seen, frankly, at Coleman--and I have
talked to my agents about this around the country--once we go
into a prison--and by the way, the three inmates on the first
panel who said they did not report it, we went to them because
we had learned about wrongdoing in the prison and reached out
to them as potential witnesses. My agents tell me this over and
over again. Once inmates see us on the ground and see action
being taken, like when we searched the warden's residence in
connection with Dublin--we searched the warden's home during
that investigation--we received a substantial number of
complaints from inmates, several of which we have corroborated.
But those happened once they saw that action.
There are a lot of things that need to occur, both on our
end and on the BOP's end. I will go back to talking about two
things that would help up front--cameras and search policy,
contraband penalties. Inmates are being groomed. Contraband is
a huge problem. If we had cameras--I cannot tell you how many
cases we have where the absence of video testimony makes it
extraordinarily difficult.
One other thing that is important on the accountability
front and the credit to the deputy attorney general for doing
this. She has told the U.S. attorneys they need to prosecute
these cases. Because keep in mind that is the other thing my
agents are looking at these cases for. If there was a crime but
no one is going to prosecute it, our investigating it as a
criminal matter does not make any sense. There needs to be the
partner on the receiving end, and that has been very helpful.
Senator Ossoff. You mentioned the proactive monitoring of
data to include complaint data. Correct to include complaint
data?
Mr. Horowitz. Correct.
Senator Ossoff. My view is that both OIG and OIA need to be
engaged in that. In fact, we heard from OIA that they are not
doing that. I will enter into the record, without objection,
some charts\1\ that we produced that show that at several of
these key, most notorious facilities, there was a data
signature of increased complaints in the years during which the
misconduct was occurring but before it broke into the public
domain and before there was significant official action.
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\1\ The charts referenced by Senator Ossoff appears in the Appendix
on page 212.
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Director Peters, will you commit to ensuring that OIA is
proactively monitoring sexual assault complaint data at the
facility level to get ahead of any possible major crises at a
facility?
Ms. Peters. Yes, Senator. The inspector general and I just
met a couple of weeks ago and he talked about this notion of
data analytics, and I went back and talked to my team. We
certainly want to be looking at the exact same data that the
inspector general is looking at so that we see that information
parallel to him looking at it. Our Office of Internal Affairs
is looking forward to that collaboration and ensuring that we
are monitoring the same sets of data.
Mr. Horowitz. Keep in mind, most of the data that we
receive are the referrals we get from the BOP. The ones we
cannot share with the BOP are the whistleblower complaints, the
inmates that come straight to us that need confidentiality. So
short of that data, we should have the same data.
Senator Ossoff. I think proactively monitoring that data is
going to be essential, and Inspector General Horowitz, you
noted that in those Coleman cases, at least in several of the,
OIA brought them back.
Mr. Horowitz. Correct.
Senator Ossoff. But still no prosecution was brought, and
as a result, those folks faced no criminal penalties for pretty
egregious acts. Clearly it sounds that you engaged in and
change is necessary. I understand you both face resource
constraints, but this is a crisis that requires immediate
action.
We are going to close now. Just a couple of final thoughts
for you.
Director Peters, I have been genuinely encouraged by the
tone of your tenure thus far, by the ambitious reform
objectives that you set out in public, and when we have met in
private and during these public engagements I have encouraged
you to make good on those intentions and those promises. I want
to encourage you again to embrace the possibility that you can
turn this agency around with everything that you have. I think
you should expect that so long as I have the ability, I will be
calling you back to the Senate to ask what progress you have
made.
The one thing that concerned me from today's discussion is
that your admirable plans for reform, which I hope you
implement with speed and strength, need to be informed by a
fulsome understanding of what has gone wrong in the past. When
we investigated Atlanta, what we heard from your predecessor
was that he was blind, in my view willfully blind, but blind to
what was happening at the regional level and at the facility
level, and the regional director did not know what was
happening at the facility level.
You will be held accountable for knowing, and I believe you
have an opportunity to establish a legacy as a reformer who
saves lives and protects vulnerable people from sexual assault,
one of the most heinous things that can happen to any human
being. This has to stop. You have the power to stop it.
I also hope that you will be responsive to the U.S.
Congress, and I want to note that we are still awaiting answers
to specific questions regarding U.S. Penitentiary Atlanta that
were submitted following that July 26th hearing. You need to
set the tone within your organization and working with DOJ's
Office of Legislative Affairs that responsiveness to the Senate
is essential, because it is not an encouraging sign when we are
stymied in our efforts to conduct oversight.
Thank you for your commitment to change, and please make
good on it. Please cooperate fully with our efforts to support
reform. We should be working together to make these changes.
This will be the final hearing for the Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations this Congress. I believe that
the work that we have done investigating conditions of
incarceration and detention in the United States has been among
the most substantive and focused effort in the history of the
U.S. Congress. We have investigated corruption and misconduct
at Bureau of Prisons facilities. We have investigated the
medical mistreatment in DHS custody. We have investigated
failures to implement the Death In Custody Reporting Act. We
are now continuing to investigate the sexual abuse of women in
Federal custody.
This work will continue. Accountability will continue. Both
of you have key roles to play in making sure that when I close
this hearing, that is not the end of this. It is the turning
point that you referenced in your opening remarks, Director
Peters.
Thank you both for your testimony, and the hearing is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:12 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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