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67 Counts for Cop Who Had Sex With Underage Girl

Raul Olmeda, a three-and-a-half-year veteran of the NYPD, has been arrested and charged with paying an underage girl for sex and recording the incidents. According to the New York Daily News, the 40-year-old Bronx cop engaged in illegal sex acts five times between January and April 2017. Two of the trysts occurred after Olmeda’s apartment

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Broward County Deputy Jailed for Sexual Assault of a Minor

A police officer with the Broward County, Florida sheriff’s office has been arrested and charged with illegal sexual activity involving a teenage girl. Leon Campbell, a 37-year-old deputy sheriff, was jailed on October 19, 2017, but was released the next day on a $15,000 bond. According to TheFreeThoughtProject.com (TFTP), he was charged with second-degree felony

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Airing Florida’s dirty prison secrets

By Christopher Zoukis A recent investigation of the country’s largest women’s correctional facility has revealed levels of corruption and inhumanity that don’t simply border on the illegal, but have placed individuals working there firmly into the category of criminals themselves. Through a telling new series of articles, Julie Brown of the Miami Herald has revealed

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Prison Legal News battles DOC censorship of important information on sexual violence in prisons

Prison Legal News has launched an important lawsuit against Arizona’s Department of Corrections over the withholding of their publication from prisoners. The editions in question discuss documented cases of rape and sexual violence perpetrated by prison staff against inmates—one of which took place in an Arizona prison and was heard in federal court. Many inmates

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Administrators Fired at Privately-Run Texas Jail

The warden and head of security at the Liberty County Jail (LCJ) in Liberty, Texas have been fired in the wake of allegations that the chief of security sexually assaulted a female prisoner at the facility. The 285-bed jail is operated by the New Jersey-based Community Education Centers (CEC), a for-profit company. Warden Timothy New

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Prisoners Raped and Sexually Abused While PREA Standards Pending

By Prison Legal News

As described in this issue’s cover story, in May 2012 the U.S. Department of Justice issued a final rule adopting national standards pursuant to the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). The rule was published in the Federal Register and became effective on August 20, 2012; however, state and local corrections agencies were given one year to provide PREA-related training to current employees. Likewise, the first PREA audit cycle, to ensure compliance with the standards, didn’t begin until a year after the rule’s effective date.

Therefore, during the one-year period ending August 20, 2013, state and local corrections officials finalized policies to comply with the PREA standards and trained staff members on PREA-related issues, including “zero-tolerance [policies] for sexual abuse and sexual harassment” and “[h]ow to fulfill their responsibilities under agency sexual abuse and sexual harassment prevention, detection, reporting, and response policies and procedures.”

Concurrently, prison and jail employees nationwide continued a long-standing pattern of raping and sexually assaulting prisoners – a pattern that Prison Legal News has documented extensively. [See, e.g.: PLN, April 2012, p.1; May 2009, p.1; Aug. 2006, p.1].

The following are examples of rape and sexual abuse involving corrections staff reported from August 20, 2012 – when the PREA standards became effective – to August 20, 2013, the start of the first PREA audit cycle. Apparently, these prison and jail employees didn’t pay attention during their PREA training.

Alabama

On June 19, 2013, two Russell County jail guards were arrested for engaging in sexual misconduct with female prisoners. Jacob Brent Phelps and James Blain were charged with felony sexual misconduct with an inmate; another guard, Charles Tarver, was fired for having “inappropriate conversations” of a sexual nature with prisoners. Phelps and Blain were released on $10,000 bond.

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Sexual Assault Claim Against Suffolk County, New York Jail Moves Forward

District Judge Ann M. Donnelly recently granted the Plaintiffs’ motion to amend their 42 U.S.C. § 1983 complaint against the Suffolk County, New York jail, the county sheriff, and several officers. The complaint, initially brought by a class of female prisoners housed at the jail, alleges a pattern of sexual assault and harassment at the

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