Prison work assignments used to lure and rape female inmates. Guards sometimes walk free

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — It was after midnight when she crept down the narrow, dimly lit stairs carrying a bag of dirty laundry. She crossed under a patchwork of pipes and ducts to the far back corner of the basement, as she had done many times before. That, she said, is where correctional officer James Widen was waiting for her.

He had just called her name over the intercom, telling her to report to the work release center’s laundry room. So April Youst rose from her bunk, careful not to wake the other incarcerated women sleeping in the dorm.

When she got downstairs, she said Widen offered to save her some money by opening “the cage,” a little room with free washers and dryers reserved for new prisoners who hadn’t yet started their jobs.

She gratefully stepped inside. And then, she said, everything changed.

“He’s rubbing himself,” she said, while reminding her of all the little favors he’d done for her. “He was like … ‘It’s time to pay.’”

Her account of that night to The Associated Press mirrors, almost word for word, the complaint she filed with police eight years ago. Widen was charged two years later and pleaded not guilty, but the case continues to crawl through the criminal court system. He vehemently denied the allegations to the AP, contending he was set up.

Youst is part of the fastest-growing population behind bars — women, most of whom are locked up for nonviolent crimes that often are drug-related. Though female prisoners long have been victims of sexual violence, the number of reports against correctional staff has exploded nationwide in recent years. Many complaints follow a similar pattern: Accusers are retaliated against, while those accused face little or no punishment.

In all 50 states, the AP found cases where staff allegedly used inmate work assignments to lure women to isolated spots, out of view of security cameras. The prisoners said they were attacked while doing jobs like kitchen or laundry duty inside correctional facilities or in work-release programs that placed them at private businesses like national fast-food restaurants and hotel chains.

“The only thing you’re thinking about when you’re coming into intake is, ‘How am I going to stay safe?’” said Johanna Mills of Just Detention International, a nonprofit organization working to end sexual violence behind bars. When she was incarcerated, she said her boss smashed her in the head and raped her after bringing her to an empty gym one night to do electrical work. “It never occurred to me to watch my back from the supervisor,” she said.

As part of a two-year investigation that has exposed everything from multinational companies benefiting from prison labor to incarcerated workers’ lack of rights and protections, AP reporters spoke to more than 100 current and former prisoners nationwide, including women who said they were sexually abused by correctional staff.