Sexual Attacks in Texas Prisons Seldom Prosecuted
By Lisa Sandberg
Originally published by the San Antonio Express-News, May 24, 2001
A month after Texas was singled out for having the worst prison rape problem in the nation, state officials released figures Wednesday showing that prison sex assault cases are rarely prosecuted. And convictions are almost unheard of.
State and county prosecutors accepted fewer than 5 percent of 566 inmate sexual assault investigations prison authorities referred to them between 1995 and 2000, prison records obtained by the San Antonio Express-News revealed. Only two convictions were obtained in the four cases that were adjudicated.
"They are low; I admit they're low," said Gina DeBottis, chief prosecutor with the state's Special Prosecution Unit, which assists local district attorneys in handling criminal cases from prison. "I do find it problematic."
But defending her office and county prosecutors with whom she works, DeBottis added that the evidence she receives from prison investigators is most often too weak to take to court.
"A lot of times an inmate doesn't report it right away. In other instances, it's a matter of one person's word against another's."
Human rights advocates say the figures don't surprise them.
"There's no political advantage to seeing that these cases get resolved," said Joanne Mariner, deputy director of the American division of Human Rights Watch and the author of last month's chilling report entitled "No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons."
"There's not a lot of public sympathy for (raped prisoners)."
Prison guards too often are unresponsive about evidence of rape, Mariner said, and "prosecutors don't see prisoners as being part of their community."
Texas officials say prisons provide a tough setting in which to prosecute rape cases, the vast majority of which involve male inmates.
"You're talking about a city of 150,000 convicted felons," said John Moriarty, the newly appointed inspector general for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, referring to the penal system population.
"It's very difficult to get witnesses and often very difficult to obtain evidence," he said, adding that prisoners often wait days or weeks to report sexual abuse.
Moriarty said the numbers are not as damning as they would appear, and he pointed out that many prison offenses are handled effectively by prison administrators with punishments such as loss of privileges and good time credits.
Prison spokesman Larry Todd said the system takes all rape allegations seriously but finds that many of the charges are simply bogus.
"We may find there was a lover's quarrel or a vendetta against another inmate," he said.
Critics say such comments reflect a dismissive attitude toward inmate rape, not much different from the widespread indifference female rape victims confronted decades ago. While acknowledging some allegations are false, critics emphasize that prison rape is vastly underreported.
The low conviction rate in Texas comes despite the seeming willingness of inmates to press charges, Mariner said.
Referring to the cases of reported rape, Mariner said: "These are the people who want to tell their side of the story. But it's not like they ever get into a courtroom."
More common are the silent victims.
Prosecutors, for instance, never heard of Kerry Cook.
A wrongfully convicted inmate who spent 20 years on death row until he was freed five years ago, Cook said he learned early on to keep years of sexual abuse a secret. It took just one complaint.
"Squealing, that was my biggest mistake," he said Wednesday from his Dallas home. "I was ridiculed and beaten in a day room and I never ratted again.
"I signed papers refusing to prosecute."
Cook, who has gone on to remarry and now has an 8-month-old baby, said he was gang raped several weeks after he arrived on death row.
Once branded a "punk," he was targeted by more prisoners than he could count. The abuse, he said, continued for two decades.
"I was like a deer in the headlights," he said.
The 3-year-long Human Rights Watch investigation offers a grim account of male rape behind bars. Prisoners tell of being turned into sex slaves and gang raped, of being "rented out" and sexually victimized year in and year out.
With the nation's highest prison population, Texas leads the rest of the country in numbers of prison rape allegations and the severity of the offenses, according to the report.
"It would amaze you (as it did me) to see human beings bought and sold like shoes," one Texas prisoner was quoted in the report.
"I was raped … by three inmates," another Texas inmate said in the report. "I was snatched into a cell and raped by two while a third kept watch for the guard and held a homemade knife to my throat. "They alternated for an hour. Nobody seemed to care. It's very depressing. I don't know where else to turn to."
Moriarty said he wanted to see better training for prison staff in the way abuse allegations are reported and investigated so prosecutors would have more confidence in accepting cases.
"Nobody should be subjected to rape. One is too many."
Given that most prisoners will be released, Mariner said ignoring prison rape will come back to haunt society.
"When you let these abuses go unpunished, that compounds the harm," she said. "Can you imagine the bitterness and the anger that these people will be left with?"
