Female inmates allege abuse

OLYMPIA – In the summer of 2004, a man named Don Baker allegedly bought a woman a bathing suit, took her to Dairy Queen and ended up with her at a Motel 6. Afterward, he sent her a note saying he hoped she’d never tire of his touch.

What’s so unusual about that? Just five days earlier, she’d been an inmate at a Spokane-area prison. And Don Baker was one of the guards, making the liaison a violation of departmental rules.

Hundreds of pages of prison investigative records reviewed by The Spokesman-Review detail allegations of sexual harassment or abuse by at least seven Spokane-area female prison inmates, virtually all of whom volunteered to take polygraphs. Two state correctional officers were fired as a result: Baker and Jeffrey Wayne Hill.

Additionally, four current or former female inmates filed a proposed class-action lawsuit this summer in Thurston County on behalf of a yet-unknown number of women allegedly abused by staffers behind bars.

At the state’s primary women’s prison near Gig Harbor, “it appears that the guards … believe that this is kind of like a fishing pond,” said Brett Purtzer, a Tacoma attorney who’s representing several other female inmates claiming sexual misconduct.

Not true, prison officials say.

“Sexual misconduct by correctional staff is a crime in this state and will not be tolerated,” Department of Corrections spokesman Gary Larson said in a written statement.

Three women’s prisons

Washington runs three women’s prisons. Near Gig Harbor, the Washington Corrections Center for Women – widely known by its former name, Purdy – can house up to 738 offenders. In Medical Lake, the Pine Lodge Corrections Center for Women is the second-largest, with up to 359 inmates. And southwest of Bremerton is Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women, with 80 women.

According to the Department of Corrections, from January 2005 through last June, there were 202 allegations of sexual misconduct totaling 218 people of both sexes in Washington’s prison system. Nearly half – 46 percent – involved staffers. Of those cases, 26 incidents were substantiated.

The agency couldn’t immediately say how many of those 26 cases involved women. But it said the cases involve only a tiny fraction of correctional staffers.

“The reprehensible actions of a few do not reflect the dedicated professional work performed every day by thousands of DOC employees who make the safety of fellow staff, offenders and the public their top priority,” said Larson’s statement.

It’s unclear how many cases of alleged sexual misconduct never get reported. Court documents and the department’s internal investigations include many references to women saying that they fear reprisals from staff or other inmates. In fact, all four women in the class action case so far are cited in court documents as Jane Doe.

Jeffrey Wayne Hill

Jeffrey Wayne Hill, now 52, had been working as a correctional officer for seven years when a female prisoner said in September 2005 that she’d seen him adjusting his pants as he came out of a women’s bathroom with a 28-year-old inmate who was “looking flushed.”

That sparked a two-month investigation, in which fellow inmates said the woman wrote “love notes” to Hill, transferred to him in books. Another reported that the woman would leave the shower curtain open so Hill could watch, and that she once reached through the handcuff port of a cell door and grabbed Hill’s crotch.

“CO Hill just looked surprised and didn’t say anything,” the informant told the investigator, Steve Baxter.

Confronted, the woman initially denied everything. Then she acknowledged that she and Hill had sex. A polygraph found that she “was not attempting deception.”

Another former inmate said she’d only kissed Hill while she was an inmate, but that the two became sexually involved after her release from Pine Lodge. She got pregnant as a result, she said, but miscarried. She said Hill repeatedly threatened to have her sent back to prison if she told anyone about the relationship.

Hill resigned last year, only to be charged with second-degree custodial misconduct and official misconduct. In April, he pleaded guilty to both charges, ending up with two years probation and a suspended one-year prison sentence. He did not respond to a message seeking comment for this story.

The woman who said she’d had sex with Hill inside the prison ended up filing a claim against the state, which paid her $45,000. Purtzer was her attorney.

Yes, some of the sex was consensual, Purtzer concedes.

“The problem is that there’s a criminal statute precluding sexual contact with inmates,” he said. “The guards have all the power out there. And for these women, freedom or privileges are a big deal.”

Don Baker

Also in 2005, investigators heard that another correctional officer, Donald Rhodes Baker, now 52, “had directed numerous inappropriate comments towards female offenders” at Pine Lodge. Among them: he allegedly told one woman that he wanted to bite her.

A 33-year-old woman said that while an inmate, she and Baker made plans to meet once she was released. The day she got out, he offered to rent her a hotel room. She declined.

A day later – when he was scheduled to be working, according to department records – Baker showed up at her mother’s house south of Olympia. They went to a Motel 6, where she said they had sex. She turned over the letter he’d sent her afterward:

“Thank you for allowing me to love you in such a way,” it read, saying he hoped that next time they could spend the whole night together.

When questioned, Baker denied ever touching her. He admitted getting the room but said he was alone. The letter just expressed his feelings, he said, not his actions.

Pine Lodge superintendent Donna Cayer was unconvinced, noting that the woman passed a polygraph test and that the hotel receipt indicated that two people were in the room.

“Your explanations regarding what occurred with all of the offenders were that of someone trying to twist the facts in order to diminish the severity of the situations,” she wrote. “… Your breach of trust is irreparable.”

He was fired and now lives in Clallam Bay, Wash. He did not respond to a request for comment.

The Purdy cases

The allegations of the other women are similar. One woman says she was sexually assaulted by four correctional officers, including two who forced her to perform oral sex on them in supply closets, one who fondled her and one who had sex with her in a property room and guards’ office. One night, she said, a guard woke her in her cell and brought her to an office for sex.

Another said she was fondled by a guard, complained, and when an investigator concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence to get the guard in trouble, tried to kill herself. Over the course of months, an officer “repeatedly engaged in oral sex and other sexual contact with Jane Doe 2 in a number of different locations, including the staff conference room, the break room, the janitor’s supply closet and the clothing closet in the treatment and evaluation center,” reads part of the 35-page lawsuit complaint.

The third was allegedly forced to perform oral sex, as well as have sex in the closet and in a staff break room.

The fourth woman says that her correctional officer gave her a book, fast food and money for months, then took her into a closet and kissed and fondled her.

The court papers refer to at least three other women who were allegedly fondled or made to perform oral sex. Several women reported that guards gave them gifts – candy, soda, razors, lotion, hair gel – or privileges if they would undress or masturbate as the guards watched.

Creating an environment

There are large sections of the state prisons where video cameras cannot see, the women’s attorneys say. By allowing such “secluded locations” and failing to properly supervise correctional officers, the state has “created an environment in which sexual assaults have occurred and are likely to occur in the future,” the lawyers for the women say.

And when the women report such abuse, they say, correctional officials fail to properly investigate. The women are given polygraph examinations; the men typically aren’t. None of the cases mentioned in the lawsuit, the women’s attorneys allege, were reported to local law enforcement. Larson said correctional officials notify local law enforcement about sexual misconduct allegations by staff.

“By treating women who report sexual assaults as suspects rather than potential victims, the class defendants have created an environment in which sexual assaults will go unreported, making such assaults more likely to occur,” the lawyers wrote in the lawsuit. Attorneys for the women at Columbia Legal Services and the Public Interest Law Group declined to comment.

On behalf of several of the correctional officers, the state attorney general’s office denied virtually all the allegations. The state also says the statute of limitations has run out on the claims.

Changes now under way

In the wake of the class-action suit, the state prison system has commissioned several investigations by outside experts to scrutinize correctional officials’ response to sexual misconduct complaints, as well as training, security and supervision.

The results will be made public soon, Larson said. But procedures are already being tightened, and more changes may be on the way. At the women’s prison near Gig Harbor, Larson said:

“the prison superintendent reviews incident reports, including sexual misconduct, daily;

“some areas have been restricted, both from offenders and some staffers “to reduce the potential for people to have access to areas where some things might occur that shouldn’t;”

“the prison is doing a “key audit” to ensure that all keys are accounted for and that people have the appropriate level of access within the facility;

“and, there’s stepped-up review of a hotline for reporting prison sexual abuse.

“Those are things that we’re already implementing as a result of our look at this situation,” Larson said.