Rape Victim Wins Suit Against Federal Prison Officer

Article Tools Print This Page | Comments(0) | Suggest a Story

By Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Published: 06/10/2003

A federal jury took 30 minutes of deliberations recently to award $4 million to a former inmate at a prison camp after finding that a correctional officer raped her and violated her civil rights.
The victim kept her sweat pants with semen stains until her last day at the camp and turned the evidence over to the camp administrator, her attorney in the lawsuit said last week.
Meanwhile, the officer, Michael Miller, is under criminal investigation, said an official with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
'I believe the jury was sending a clear message to the United States government that this conduct by an employee of the Federal Bureau of Prisons is reprehensible,' said Dallas lawyer Arch McColl, who represented the plaintiff.
The Star-Telegram usually does not identify victims of sexual crimes.
The woman, serving a four-year drug sentence, was assaulted in a supply room in March 2000 about 3:30 a.m. after Miller had ordered her to report for a urinalysis, the victim testified. During the one-day trial in U.S. District Judge John McBryde's court, she testified that Miller slammed her face against a wall and raped her.
As he was raping her, she testified, Miller told her, 'Do you think you're the first? This happens all the time.'
In a telephone interview recently from her home in Dallas, she said the prison assault has ruined her life.
'I have panic attacks, I'm in a terrible state of depression all the time, I have terrible nightmares,' said the woman, a 47-year-old mother of two with five stepchildren. 'I am in fear of losing my husband. I want to be a mother to my kids.'
Miller is unable to pay the $4 million, McColl said. Unless the victim prevails in a planned suit against the Bureau of Prisons, she can expect to receive little compensation.
McColl said that legal procedures required him to file administrative claims against the Bureau of Prisons first and, having exhausted those remedies, he can now sue the Bureau of Prisons.
The Dallas woman said she sued to elicit change in the prison system and to help prevent sexual attacks by officers against female inmates at federal prisons.
'It's never been about the money,' the woman said. 'It's always about justice. I want things to change at the prisons. I want security cameras at officers' stations and intercom systems in cells and on the compounds, so inmates can make emergency calls and things like that won't happen anymore.'
The woman said it bothers her that Miller continued to work as a correctional officer after she reported him. Miller was transferred to Federal Medical Center Fort Worth, a men's prison.
'He is still being paid with the people's tax dollars, and that's not right,' the victim said.
Miller could not be reached to comment last week.
Dan Dunne, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons in Washington, declined to comment on Miller's case because of the ongoing criminal investigation.
'At the Bureau of Prisons, we take very seriously issues of sexual misconduct,' Dunne said. 'Any sexual contact between inmates and staff has always been prohibited.
'I don't think these isolated types of incidents should distort the professional manner in which our staff are treating inmates across the country,' Dunne said.

Comments:

No comments have been posted for this article.

Login to let us know what you think

MARKETPLACE search vendors | advanced search