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| Suit Claims Jailers Ignored Inmate Sex |
| By The Houston Chronicle |
| Published: 02/16/2006 |
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A civil rights lawsuit announced Wednesday blames the private corrections system for the 2004 suicide of a South Texas woman found hanging in her cell after reporting that a male inmate raped her. LeTisha Tapia, who died at the Val Verde County Jail in July 2004, was housed in the same cell block as male inmates and reported that officers allowed male and female inmates to have sex with each other, according to the lawsuit filed by the Texas Civil Rights Project on behalf of the woman's family. "It's unbelievably outrageous what happened here. Sexual relations between inmates is just beyond the pale," civil rights attorney Scott Medlock said Wednesday. "When prisons and jails are privatized, the company's bottom line is placed above inmate health and safety." The lawsuit, filed in the federal district court for the Western District of Texas in San Antonio, names GEO Group Inc., the nation's second-largest private prison company, among the defendants. The GEO Group, Inc. had no comment on the matter, and said they were in the process of reviewing the lawsuit. Also declining immediate comment were the U.S. Marshals Service and several Val Verde County officials named as defendants in the civil action. The Marshals Service contracts with Val Verde County for jail space and the county, in turn, hires GEO Group to run the jail, which houses 784 inmates. Tapia, who spent nearly six months in the jail before her death, was awaiting transfer to a federal facility after pleading guilty to a marijuana possession charge, Medlock said, adding that she had about a year left on her sentence. While in the county jail, male inmates were moved into maximum-security, solitary confinement cells that are connected to the women's cells by a common day room, the lawsuit said, but jailers allowed the inmates to have contact with each other. |
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