Gay prison rape

The videos are to be shown to new inmates in all prisons in the state of New York. Police first became away of Wouts’ behavior back in December when they received a tip regarding a sexual assault allegation from inside the Fox Lake Correctional Institution in Fox Lake. A former prisoner, T.

Parsell, is the director. eraged to protect LGBTI individuals from sexual assault. The tone is that of a welcome video, offering matter-of-fact, practical tips, while the subject is sexual violence. Sexual abuse is rampant in prison and detention facilities today, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and gender nonconforming people are among those most at risk.

Because the data is quite robust and runs counter to assumptions, this phenomenon needs to be brought forward and addressed. To address this crisis, Congress unanimously passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in Their trials were marked by lynch mobs and all-white juries, and they have since been pardoned.

The first reviews are in, mostly amazed that New York actually made these films. The video tells women to refuse an officer's advances, with vague assurances that DOCCS will protect them from retaliation. I’m a man who was raped prison In , I was sent to prison on drug-related charges linked to the manufacturing and distribution of a controlled substance.

While in prison, she and a male corrections officer had a sexual relationship; he ultimately pleaded guilty to statutory rape. Where there is criticism, it has focused not on what is in the videos, but on what is missing. The videos also take an extraordinary approach to the material, by involving actual inmates in every step of the process.

So long as DOCCS fails adequately to investigate and discipline staff, all the videos in the world won't convince women in custody that there is any reason to report: They know they won't be believed and that no action will be taken. Reports about prison rape by advocacy groups led to occasional efforts by federal lawmakers to address the problem.

I'm concerned about homophobia and overzealousness that might unnecessarily patrol consensual relationships, which do take place in prisons. In the past, Rhode Island and Michigan have also shown inmates an orientation video about prison rape, but that video featured dramatizations rather than first-person advice from actual inmates.

The interviews with the inmates themselves, as opposed to a more artificial approach or one that simply recites policy, is a brilliant strategy. Stemple is the former executive director of Stop Prisoner Rape. Current inmates workshopped all of the content before filming.

Inmates see this type of behavior as approval to beat, rape and extort gay men in prison because of the anomosity and hateful attitudes displayed by the state. I had just turned twenty-five and had no idea of what life was like behind bars. Finally, the Bureau of Justice Statistics data has consistently shown that male inmates are more likely to be sexually victimized by staff than by other inmates.

The video acknowledges that some relationships between staff and women prisoners are obvious and glaring to anyone who pays attention, but ignores the Department's responsibility to pay attention to what its staff is doing, and to supervise them to prevent such abuse from taking place.

I also happen to identify as straight. Reluctance to report has long been a major obstacle, and inmates urging others to speak out is powerfully important. Some prisoner advocates have pointed out that the videos disregard sensitive topics that could reflect badly on DOCCS. I was a little surprised that some of the inmates would even talk about this.

A promise of protection from retaliation is virtually meaningless: If she reports misconduct she will have to live with the day-to-day fear that he, or his friends and colleagues, will make her life a living hell, including being the target of false disciplinary charges.

This four-part toolkit is designed for advocates both in and outside of correctional settings to use PRE. Investigators found that 28 guards and prison officers committed offenses in the mishap that allowed a gay inmate to be housed in the same cell as an abuser. Below, a further selection of the responses, both laudatory and skeptical, to these unusual videos.

And both the male and female versions, said Brenda Smith, a former PREA commissioner and an expert on prison rape, should have explicitly emphasized that there is no such thing as consensual sex between inmates and staff; that female staff can be as sexually abusive as male staff; and that sex between inmates can start out as consensual but turn into something more coercive.

I'd like to see an additional video about this form of abuse. But the video ignores prison reality: A prisoner is not allowed to disobey an officer's order. The video claims that complaints of staff sexual abuse will be taken seriously, but that claim is undermined by how DOCCS actually responds to these allegations: In reality, New York State substantiates only about 2 percent of the complaints of staff sexual abuse that they receive.

On Friday, the Marshall Project posted two prison orientation videos — one for incoming female inmates, one for incoming male inmates — which feature veteran inmates advising newcomers on how to avoid being raped. We have to be careful not to police all intimate relationships among inmates.