In the #MeToo era, punch lines about sexual assault in jail remain acceptable. That needs to change. In this video Op-Ed, Rodney Roussell tells his painful story for the first time on camera. Convicted of check fraud, Mr. Roussell spent nine years in prison in Louisiana, where he was raped and sold into sexual
It is well known among prison reformers that the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, a private prison, is a cesspool of violence and sexual abuse. The horrific conditions there have long been out in the open, thanks in large part to a class-action lawsuit brought in 2013 on behalf of the prisoners, on which a judge
A few years ago, I received a harrowing series of letters from a man serving time in Halawa Correctional Facility in Honolulu. The man, whom I will refer to as Joseph, was desperate. He had been sexually assaulted twice, he said, each time by a different officer. When he tried to report the abuse, Joseph
1,224 Complaints Reveal a Staggering Pattern of Sexual Abuse in Immigration Detention. Half of Those Accused Worked for ICE. A woman held at an immigration detention center in Washington state said she was raped by a medical worker and a private facility contractor as she sought help in the center’s medical unit. Another woman said
At least 200,000 people are sexually abused in detention centres each year, yet their stories have been absent from mainstream movements Jan Lastocy was in a Michigan prison in 1998 when a new guard first began raping her. The months of assault began while she was at work in a warehouse that serviced a men’s prison; the guard