Claims of sexual assault at NY prisons flood in as deadline looms

Vanessa can name every hallway, storage area, fire exit, phone room, mess hall, medical office, cell and exercise area in the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility that doesn’t have a camera.

That’s because during her 17-and-a-half years incarcerated at the women’s prison in Westchester County, Vanessa says she and others were sexually abused by New York state correction staff in those invisible corners, “especially at night.” She says she stopped speaking up after she and other women reported abuse and were ignored, or worse, retaliated against.

In October, Vanessa, who was released in 2020, filed a civil lawsuit against the state of New York, saying the state’s negligence led to her abuse. She is one of 2,045 people who have so far filed lawsuits under the Adult Survivors Act, a law that gives anyone who says they were sexually abused a one-time opportunity to file civil suits long after the statute of limitations for most criminal cases has expired. Lawyers say they plan to file more lawsuits on behalf of formerly incarcerated people before the law’s Nov. 23 deadline.

Gothamist is withholding Vanessa’s last name because she is still on parole and fears retaliation. She is using an alias even in her legal filings.

The legislation was bolstered by high-profile advocates, including music exec Drew Dixon, who went public with rape allegations against Russell Simmons, and Evelyn Yang, who accused Columbia University OB/GYN Robert Hadden of sexual abuse.

But some legislators who supported the law and even lawyers representing victims said they were surprised by the large response from people who had served time. Some of the lawsuits filed go back 40 years, attorneys say. In some cases, multiple plaintiffs are naming the same correction officers, said Anna Kull, an attorney at Levy Konigsberg who says she will file more than 500 individual civil lawsuits on behalf of once incarcerated people by next month.

“It's chilling. Especially when the women are identifying the same perpetrator. Years apart, decades apart,” she said.

Vanessa said in her lawsuit many women she knew in prison claimed abuse by the same slew of correction officers.

“There were a few who were notorious,” she said. “I could name at least 10 men.”

Spokespeople for both the city and state correction departments said they have “zero tolerance” for sexual abuse. A spokesperson for New York State Department of Correction said the department does not comment on pending litigation, however she said the department investigates all instances of sexual victimization. A spokesperson for the New York City Department of Correction said that department supports the prosecution of sexual misconduct within city jails.

Spokespeople for the city and state unions did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Negligence and coverups

In addition to Kull’s 500 cases, the law firm Slater Slater and Schulman has said in published reports it has at least 750 individual civil lawsuits on behalf of once incarcerated women.

Kull says her clients spent time at correctional facilities statewide, including Bedford Hills, Albion, Lakeview Shock and Bayview, and hundreds from New York City’s Rikers Island jails facility. Kull says the Rikers cases, which span from 1976 to April 2023, are some of the worst she’s ever seen, including gang rape and rapes that left female detainees pregnant.

“And what's really terrifying about it is a lot of these are recent events, so clearly this is still going on,” Kull said.

She said, in some cases, the officers named still work for the department. In 2013, the Department of Justice named Rikers Island’s Rose M. Singer Center one of the least safe female correctional facilities in the country due to the high rate of reported staff sexual misconduct.

The state correction department also has a long history of sexual abuse inside its prisons. A 2022 Correctional Association of New York report of Albion Correctional Facility found more than 28% of inmates had filed a prison sexual assault or abuse complaint. In 2020, Lakeview Shock Correctional Facility was implicated in a federal lawsuit over staff sexual abuse and cover-ups. In 1985, the Department of Justice released a scathing report about abuse in the now-shuttered Bayview Correctional Facility in Manhattan – which was often a last stop for women about to leave the correctional system.

Kull says many of her clients were abused in Bayview even after the 1985 report. Her clients’ lawsuits take aim at the state and city for being negligent in taking care of people in their custody.

“They employed the individual who committed the assault,” Kull said. “They're the ones who implemented or failed to implement certain policies and procedures to prevent the assault. And, many times, they may have been complicit in covering it up.”

A New York correction department spokesperson said the department implemented new sexual victimization policies in 2022 and has invested millions of dollars in a pilot program to increase the deployment of body-worn cameras at state jails. The department has also earmarked millions for projects that will upgrade the video surveillance systems in a number of its women’s facilities in the coming months, she said.

All sexual contact between incarcerated people and correction staff in New York jails is illegal, in recognition of the victim's inability to truly consent due to the power imbalance.

In the past, sex abuse cases like those filed under the ASA have seen victims compensated anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, Kull said. It also gives survivors a chance to finally seek accountability for what happened to them, and to be heard.

‘I just gave up telling it’

Vanessa, now 43, decided to file a claim when she saw a video on Facebook featuring a woman she had been friends with when she was incarcerated. The friend was featured with her attorneys talking about the Adult Survivor’s Act. Vanessa said she was touched to see someone listening to the voices of incarcerated women, and reached out to Kull, who was mentioned in the video.

Vanessa, a survivor of child sexual abuse, says she was sexually assaulted at least a dozen times while incarcerated at Bedford Hills – by correction officers and sergeants. She said she witnessed and heard of others being assaulted almost daily.

Vanessa described a power dynamic in which correction staff had the discretion to write up disciplinary tickets that could lead to 30 day bans from phones, commissary and access to their packages, and even influence the decision of the parole board. She said some of them used that power to coerce women into performing sexual acts.

“So most of my time incarcerated, I did whatever they told me, even if it didn't make sense,” she said. “We have rights, but a lot of us don't exercise them for fear of retaliation.”

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How to bring an ASA case according to victim advocates:

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- Get in touch with a lawyer who specializes in sexual abuse cases

- Be prepared to tell the lawyer your story

- The lawyer will investigate, find evidence and build your case

- The deadline for the lawyer to file your claim is Nov. 23

- The case could go to trial or could be settled out of court

- Either way, bringing a case can be difficult emotionally. Read more about the process here.

Donna Hylton, an advocate for incarcerated women, was among those who pushed for the passage of the Adult Survivors Act. She is also a child sexual abuse survivor, and says that, like Vanessa, she was sexually abused at Bedford Hills by a correction sergeant who was assigned to help her navigate assistance for her then-14-year-old daughter after she was raped and ran away from home. “He used that situation to show the predator that he was,” she said.

Today, Hylton runs A Little Piece of Light, a nonprofit that advocates for formerly incarcerated women. She is an ordained Christian minister and holds a master's degree in English literature. She said she’s hoping to file her own lawsuit before the Nov. 23 deadline.

Vanessa said she reported abuse several times early on and was either “shut down” or put in solitary confinement. Once after a correction officer touched her breasts, and once when she screamed for help when another officer put his hand in her underwear saying he was conducting a “contraband search.” “I just gave up telling it.”

Vanessa said beauty was a curse behind bars. “They think just ‘cause you look a certain way that you're supposed to like certain things. And I don't, I don't like it,” she said through tears.

Today, she doesn’t like to wear makeup or anything that draws attention to her appearance. Vanessa has been free since March 2020. She has her masters degree in legal studies and is working toward her doctorate in criminal justice. But she said it still bothers her that she isn’t able to be as intimate as she would like with her partner, due to what she’s been through.

A moment to take back power

More than 2,000 Adult Survivors Act cases had been filed in New York as of Oct. 19, said state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who sponsored the legislation. He expects a last-minute rush of cases to be filed in the weeks ahead of the deadline, as was the case with the Child Victims Act, which opened a similar one-year claim window for people who were sexually abused as children .

Hoylman-Sigal said he hopes prosecutors see the flood of cases and move to criminally prosecute some of the perpetrators, and that correction officials and lawmakers take steps to halt sexual abuse behind bars. He also hoped the window for claims would be evaluated for extension.

“In whose interest is it cutting short an opportunity to file a claim for sexual abuse? Certainly not in the public's interest, because we've seen that reporting of abuse leads to the identification of literal monsters in our society who have abused countless children, women and others,” he said.

He warned survivors not to wait until the final day as lawyers need to put together paperwork. “The real deadline is probably at least early- to mid-November.”

Meanwhile, as Hylton prepared to file her own claim, she encouraged others to consider filing a lawsuit against their abusers and a broken system, too.

“Sometimes the hardest things for us to do are the best things for us to do,” she said.