From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
Subject: NEWS:Women Prisoners Fight Abuse in Ga.
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Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 22:17:45 GMT


Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit

WOMEN PRISONERS FIGHT SEXUAL ABUSE IN GEORGIA

By Workers World Atlanta bureau

After months of horrifying allegations about sexual abuse at the
Georgia Women's Correctional Institution at Hardwick, 14 former
employees were indicted on charges of rape and sexual assault
Nov. 13.

The 10 men and four women included guards and vocational
instructors. Significantly though, a former deputy warden of the
prison, Cornelius Stanley, is also among the indicted. And a
high-ranking guard is accused of multiple crimes against eight
different women.

The details first became public in March of this year as part of
a civil suit against the Georgia Department of Corrections. More
than 100 women prisoners joined in the lawsuit and provided
chilling examples of routine sexual, emotional and physical abuse
at the prison for at least 13 years.

The allegations include:

- Inmates were taken off prison grounds by staff members and
forced to act as prostitutes. The staff pocketed the money.

- Prisoners were photographed for pornographic purposes.

- Women determined to be suicidal in the judgment of a guard were
stripped and hog-tied with chains and handcuffs to the cell
floor.

- Staff members supplied prisoners with drugs and alcohol in
exchange for sex.

The investigation into the women's charges was conducted by the
Georgia Bureau of Investigation because in Georgia it is a felony
for prison employees to engage in sexual relationships with
inmates. More than three dozen staff people were accused of
various criminal violations by the prisoners at Hardwick. One
hundred nineteen women have been identified as victims by the
GBI.

As of now, only 14 prison employees have been indicted. According
to Robert Cullen, the lawyer for the prisoners: "There are lots
more issues and lots more potential defendants. We keep turning
up more things." Cullen says the scope of the abuse at Hardwick
is "unprecedented."

Similar charges of extensive sexual abuse have been made in
recent years by women in state prisons in Hawaii, Ohio and
California.

The number of women in prison nationally has quadrupled over the
last decade, from 12,331 in 1980 to 47,691 at the end of 1991.
This is an indication of the steep price women paid during the
last 12 years of cutbacks on the one hand, and "law and order"
demagogy on the other.

The revelations about Hardwick have prompted investigations at
Georgia's other women's prisons. Prisoner and women's advocates
predict that equally disturbing charges will be brought at those
institutions.

On the local level, 10 women have come forward with charges of
sexual abuse at the Gwinnet County Jail in metropolitan Atlanta.
A county jailer in southern Georgia was fired in late summer for
making sexual demands of women prisoners.

The women's civil suit shows that a culture of abuse,
intimidation and violence prevailed at Hardwick for years,
sanctioned at all levels of the prison administration. The
struggle for women's rights, particularly the movement against
sexual and physical abuse, includes millions of women in the U.S.
who refuse to be silent any more. The women prisoners of Georgia
deserve support for their courageous stand against such brutal
and degrading conditions.

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World, 46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; "workers" on PeaceNet; on Internet:
"workers@mcimail.com".)


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