McHenry County Blog

A press release from Just Detention International, which used to be called Stop Prison Rape:

FINALLY — NATIONAL STANDARDS TO STOP PRISONER RAPE

Nine years after passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) of 2003 and almost two years after missing its statutory deadline, the Department of Justice releases strong, binding standards to end sexual abuse in U.S. corrections facilities

Highlights:

• PREA applies to all federal confinement facilities; several agencies – including the Department of Homeland Security – now need to develop PREA standards.
• Ban on routine pat-down searches of female adult inmates by male staff.
• Strong protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) inmates.
• Youth in adult facilities will no longer be detained in housing units with adults.
• All facilities must be audited by independent auditors every three years.

Washington, D.C., May 17, 2012 – Today the Department of Justice finally issued its long-delayed national standards aimed at ending the crisis of sexual abuse in U.S. corrections facilities. Mandated by the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) of 2003, the new regulations are a milestone in the effort to end rape and other forms of sexual victimization of inmates. The PREA standards are immediately binding on federal prisons; other facilities have one year to comply.

According to the Department of Justice’s own estimates, at least 216,600 people are sexually victimized every year while in prisons, jails, and youth detention facilities.

A major new Department of Justice study – also released today – confirmed the crisis of sexual abuse in U.S. detention, finding that a shocking one in ten state prisoners had been victimized during their most recent period of detention.

“Sexual abuse in detention shatters hundreds of thousands of lives of men, women, and children every year,” said Lovisa Stannow, Executive Director of Just Detention International.

“We have fought long and hard for the PREA standards.

“They have the potential to cut prisoner rape dramatically.”

Today’s PREA standards cover

• federal [prisons]
• state prisons,
• jails,
• youth detention facilities,
• police lock-ups, and
• community corrections facilities (such as halfway houses).

They detail concrete, common-sense steps that facilities must take to prevent and respond to sexual abuse, incorporating many – though not all – of the reforms championed by Just Detention International.

Founded in 1980 by a prisoner rape survivor, Just Detention International was instrumental in developing and securing the passage of PREA and has since led the push for strong, binding standards.

Unfortunately, the standards include several dangerously weak points.

For instance, while banning routine pat-down searches by male staff of female inmates, they fail to prohibit female staff from conducting pat-down searches of male inmates, even though the Department of Justice’s own study released earlier today showed widespread abuse by female staff of male inmates.

Additionally, the Obama Administration chose not to apply the PREA standards to immigration detention facilities, contrary to Congressional intent.

The Administration did, however, issue a crucial Presidential Memorandum this morning, confirming that PREA applies to “all agencies with Federal confinement facilities.”

In response, the Department of Homeland Security, which administers immigration detention facilities, already announced that it has begun developing its own PREA standards and will issue a draft for public comment within 120 days.

“The Presidential Memorandum rightly points out that all federal agencies must comply with PREA,” said Stannow.

“In the coming year, Just Detention International looks forward to working with these agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Defense, to finalize their PREA standards.”

Among the many strengths of the PREA standards, they require that particularly vulnerable inmates – such as those who are

• lesbian,
• gay,
• bisexual, or
• transgender

–be housed safely.

They spell out requirements for inmate education and staff training on sexual abuse prevention, including specialized training for investigative and medical staff.

The standards also demand that facilities offer survivors access to rape crisis counselors – trained experts who provide crisis intervention and emotional support in the aftermath of an assault.

The standards require that youth in adult facilities no longer be detained in housing units with adults.

Crucially, the standards remove a proposed 20-day time limit for victimized inmates to report the abuse, and they also insist that all facilities be audited by independent auditors every three years.

Many prisons and jails started adopting draft versions of the PREA standards years ago, in collaboration with Just Detention International. State prisons in California and Oregon and the Miami-Dade County jail are among facilities that already have launched groundbreaking projects aimed at ending sexual abuse of inmates.

“We know from our extensive on-the-ground work that the PREA standards can transform corrections culture,” said Stannow.

“Working inside prisons and jails, we have seen how basic, low-cost changes to policy and practice can trigger enormous improvements in transparency, respect between staff and inmates, and overall safety.”

Survivors of sexual abuse in detention have been at the forefront of the fight for strong PREA standards.

One of them, Jan Lastocy, who was raped several times a week for seven months by a Michigan prison official while serving time for attempted embezzlement, said:

“I have dreamed of this day for years. The PREA standards aren’t perfect, but they are an amazing tool for making prisons safer,” said Lastocy, a member of Just Detention International’s Survivor Council. “I don’t need revenge. All I want is to know that others won’t have to live through the horror I endured. Now we need to use these standards and stop prisoner rape once and for all.”

For more information, or to speak with a survivor of prisoner rape, please contact Jesse Lerner-Kinglake at jkinglake@justdetention.org. Tel 213-384-1400, ext. 113; cell: 424-230-4540.

The national PREA standards can be found here.

The Presidential Memorandum on the PREA standards can be found here.

Chuck Keeshan’s Daily Herald article about 53-year old Antioch Upper Grade School teacher Wes Owens, a resident of McHenry County’s far northeastern Solon Mills, has brought some pungent comments from those who think the punishment should be more that incarceration.

The sexual relationship started when a former student, who had become a babysitter, was 15 and lasted two years.

One seems to be looking forward to Owens’ being raped in prison.

Voiceofthepeople: Tue Sep 21, 2010 3:24 PM +3

Believe me this guy is going to get whats comming to him in Prison….You know I dont really care much for convicted Felons, but I love the way they deal with Child molesters….

ihateidiots : Tue Sep 21, 2010 9:55 PM +2

Anyone for castration

Perhaps these folks should run for the state legislature, but, if I were still in Springfield, such proposals would have my active opposition.

Until they change current law, however, rape is not part of any sentence in Illinois.

Perhaps those calling for such informal, but life-changing punishment by inmates might reflect upon the

“Fresh meat!”

cat calls when newly incarcerated young men from the area walk into prison.

Those young men get raped, too.

Maybe the neighborhood kid who stole something to support a drug habit. Maybe the neighborhood youth who sold marijuana to support his habit.

Besides never being able to teach again, former Antioch teacher Owens will have to register as a sex offender.

This is the second teacher from that system to face such charges. The first, Kenneth Lee Johnson, told police of Owens’ affair.

= = = = =

Added September 30, 2010.

The day this story went up, I filed a Freedom of Information request with the Antioch school district for photos and what the two men taught.

She wrote me, “Ken Johnson taught Social Studies at Antioch Upper Grade School and Wes Owens taught Language Arts and Social Studies at Antioch Upper Grade School,” but did not send their photos.  I asked her to reconsider before I filed an appeal with the Attorney General’s Public Access Division.

Today I received the following email from Principal Mary Ellen Casey:

The District continues to assert that the photographs you have requested are not “public records” merely because they are in the District’s possession.  However, the District is not interested in continuing to expend District resources to object to the disclosure of photographs of these two individuals.  Therefore, pictures of both individuals are attached.

Needless to say, I disagree and would have filed an appeal with the Public Access Division of the Illinois Attorney General’s Office had the district not provided the photos.  Fortunately for Antioch taxpayers, wise heads prevailed and legal fees were saved.

There is a way to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS in prison.

But it goes against the grain of everything considered by liberals as politically correct.

The way to do it is to test all of the prisoners periodically and house those who are HIV-infected separately from those who are not.

When I was on top of this subject in the mid-1990′s, three or four states followed that almost guaranteed course of protecting uninfected inmates from those who are HIV-infected.

I talked to a former Illinois Corrections official working in Louisiana’s prison system, one of the ones that housed the infected separately from the infected.

(The liberals opposed to this practice always called it “segregation,” thus putting a racial twist on a disease that infects all races.)

The former Illinois DOC employee told me when they first instituted the policy, they put up a chain link fence between the two sections.

Guess what?

The prisoners were having sex through the links.

Louisiana solved that problem by putting up another fence 12 inches away.

The point is that prisoners are not responsible people. If they were responsible, they would not be behind bars.

Now comes my former colleague Monique Davis, who sat across the center aisle from former State Rep. Tom Johnson and me in the 1990′s, sponsoring a bill to distribute condoms in the Illinois Department of Corrections.

She has gotten the bill out of committee.

Giving prisoners condoms will not stop rape in prison.

If you are interested in the problem, here’s some more information.

The DOC has pretty much a three money approach to HIV.

Although an almost half million dollar CDC study in the early 1990′s proved that HIV was being spread behind Illinois prison walls, the Department refused to do anything significant about it.

Even when I found a “face”–Michael Blucker, then of Crystal Lake–who could proved he was HIV-infected in prison.

DOC decided to institute “peer counseling.”

Big deal.

Inmates don’t put on condoms when they are about to rape someone.

If a subservient inmate agrees to “hook up” with a dominant inmate in order not to be randomly raped, the dominant male may use a condom. That happened to Donny Donaldson, who wrote the brief

But the rape is not less a rape, even if it looks consensual.

How bad is it?

“The horrors experienced by many young inmates, particularly those who are convicted of nonviolent offenses, border on the unimaginable.

“Prison rape not only threatens the lives of those who fall prey to their aggressors, but it is potentially devastating to the human spirit.

“Shame, depression, and a shattering loss of self-esteem accompany the perpetual terror the victim thereafter must endure.”

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Farmer v. Brennan

That is the top item on the newly re-named Stop Prisoner Rape organization. It is now called Just Detention International.