Women’s prison officer charged with sexual assault

Inmate, 21, says they had an ongoing physical relationship

A Connecticut correctional officer has been arrested after he was caught having sex with an inmate in the officers’ cafeteria of the state’s women’s prison last fall, state police said Tuesday.

Wesley Applegate, 38, was arrested Monday and charged with second-degree sexual assault after the 21-year-old inmate told investigators she had an ongoing physical relationship with Applegate, according to a state police report.

The relationship came to light shortly after Nov. 15, when a second female inmate saw Applegate and the 21-year-old inmate having sex inside the officers’ mess hall at the York Correctional Institution in Niantic, an arrest warrant affidavit released Tuesday morning shows.

The second inmate had entered the officers’ mess hall to get a foam tray while cooking her dinner in a microwave in another room and briefly saw both Applegate and the 21-year-old inmate with their pants pulled down slightly while having sex, she told investigators.

Both Applegate and the woman “jumped” and Applegate “quickly tucked away something and closed his pants,” she

told investigators. She reported the incident to prison officials because she feared the woman may have been raped, according to the affidavit.

The 21-year-old inmate spoke with Department of Correction investigators and detectives a few days later and noted she was not forced to have sex with Applegate and that they stopped after only a few seconds, before the other woman entered the mess hall, “because it felt weird,” she told investigators.

She later told investigators in another interview that she and Applegate had an ongoing physical relationship before they were caught having sex the night of Nov. 15, according to the affidavit. They had kissed many times over the past year, always in the officers’ mess hall when she would go there to clean, and on another half-dozen occasions he had touched her sexually, although she had not touched him, she said.

“It seemed he did not want to pressure me to do anything that I was not comfortable with,” she said in a signed statement to investigators. “What I just described is the extent of our physical relationship. In all, I don’t see our relationship as being anything beyond physical in nature. I don’t think either of us saw this as a dating relationship or anything like that.”

Any sexual relationships between prison staff and inmates are against federal law under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, however, even if they would be considered consensual outside of the correctional setting, because of the power dynamic a correctional officer has over an inmate.

DOC officials transferred Applegate, who has worked as a correctional officer since 2008, from York to Corrigan Correctional Center in Uncasville after the allegations surfaced and they launched an investigation, police records show.

State police detectives also seized several of the 21-year-old woman’s clothing items from the night to send to the state forensic lab for testing, which identified semen in one pair of underwear the woman had worn, records show.

Applegate was first interviewed by state police in early February and denied ever having sex with the woman, according to the affidavit. He initially would not agree to provide a DNA sample to police for testing and told investigators he would give them an answer the following day, but instead called in sick to work, police noted.

A month later, investigators obtained a search warrant to secure a DNA sample from Applegate and waited at Corrigan to meet him before his shift that night, police said. This time, though, Applegate was a “no call, no show” for his scheduled shift and started a two-week vacation the next day.

Applegate, who lives in New London, was scheduled to return from vacation Monday but was instead arrested in Wethersfield and charged with sexual assault.

The DOC put Applegate on administrative leave starting March 10, a spokesman said Tuesday.

“The events surrounding Wesley Applegate’s arrest are still actively being investigated by the Connecticut State Police and the Connecticut Department of Correction, as a result no additional information can be released at this time,” the agency said in a statement.

Applegate remained held on $50,000 bond ahead of a hearing Thursday in Superior Court in New London.