Feds pay more than $1 million to settle suit over systemic sexual abuse at women’s prison
The Bureau of Prisons has agreed to settle a claim that women were sexually abused at the Coleman prison northwest of Orlando.
Fourteen women who say they were sexually abused by officers at Coleman Federal Correctional Complex, a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility northwest of Orlando, have reached a monetary settlement with the United
States in a related lawsuit.
The settlement was approved by the Attorney General’s Office, but the funds have not yet been released. Philip Reizenstein, an attorney for one of the women, expects they will be released “shortly.” He can’t discuss the exact amount of the settlement until then, he said.
Even so, James DeMiles, an attorney for three of the 14 women, told the Tampa Bay Times, which first reported the settlement, that the three received $1.26 million to divide among them.
Filed in December
2019, the lawsuit alleges several instances of sexual abuse wherein officers forced the incarcerated women to perform sex
acts, assaulted them outside the view of surveillance cameras, and stalked them into submission.
The officers — identified by name in the litigation — have all retired or resigned, and some of them received full benefits from the bureau, according to the suit. None faced criminal charges.
The BOP declined to comment.
This suit is not the first time Coleman has been cited in a legal action. A group of 524 female employees received a $20 million settlement in 2017. The employees said management didn’t protect them from sexual harassment by male inmates and dissuaded the employees from documenting their complaints.
Coleman is a sprawling facility that houses male and female inmates separately.
Gina Hernandez, who was formerly incarcerated at Coleman and who was
not involved in either of the suits, previously spoke to the Miami Herald about her experience there. She gave permission to publish her name.
Hernandez said because Coleman has multiple buildings and plenty of wooded paths, abusing inmates is easy. She and other women would go to the “Back 40,” a stretch where they were coaxed
by officers to sunbathe topless. She said she and another woman were forced to have three-way sex with a staffer near the mailroom.
She also said officers talked openly about their “next target.”
Allegations of sexual abuse are rampant in Florida’s state-run prisons as well. Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice
rebuked Florida’s Department of Corrections after it found that officers at Lowell Correctional Institution had been sexually abusing incarcerated women for years.
In a series of articles called “Beyond Punishment,” the Miami Herald documented a culture of sexual abuse by staff on inmates. The action often went unpunished.
Denise Rock, the executive director of the prisoner-advocacy group Florida Cares, said that while the monetary settlement does help in acknowledging the misconduct that occurred at Coleman, it does nothing to change misconduct occurring in the broader prison system and at facilities like Lowell.
“We keep paying out plenty of lawsuits, but we’re not making changes,” Rock said. “When someone has to pay money, it does give you pause. But is an officer being arrested?”
While Lowell is under the FDC’s jurisdiction, Coleman and the Bureau of Prisons are part of the Justice Department.