People name me “Mama Detroit,” after my hometown. As a former nurse, a present journalist, a organic mom of three, and a mom determine to many, I’m at all times seeking to empower ladies right here at Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville, Texas.
Of the 17 years that I’ve been incarcerated for killing an abusive boyfriend, I spent eight — from 2016 to final Could — in what the state calls “restrictive housing,” however I name “solitary confinement” or “the outlet.”
One afternoon in my solitary cell block, I overheard an incarcerated lady ask a guard for lavatory tissue. His response — “What you gonna do for it?” — stayed with me. So later that day, throughout one in all my twice-weekly hours within the out of doors recreation cage, I began asking questions:
“Increase your hand when you’ve ever been sexually abused whereas in jail,” I known as out to the 30 or so different ladies in my cellblock.
A number of tentatively hung their arms out of the cell home windows I may see from the cage.
“OK, what number of of you’ve ever had a guard watch you on the bathroom or take a bathe?”
A lot of fingers went up. “After all!” one lady shouted.
“What number of of you’ve skilled a guard knocking your makeshift masking from the viewing window in your door when you had been altering your pad or tampon after which simply standing there making trivial dialog?”
Everybody known as out in recognition.
“Have you ever ever taken your shirt off when a guard got here by with the meals cart so that you simply would not get handed for a meal?”
“Sure!”
‘Whereas escorting you, has a guard ever rubbed his genitals in opposition to your handcuffed fingers?”
All fingers went up.
“Have guards ever known as you a ‘cunt,’ ‘bitch’ or ‘ho?’”
I heard a lot of laughter and folks hitting the partitions with their handheld mirrors or naked fingers in settlement.
“What number of of you’ve a jail ‘boyfriend’?”
About each lady youthful than 25 raised her hand.
“That’s all sexual abuse,” I informed them.
A silence hung over the concrete hall.
This rec cage lesson re-confirmed what I’ve noticed over the previous 17 years: In ladies’s prisons, sexual intrusion, harassment, coercion and violence are each day realities. And in solitary confinement, this conduct is so routine that many ladies — notably the youthful ones — don’t even consider it as abuse. They consider it’s merely an inevitable a part of their incarceration.
For the file, sexual contact with folks in jail is a felony in Texas, and the state’s division of corrections has a “zero tolerance” coverage in opposition to it. Texas can also be required to adjust to the federal Jail Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which was handed in 2003 to eradicate all types of sexual abuse. However what I’ve noticed inside these partitions of Lane Murray tells a distinct story.
Final yr, I watched one guard yank off his uniform shirt as he stormed towards the gate. Later, the imprisoned lady he was allegedly partaking in an inappropriate relationship with acquired a message on her pill that he had been terminated. In the identical month, phrase unfold {that a} second guard was additionally fired for sexual misconduct.
This isn’t just some rotten apples in a single facility. In 2023, the Texas Division of Felony Justice (TCDJ) reported over 700 allegations of staff-on-prisoner sexual abuse and harassment to the PREA Ombudsman, an unbiased workplace that tallies up and investigates complaints. Virtually 90 of these instances concerned sexual harassment, almost 150 had been categorized as voyeurism, and slightly greater than 500 had been labeled as sexual abuse.
Of the 505 abuse claims, solely 20% met the jail system’s onerous standards for sexual assault or “improper sexual exercise with an individual in custody.”
I consider these stats solely scratch the floor. On the skin, fewer than half of sexual violence instances are reported to police, with victims typically citing worry of retaliation or disbelief from these in energy as the explanation. Given the ability dynamics of jail, underreporting is probably going extra extreme right here.
The most important impediment to reporting abuse in jail is getting somebody to really file your grievance. Nepotism is rampant, and lots of guards aren’t keen to report their family and friends.
In solitary, you rely on workers to place your letters within the mailbox. Some merely discard them, which may trigger you to overlook the 15-day deadline for submitting a grievance. I do know guards toss mail as a result of some truly brag about it. And ladies who can see the trash can on the entrance from their cells typically announce, “They simply trashed some mail!”
Prisons may also make the grievance course of too painful to be value it. Girls who make reviews can find yourself being cited for having an “inappropriate relationship” with a guard, which is grounds for being despatched to solitary. You typically can’t convey your property, hygiene gadgets or your pill with you. No pill means no telephone calls, and call visits can be suspended throughout investigations, which I’ve seen final 60 to 90 days, and even longer.
Within the gap, guards use a wide range of strategies to retaliate in opposition to ladies who complain about their abuse. They will write bogus disciplinary infractions that may result in the lack of visits and telephone calls, extra time in solitary confinement, and in the end an extended sentence. Officers may also flip off the electrical energy and operating water in ladies’s cells and refuse to serve them meals. To keep up management, officers can maintain this remedy going from shift to shift.
Even when Texas prisoners do take the danger to report workers sexual misconduct or abuse, accountability is uncommon. I haven’t discovered a single complete supply for case knowledge, however a 2015 Marshall Mission investigation discovered that from 2000 to 2014, Texas prosecutors didn’t pursue virtually half of the almost 400 instances that the jail system’s inspector common referred to them.
Of the 126 employees — principally guards — who had been convicted, solely 9 had been sentenced to state jail. Most acquired fines starting from $200 to $4,000 and a sort of probation that allowed them to clear their file upon completion. These lenient punishments mirror a broader sample of minimizing sexual violence in opposition to incarcerated ladies.
Holding COs accountable may go a good distance in altering the tradition of sexual violence in prisons. However that also wouldn’t change a significant underlying drawback: Sexual abuse is normalized in many ladies’s lives lengthy earlier than they get to jail.
These popping out of Texas’ notoriously troubled youth amenities have already been primed by what a latest federal investigation described as “a pervasive environment of sexual abuse, grooming and lack of workers accountability and coaching.”
Society’s systematic failure to guard and assist susceptible women and girls creates cycles of victimization that usually start in childhood. In a 2014 survey of roughly 430 ladies in Texas prisons, 58% reported being abused as youngsters. Practically half stated they’d skilled sexual violence as adults earlier than they acquired to jail. And 1 / 4 reported being pressured to commerce intercourse for cash, meals or different fundamental wants previous to their incarceration.
On the skin, ideas like sexual exploitation and victim-blaming have been totally mentioned and debated. Extra individuals are being taught that compliance just isn’t actually voluntary when it’s primarily based on intimidation, threats or controlling behaviors.
However prisoners exist in a void the place societal norms do not apply, and that’s amplified in solitary. The facility of guards over the folks of their cost is absolute. Girls are confined to their cells 23 hours a day, and “recreation” occurs in tiny out of doors cages. Contact with different people is sort of utterly lower off. Even lawyer visits happen in a coffin-sized mesh cage with a slot to go paperwork.
As a result of ladies are solely depending on officers to feed them, take them to the bathe and ship necessities like medicine, rest room paper and tampons, sexual exploitation is all however assured. It isn’t unusual for guards to withhold meals and different requirements except we take our shirts off. A standard chorus I’ve heard from youthful officers is, “Present one thing, fo’ one thing!”
I’m nonetheless haunted by an act one in all my neighbors carried out one evening in 2019 to avoid wasting my life. I’ve a peanut allergy, which will be lethal in solitary confinement as a result of our 24-hour medical clinic is a number of buildings away and no one within the gap has direct entry to an EpiPen.
Our meals arrive in solitary pre-made, so I can by no means make certain if there might be traces of peanut butter on my meals. That specific evening, once I felt that acquainted tingle on my lips, I banged on the door to alert my neighbors. (The in-cell emergency button didn’t work for your entire time that I used to be within the unit.) Because the phrase unfold, everybody was banging on their doorways with cups and yelling out their home windows. When a guard lastly got here, he walked proper by my cell.
My neighbor known as out to him to inform him I wanted Benadryl. Then, I heard the unmistakable clang of the meals slot in her door opening and a guard urgent his physique in opposition to it.
Minutes later, I heard my neighbor say, “Go! Imma end whenever you convey Benadryl again!” My again was itching, and my eyes had been puffy when he threw a handful of Benadryl drugs wrapped in rest room paper by my door hole on his means again to her cell door.
I’ll at all times be grateful to my former neighbor for saving my life. However I’ll by no means forgive the system for placing her on her knees to do it.
While a lot of the workers sexual abuse we endure comes within the type of bribery, extortion and coercion, I’ve additionally heard numerous tales of violence through the years. Final yr, as reported by Texas Public Radio, my former neighbor Elizabeth was allegedly attacked by a guard in solitary whose sexual advances she had rebuffed. The incident passed off as he was escorting her again to her cell in handcuffs. He tried to journey her, and she or he went limp to keep away from a much bigger fall. The officer allegedly lifted her up and slammed her to the bottom, leaving her with a black eye and stitches in her face. Liz adopted protocol and filed a grievance that included a number of witness statements. However TDCJ claimed that she induced her personal accidents by inflicting guards to fall on prime of her. By blaming Liz, Texas took a play proper out of the home abuser handbook.
On this setting the place violence and secrecy reign supreme, ladies start to see abuse as a routine a part of our punishment. This confusion about find out how to decide what is really in our greatest curiosity and whose authority to belief not solely perpetuates a tradition of silence, but additionally undermines elementary rules of rehabilitation and justice. Victims are left grappling with their experiences, unable to totally comprehend or acknowledge the extent of the abuse they’ve suffered.
Like most of the ladies right here, I used to be taught that good ladies are quiet and obedient and by no means query adults. I acquired that message from Catholic college, the place I attended each day faith lessons, and the Southern Baptist Church, the place I went three to 4 instances every week. When ladies confirmed up with black eyes, my congregation prayed for them to behave. I used to be one in all many youngsters molested at that church.
It took me coming to jail to essentially reply the query, “Why did not I say no?” The underside line: I didn’t know I may. No person ever informed me I may. I’m 52 years previous now and was as soon as a compulsory reporter of abuse, however solely now am I beginning to totally perceive this horrifying dynamic.
That is why I maintain talking up, instructing and making an attempt to assist the younger ladies right here perceive their rights and their value. Nobody ought to settle for abuse as regular or commerce their dignity for fundamental human wants. And nobody ought to have to avoid wasting a life the way in which my neighbor saved mine.
Kwaneta Harris is an incarcerated journalist and essayist who has written for a spread of shops together with The Austin Chronicle, the Texas Observer, Teen Vogue, Slate, Scalawag and Solitary Watch. She is a 2024 Haymarket Books Writing Freedom Fellow.
Deborah Zalesne is a regulation professor at CUNY Faculty of Regulation. She co-authored “Ending Isolation: The Case Towards Solitary Confinement” with Christopher Blackwell. The ebook, which is forthcoming from Pluto Press in September 2025, has contributions from Kwaneta Harris and Terry Kupers.
The TDCJ director of communications denied all claims made about ladies at Dr. Lane Murray Unit being pressured and coerced into sexual acts by workers, in addition to all claims of retaliation by guards in opposition to ladies who file grievances or complain about abuse. In addition they denied claims of jail workers throwing away mail, in addition to the declare that in-cell emergency buttons within the administrative segregation unit didn’t work whereas Harris was housed there.
TDCJ was unable to verify the small print of two guards’ termination with the data we had been in a position to present.
In response to fact-checking questions on investigations, TDCJ’s PREA Ombudsman didn’t reply on to questions, as a substitute referring us to the Public Info Act division, and the Workplace of the Inspector Normal didn’t reply by publication time.
