U

FRESNO -- One of California?s most dangerous prisons returns to the spotlight today when three guards and a former medical assistant appear in court in a civil rights lawsuit accusing them of setting up and then covering up the rape of an inmate by another inmate known as the "Booty Bandit."

Eddie Webb Dillard claims the California State Prison, Corcoran, guards set up his rapes by convicted murderer Wayne Robertson over two days in March 1993 to punish him for kicking a female guard at another prison.

Robert Decker, Dale Brakebill, Anthony Sylva and Joe Sanchez were acquitted in 1999 of criminal charges in the same case of aiding and abetting sodomy in concert. Each had faced up to nine years in prison.

Dillard filed the federal civil rights lawsuit in 1994 against Decker, Sylva, Sanchez and Kathy Horton-Plant, a prison medical assistant at that time who has since retired from the California Department of Corrections.

"One thing that will become clear in this trial is that CDC guards were purposely using Robertson to dole out gratuitous, extra-judicial, extra-administrative punishment," said Robert L. Bastian Jr., Dillard?s attorney.

Bastian said witnesses to be called during the trial in federal court in Fresno include Robertson, who admitted at the criminal trial to raping and torturing Dillard over several days after guards left him in his cell in 1993. Robertson testified that the guards intentionally put Dillard in his cell.

"They knew what would happen to him if they put him in there," Robertson said at trial.

Former Corcoran prison guard Roscoe "Bonecrusher" Pondexter will also be called to testify. Pondexter, who testified for the prosecution under a grant of immunity at the criminal trial, has said his fellow officers knew they were endangering the 23-year-old Dillard when they left him in a cell with Robertson, a hulking 6-foot-3, 230-pound convicted murderer serving a life sentence.

At the time, Dillard weighed a mere 118 pounds and was a known enemy of Robertson after a run-in with the man guards called "a refrigerator with legs" at a prison in Tehachapi.

According to affidavits by CDC?s own investigators, Robertson was listed in prison records as an enemy of Dillard. It is against CDC policy to house inmates with documented enemies, prison officials acknowledge.

Bastian said CDC records document at least 25 reported instances of Robertson assaulting or raping cell mates from April 23, 1983, until November 30, 1997, earning him the nickname "Booty Bandit."

In a sworn statement filed in Kings County Superior Court in 2001, where the criminal case was heard, Barbara Sheldon, a CDC staff attorney, "concluded that Decker, Sanchez, Sylva and Horton had acted outside the scope of their employment, acted with actual malice."

Sheldon also noted that the investigation found the guards "may have been involved in encouraging, promoting or covering up the Dillard rape."

But later, after being notified by the prison guards union that state law required CDC to provide a defense, the CDC agreed to do so. Gov. Gray Davis approved the deal last year.

Under state law, the CDC is now responsible for any compensatory damages awarded to Dillard.

CDC spokesman Russ Heimerich said the agency stands behind its investigators? conclusions.

"But we are obligated by law to defend them (the guards) given that they were found innocent in the criminal investigation," Heimerich said. "I don?t think the (CDC) ever felt the agency was at fault, but the guards themselves."

Bastian said the CDC?s responsibility should be to settle the case. And he said Gov. Davis should never have approved the CDC?s deal to defend the guards, but instead should have ordered the agency to settle the case.

The governor?s office referred questions to Stephen Green, assistant secretary of the California Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, which overseas the CDC.

Asked about the CDC?s own investigators? conclusions that the guards were at fault, Green simply noted their acquittal on criminal charges.

"Those were the investigators? opinions and the court didn?t buy them," Green said. "The court did not find the investigators? conclusions were credible. Given that, the officers are innocent, so we will defend them."

Green said the agency would be willing to settle the case. Bastian said an offer has never been made.

"We are open to settling this case ? but the attorney has not come to the table with anything reasonable," Green said, adding that the agency does not admit guilt.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Ex-Corcoran inmate testifies to attack in cell
By Jerry Bier
The Fresno Bee
Published 10/01/03 12:29:00

A former Corcoran State Prison inmate who fought off an attack by sexual predator Wayne Robertson testified Tuesday that he protested being placed in the cell with Robertson, but never told correctional officers the reason why.
"That's snitching. ... it's not my position to say, especially to a correctional officer," said inmate Lawrence Johnson, who is serving a "Three Strikes" sentence of 31 years to life for attempted rape.

Johnson said inmates were well aware of Robertson's reputation as a prison rapist and predator and that is the reason he protested to Sgt. Robert Allan Decker before being placed into a cell with him at Corcoran in 1993.

Decker, along with guards Joe Sanchez and Anthony Sylva, are accused of deliberately placing inmate Eddie Webb Dillard into a cell with Robertson to punish him because he had kicked a female guard at another state prison.

Dillard's civil trial against the guards and former medical assistant Kathy Horton-Plant resumed Tuesday with the testimony of Johnson and another inmate, Oliver Coleman, serving seven years to life for kidnapping and robbery.

Johnson, answering questions from Dillard's lawyer, Marina R. Dini, said he protested to Decker that he and Robertson weren't compatible when he was ordered moved into Robertson's cell in the secured housing unit.

Decker did not heed his protests, Johnson said, and he went to Robertson's cell and was told by the 6-foot-3, 220-pound Robertson that "if I come in there, I come in at my own risk."

Lawyers for the officers objected to the testimony about Robertson's warning, and U.S. District Judge Anthony W. Ishii ordered the jury to disregard the statement.

The judge also prevented testimony from Coleman that he didn't tell guards about Robertson's reputation because that would label him a "snitch," and in a prison, a snitch could wind up injured or dead.

Robertson did attack him, but he was able to fight him off and suffered a "busted lip and black eye." He never told officers about the fight, he said, and was transferred out of Robertson's cell a couple of days later.

Robertson, who admitted he raped Dillard when he testified at the guards' criminal trial four years ago, last week testified in the civil trial that the alleged rape was a scheme that he and Dillard made up. The guards were acquitted in the criminal trial.

Coleman testified that he saw Dillard run from Robertson's cell after the alleged rape.

"All I know is the man came out of the cell hollering he was raped," Coleman said.

He said he later was placed into a cell with Robertson and asked him "what happened to the little youngster?" Dillard was 5-foot-7, 118 pounds.

Robertson responded something to the effect that "one thing led to another," Coleman testified.

Asked by lawyer Katherine L. Hart, representing Decker, whether he had any problems with Robertson, Coleman replied, "not at all."

In testimony later Tuesday, Decker said that when he answered questions in the civil case in 1995 and stated he knew Dillard had been sexually assaulted by Robertson in March 1993, he actually was thinking of an alleged assault of another inmate that took place three months later.

Decker underwent intense questioning by another Dillard lawyer, Robert L. Bastian, about cell transfers he had ordered in the secured housing unit and whether he should have known that Dillard had placed Robertson on his "enemies list," meaning he did not want to be in a cell with him.

Been keeping a watch on this one through Prisoners of Davis...just DISTURBING. The whole thing just gets me sick.

-Judge refuses to drop woman from prison trial
By Jerry Bier
The Fresno Bee
Published 10/11/03 05:35:25

A federal judge said Friday that if he were on the jury in Eddie Webb Dillard's trial over allegations of rape in Corcoran State Prison, he would find in favor of one of the defendants.

However, U.S. District Judge Anthony W. Ishii wouldn't drop Kathy Horton-Plant as a defendant in the case after a lawyer argued that there was a lack of evidence against her.

Horton-Plant was a medical technical assistant who visually examined Dillard on March 8, 1993, after he fled the cell of Wayne Robertson, a 6-foot-2, 220-pound sexual predator known in prison as the "Booty Bandit."

She and three Corcoran corrections officers are on trial in federal court in Fresno over allegations by Dillard that he was deliberately placed into the cell of Robertson as punishment for assaulting a female guard at another prison.

Horton-Plant, who now lives in Texas, testified during the trial that after she examined Dillard, she received an order from a prison doctor to have him taken to a hospital for a rape examination.

The transportation order was mysteriously canceled, according to testimony, and Dillard was moved to another cell without any further medical treatment.

Another witness, former corrections officer Michael Coziahr, also testified that Horton-Plant, who is accused of participating in a cover-up, was sympathetic to Dillard's alleged attack and angrily admonished other officers who laughed at an off-color joke about the alleged rape.

Mark H. Harris, a lawyer representing Horton-Plant, asked Ishii to drop her from the case before it is turned over to the four-woman, four-man civil jury.

While it appears "some balls were dropped" in the Dillard case, Harris said, "I don't believe my client dropped any balls or was deliberately indifferent to Eddie Webb Dillard."

However, Robert L. Bastian, one of Dillard's lawyers, urged the judge to deny the motion to dismiss Horton-Plant as a defendant and let the jury decide.

If it is true she was "heroically trying to get medical care" for Dillard, Bastian said, she should have known and written in reports who is responsible for blocking that care.

Ishii said the evidence against Horton-Plant is circumstantial and if he were on the jury, he would find in her favor, but the jury has to reach its own conclusion.

The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of damages from Horton-Plant, Sgt. Robert Allan Decker and officers Joe Sanchez and Anthony Sylva, whose defense is being paid for by the state.

In testimony Friday, Elizabeth J. Harris, a clinical psychologist from Encino, said she treated Dillard in 2001 for post-traumatic stress disorder relating to the alleged multiple rapes by Robertson.

Harris, no relation to lawyer Harris, said Dillard exhibited all of the classic symptoms of the disorder, caused when one witnesses or is subjected to an event that causes fear of death or great injury.

"He came basically wanting relief from the symptoms he was experiencing," Harris said, noting Dillard's problems included nightmares, pervasive fear, irritability and psychological distress.

After nine sessions, Dillard appeared much better and did not return, Harris said.

Dillard, 33, was first convicted of three felonies in 1990 and served six years of a 10-year sentence. He went back into prison this year after committing other felonies and is serving a term of nine to 11 years.

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Posted on Fri, Oct. 17, 2003

Closing arguments in "booty bandit" prison rape case BRIAN SKOLOFF Associated Press FRESNO, Calif. - A lawyer for a state prison inmate who claims guards set him up to be raped by another inmate known as the "Booty Bandit" asked jurors Friday to award the plaintiff the same amount of money they would give to a free man. "He is entitled to the benefit of federal law and justice," said Robert L. Bastian, Jr., in his closing argument after four weeks of testimony. Eddie Webb Dillard claims the guards at California State Prison, Corcoran set up his rapes by convicted murderer Wayne Robertson over two days in March 1993 to punish him for kicking a female guard at another prison. Dillard is serving time for assault with a deadly weapon. Robert Decker, Dale Brakebill, Anthony Sylva and Joe Sanchez were acquitted in 1999 of criminal charges in the same case. Each had faced up to nine years in prison. Dillard filed the federal civil rights lawsuit in 1994 against Decker, Sylva, Sanchez and Kathy Horton-Plant, a prison medical assistant at that time who has since retired from the California Department of Corrections. Decker, Sylva and Sanchez remain employed by the CDC. The guards' attorneys have claimed their clients did not act with intent to harm Dillard, and, in fact, were not responsible for Dillard's move into Robertson's cell. Dillard's attorneys claim the guards ignored the fact that prison records indicated he was a known enemy of Robertson's. It is against prison policy to house inmate enemies together. Dillard's attorneys claim Horton-Plant orchestrated a cover-up of the rapes by not filing the proper medical reports and not following through with an order to have Dillard transferred to a hospital for a full rape examination. Former guards testified that the defendants knew Robertson was a sexual predator and would harm Dillard. Bastian said CDC records document at least 25 reported instances of Robertson assaulting or raping cellmates from April 23, 1983, until November 30, 1997, earning him the nickname "Booty Bandit." Robertson himself testified at the earlier criminal trial that he raped Dillard and that the guards "knew what would happen to him if they put him in" his cell. But during the civil case, Robertson changed his story, claiming he never raped Dillard and that the two concocted the tale in hopes of winning money at a trial. Bastian said Friday that Robertson changed his story because the attorney refused to offer him an incentive for testifying. "Robertson sent me a letter, asking 'What's in it for me?'" Bastian told jurors. Bastian has not said how much money his client should get, but CDC officials said Dillard wanted millions. The CDC would be responsible for any compensatory damages awarded to Dillard. Prison officials refused to settle the civil case even though their own investigators found the guards liable in the criminal case. Jan Kahn, the attorney representing Sanchez, said Sanchez shouldn't be held responsible because he wasn't on duty the day Dillard was transferred into Robertson's cell. Kahn said Dillard never told Sanchez he was in any danger sharing a cell with Robertson and depicted the two inmates as being on friendly terms. Mark Harris, the attorney representing Horton-Plant and Silva, attempted to depict Dillard as a career criminal whose credibility can't be trusted. "This case is all about evidence and credibility," Harris told jurors. Harris said Horton-Plant examined Dillard after the alleged rape and contacted her supervisors, who ordered Dillard transferred to a hospital for further exams. The fact that Dillard was never transferred was not Horton-Plant's fault, Harris said. He blamed the oversight on other prison employees. "This is not a cover-up," he said. "The ball was dropped that night, but who dropped it? It certainly wasn't Kathy Horton-Plant, Anthony Silva, Robert Decker or Joe Sanchez." Harris said the decision to transfer Dillard into Robertson's cell came from higher authorities in the prison system, not from any of the defendants. Closing arguments were expected to last throughout the day Friday. The jury would either get the case Friday evening or Tuesday, when court is back in session.

-------------------------------------Jury Finds Rape Not Prison Workers' Fault

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - Four employees of a California state prison were not responsible for the rape of an inmate by a fellow prisoner, a jury found Tuesday.

Eddie W. Dillard claimed during the federal civil rights trial that the employees at the prison in Corcoran arranged and then covered up his rapes by a convicted murderer notorious for sexual assaults on inmates.

Dillard contended the rapes, over two days in March 1993, were arranged to punish him for kicking a female guard at another prison. Dillard is serving time for assault with a deadly weapon.

Dillard filed suit in 1994 against Robert Decker, Anthony Sylva, Joe Sanchez and Kathy Horton-Plant. Decker, Sylva and Sanchez remain employed by the California Department of Corrections. Horton-Plant has since retired.

Sanchez said he was ready to get back to work: ``I'm just glad it's over and I can get on with my career.''

Dillard's attorney, Robert L. Bastian, Jr., said he was considering seeking a new trial.

The defendants' attorneys told jurors their clients had no knowledge of Wayne Robertson's sexually violent behavior and were not responsible for Dillard's transfer into Robertson's cell.

Bastian called their claims ``denial, upon denial, upon denial,'' and pointed to a culture of apathy and neglect in the state prison system.

Juror Grace Alcaraz said she wanted to decide for Dillard but the evidence did not prove intent by the guards.

``My heart goes out to Dillard,'' Alcaraz said. ``The system failed Dillard and they (the guards) are the system.''

Decker, Sylva and Sanchez were acquitted in 1999 of criminal charges in the same case.
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Lawyers file for new trial in prison rape case

Wednesday November 05, 2003

By BRIAN SKOLOFF

Associated Press Writer

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) Attorneys for an inmate who claimed in a civil suit that four prison employees arranged his rape by another inmate have filed a motion for a new trial after the employees' acquittal last month.

Eddie Webb Dillard claimed the guards and a medical technician at California State Prison, Corcoran set up and then covered up his rapes by convicted murderer Wayne Robertson, a man so notorious for his sexual assaults on fellow inmates that he's known as the ``Booty Bandit.''

In October, jurors found that guards Robert Decker, Anthony Sylva, Joe Sanchez and medical technician Kathy Horton-Plant were not responsible for the attacks. Decker, Sylva and Sanchez were acquitted in 1999 of criminal charges in the same case.

The attacks are alleged to have occurred over two days in March 1993. Dillard is serving time for assault with a deadly weapon.

Dillard's attorney, Robert L. Bastian, Jr., said Wednesday that U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Ishii would hear arguments for a new trial Dec. 1 in Fresno.

Bastian said the jury should not have heard details of Dillard's criminal conviction during the four-week long civil rights trial.

``The nature of his conviction had little bearing on the facts in this case,'' Bastian said. ``This was a miscarriage of justice.''

The motion for a new trial filed last week does not include Horton-Plant as a defendant. Bastian said ``the judge made it clear'' the evidence did not support Horton-Plant's inclusion in the case.

Attorney Mark Harris, who represents Silva and Horton-Plant, said the motion for a new trial has no merit.

``I'm confident the jury's verdict was carefully deliberated and was without error,'' Harris said.

Decker's attorney, Katherine Hart, said she would expect nothing less than a motion for a new trial from Dillard's attorneys.

``These two attorneys for the plaintiff are excellent, ambitious, hard-working attorneys ... They passionately believe in their case and they are trying to do the best job for their client,'' Hart said. ``But I am confident the jury reached the right result.''

Sanchez's attorney, Jan Kahn, did not immediately return telephone calls.

Summary: Recently, a small Los Angeles-based advocacy group, Stop Prisoner Rape, squared off against advertising giant Young & Rubican, and its client, 7 Up, the large soft drink company, owned by Britain's Cadbury Schweepes. At issue is the propriety of a television commercial making light of prison rape. Stop Prisoner Rape is right, 7 Up is wrong, as explained in this op-ed piece by Robert Bastian, an attorney who represents prison rape victim Eddie Webb Dillard in his lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections.

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Anyone doubting prison rape is widely tolerated is invited to review evidence in the Human Rights Watch Report, No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons, released last year. For example, Eddie Dillard, whose civil rights lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court, Fresno, is the victim of a recidivist inmate rapist whom California Department of Corrections authorities continued to assign new cellmates, notwithstanding over 25 documented instances of rape or sexual assault on cellmates at six separate California prisons.

Stop Prisoner Rape is a small Los Angeles-based advocacy group devoted to addressing this problem. Recently, Stop Prisoner Rape squared off against advertising giant Young & Rubican, Inc., and its client, 7 Up. At issue is a television advertising campaign directed primarily at 12-24 year olds. In one ad, comedian Godfrey, poses as a company spokesman handing out 7 Up in a prison. After dropping a can, he states, "I'm not picking that up." Later, he sits uncomfortably in a cell as a bearded inmate wraps a tattooed arm around him. "When you bring the 7 Up everyone is your friend," the spokesman says. As the cell door slams, he adds, "Okay, that's enough being friends."

7 Up's spokesman says the company's sole aim was to create a humorous commercial, not offend anyone. According to 7 Up, test screenings showed the average person enjoyed the ad, but did not take the rape references seriously. He concludes, "We understand this is a serious issue" but "we believe the appropriate people to address it are [those] in the criminal justice and corrections systems." Thus, 7 Up has no plans to, as they say, kill the spot.

Elizabeth Noelle-Neuman, a noted social scientist who, in 1947, founded the prestigious German polling organization, the Allensbach Institute, has spent a lifetime studying and explaining how public opinion is formed. In her seminal work, The Spiral of Silence (1984), she elegantly demonstrates how opinions people openly share are powerfully conditioned by innate desires to socially fit in; how, at the deepest levels, opinions people publicly share are shaped by fear of social isolation. Consequently, people generally express opinions that fall within a range they perceive to be socially acceptable.

Implicit in her work is a search for, and explanation how, in a modern, highly educated democracy, officially tolerated human rights abuse and widespread depravity can, nonetheless, occur. Her work suggests there is social danger when outrage, even one cloaked in humor, is met with approval or -- what is sometimes worse -- an aura of approval in the form of silence.

Yet, when the consequences of silence in the face of outrage are, through experience and education, widely understood, outrageous ideas are met with appropriate disapproval. For an extreme example: if, instead, the commercial made light of the actor not following the soda can into a boxcar occupied by terrified internees, the effort would be commonly adjudged not only insensitive, but malevolent. Likewise, a commercial making light of an intimidating man implicitly threatening to sexually assault a woman should she bend over to retrieve a soda is entirely intolerable. Regrettably, though, there have been times and places where, if audience screening was the sole determinative factor, such ill-conceived advertising concepts might have passed muster.

What's left, now, is a climate in which, while it is unacceptable to trivialize rape, it is acceptable to trivialize rape behind bars. Not surprisingly, it has also become, in practice, penologically acceptable. When Dillard escaped from a Corcoran prison cell where he was violated for three days by a sociopath twice his size, correctional officers joked that he got his doughnut glazed. Now, guards operating at this level of moral awareness might offer the victim 7 Up.

While 7 Up would deny being morally implicated in a climate that enables prison rape, it nonetheless spends advertising dollars on the assumption that sharing with 12-24 year olds a chuckle -- that hapless fellows, such as the diminutive Godfrey, are likely to be raped if isolated in prison -- sells sodas. If 7 Up is correct that such shared drollery has measurable influence over young peoples' beverage preferences, it stands to reason it has at least that much influence over their attitudes towards prison rape. Stop Prisoner Rape rightly fears 7 Up is laying groundwork for another generation of silence in the face of outrage.

In 1910, Winston Churchill asserted, "treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country." In a 2001, 7 Up introduced its ad campaign, featuring, in the company's words, "comedian Godfrey as the brand's new clueless marketing executive . . .[i]n keeping with the campaign's overall theme . . . coming up with exciting and innovative concepts for marketing 7 Up, which ultimately go awry."

By: Robert L. Bastian, Jr.
Attorney at the Law Offices of Bastian & Dini (Los Angeles)
which represents Eddie Webb Dillard

Joanne Mariner, "No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons,"
Human Rights Watch 2001.

Elizabeth Noelle-Neuman, "The Spiral of Silence",
University of Chicago Press (1984).

Tamar Lewin, Little Sympathy or Remedy for Inmates who are Raped
New York Times, 4-15-01.

The Dillard case is also discussed in multiple LA Times articles by Mark Arax. (Indeed, his fine work has resulted in Eddie Dillard having a fighting chance in his civil lawsuit.)

The factual assertions in the second sentence are supported by a Declaration and accompanying exhibits filed in Dillard v. Decker, et al. U.S.D.C. Case No. CV F-94 5048 AWI SMS. A copy of the declaration is attached as an Appendix to the Human Rights Watch Report referenced above. A similar declaration is on file in the related case of Decker, et al. v. C.D.C., King County Superior Ct. No. 00C2852

1-4-02, 7 UP `Exposes' Itself to Consumers Through Integrated
Advertising and Point-of-Sale marketing Campaign.

10-31-01, 7 UP Introduces New Spokesman as Part of
its 2002 `Make 7 UP Yours' Advertising Campaign.

o: 310-789-1955
f: 310-822-1989
e: robbastian@aol.com
a: Law Offices of Bastian & Dini
1925 Century Park East, Suite 500
Los Angeles, CA 90067-2700
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Quick Now: What Has 2 Million Victims, Turns Passive Men Violent, Spreads HIV and Could Be Stopped Overnight? If You Said 'Prison Rape,' You're in on the Joke.

Bill Handel is a drive-time radio host on L.A.'s KFI-AM (640). He stays popular because he has a feel for what makes his audience chuckle as they head for that unfunny 9 a.m. encounter with the boss. His repertoire includes prison rape jokes, the tired but reliable picking-up-soap-in-the-shower ones, especially when the hapless subject is a celebrated or heinous convict. "When people hear about a victim" of prison rape, Handel explains, the response is: "So he should have stayed out of jail!"

Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, the chief law enforcement official of California, told the Wall Street Journal last year that Enron CEO Kenneth Lay deserved to be jailed with a cellmate who would say to him, "Hi. My name is Spike, honey."

Everyone, it seems, is in on prison rape jokes. Don't worry about crossing a line because when the subject is inmates raping other inmates, people don't empathize. They laugh.

So have you heard this one? The FBI says that 89,107 women reported rapes in the U.S. in 1999. Prison experts say that at least twice that number of men are raped each year in prison. "Prison rape is the most tolerated act of terrorism in the U.S.," says James E. Robertson, a professor of corrections at Minnesota State University, Mankato, who has studied the problem for 15 years.

Precise numbers of these rapes are not available. Neither the federal government nor the state of California keep statistics on the crime. But this much is known: Just as heterosexual rapes across the U.S. are often not reported, sexual abuse in prison is "massively underreported," says Terry Kupers of Oakland, a psychiatrist who has written and edited books on prison conditions. Kupers believes that more than one-third of all incoming inmates in American jails and prisons are either sexually assaulted or are in imminent danger of attack.

Cindy Struckman-Johnson, a psychology professor at the University of South Dakota, says that studies she has conducted suggest that at least 22% of the some 2 million male prisoners nationwide have been either pressured or forced to submit to sex at least once. Stop Prisoner Rape, an organization co-founded by Stephen Donaldson, a Vietnam veteran who was raped repeatedly after being jailed for protesting the Vietnam War, argues that one prisoner in five has been sexually abused and that one in 10 has been raped.

Yet most Americans accept prison rape as a harsh reality, and their jokes imply that the victims are getting their just reward. "The only people who care are the relatives, and they are usually poor and uneducated," explains Cal Skinner Jr., a conservative Republican who fought for state prison reform during eight terms in the Illinois Legislature. Skinner eventually paid a high price for his activism when he lost a reelection bid to an opponent who mocked his efforts to end prison rape. But he and others continue to work against the abuses. Their findings won't set up many punch lines.

The victims often haven't been convicted of crimes, Kupers says. Many prison rapes happen in poorly supervised local jails to short-time prisoners who are found innocent or sometimes not even charged with a crime.

Most of those who have been convicted are serving time for nonviolent offenses. But to survive behind bars, they are forced to adapt to the culture of brutality, says Vincent Schiraldi, president of the Justice Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. Many have trouble leaving it behind once set free. "Prisons have a far better chance of turning a nonviolent inmate into an armed robber than into a law-abiding citizen," Schiraldi says.

Worse still is Skinner's ominous warning that research conducted by his legislative staff found an alarming amount of HIV among prisoners. "Prison systems in many states are a major breeding grounds for the AIDS virus, and that can give rape victims an unadjudicated death sentence. How can society live with that?"

Seven years ago, Lawrence Bittenbender was held temporarily in the Santa Clara County jail in San Jose awaiting extradition to the state of Washington to serve time for child molestation, a conviction to which he protests his innocence and blames his ex-wife for a false accusation. He was placed in a dormitory that housed 28 men. At 2 a.m., he was jumped by five inmates who, he believes, had been told by guards of the nature of the charge against him. He says he was awakened by a blanket thrown over his head and the bodies of several men piling on top. He was forced to endure at least a half-hour of rape.

"I had no idea it was coming," he says. "All of a sudden, I couldn't breathe. Someone grabbed at my clothes. Someone thumped my head." The raping "was excruciating, pain that seemed to go on forever. There was blood everywhere." He says he required surgery to repair the damage to his sphincter muscle.

Bittenbender, now 46, is serving time in McNeil Island Corrections Center in Washington. He is bitter and angry, a powerful man ready to use his strength and rage without hesitation. He never stops being watchful and pumps iron preparing for the day of the next attack. "I know how to take care of myself now. If someone tries it again, no matter how long his sentence is, he'll be free in the morning. I'll take a lot of damage, and I'll kill him." To prove his resolve, he goes to great lengths to explain an ingenious way that a "shiv" (homemade knife) can be made out of everyday materials.

The state of California knows that violent sexual assaults are common, but refuses to take meaningful steps to prevent them, says a high-ranking official with the Department of Corrections who asked that his name be withheld. Prison rape "is not treated as a problem," he says. "We don't do anywhere near all we could to prevent it."

California corrections officials say they have no idea how many rapes occur in their prisons, although Brian Parry, a corrections assistant director who recently retired, says, "In terms of numbers, I don't see it as a big problem. It doesn't get reported very frequently."

Others in the department disagree. They see rape as a cancer that corrections does not fight aggressively because acknowledging its extent would make the department look bad and make the state more vulnerable to lawsuits, the high-ranking official says. It would also remove a tool that many prison guards use to control prisoners, Robertson says. "There's an implicit quid pro quo between some officers and gangs, as well as the more aggressive inmates: You keep the lid on and we'll leave you alone."

Paul Wright, 37, is editor of Prison Legal News, a monthly newspaper, while serving time at Monroe Correctional Complex in Washington for the botched robbery-murder of a drug dealer in 1987. He has never been attacked in prison because, he says, "I was older, bigger and could defend myself." But he became aware of the problem while confined. "We'd be watching television, and you know how you get to a silent part of a movie? We'd hear prisoners screaming for help: 'Guard, guard, help! I'm being raped!' and guards wouldn't respond."

The issue briefly flared into prominence in California in 1998, when four guards at Corcoran State Prison near Fresno stood trial on the criminal charge that they had used rape as a disciplinary tool by allowing a sinister inmate called the "Booty Bandit" to rape an L.A. gang member named Eddie Dillard repeatedly. The four were acquitted. Even so, says the corrections official, some guards allow rapes to go on. "Absolutely. It's a mentality and ego thing [among guards] who think, 'I'm God and I have the power.' "

William Rigg, a retired lieutenant in the California Department of Corrections, says the prison system simply regards rapes with indifference. "They just don't care, from the C.O.s [correctional officers] all the way up to the director of corrections. The governor, to him the CDC is a pain in the butt. The less he hears about it, the happier he is."

The powerful union that represents prison guards, the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., does not see inmate sexual assault as a problem. Lance Corcoran, executive vice president and a former guard, says offenses may be "underreported," but he believes that most occasions of sexual contact are consensual. He says it is "nonsense" to claim that some guards conspire to use sexual assault as a tool of manipulation.

Roscoe Pondexter of Fresno, who served as a guard for eight years in Soledad and Corcoran prisons before resigning in 1996, says he personally reported to superiors five inmate complaints of sexual assault. "They weren't taken seriously," he says. "There was no great effort to substantiate them."

Pondexter says that, typically, victims tend to be troublemakers, child molesters and rapists, the very people whom guards do not find sympathetic. He says guards feel that such victims "got what they deserved. They did it to someone on the streets, so now someone is doing it to them."

People on the outside blink in bewilderment at the idea of one man raping another. The confusion begins with any notion that these are typical homosexual activities. Technically, that may be true, but the term is not valid in the eyes of the most important definers--the prisoners. As in heterosexual rapes, primary motivations are an intermingling of power, domination and anger. It is accepted dogma in prison that rapists are not homosexuals, says Chuck Terry, 50, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at St. Louis University who served time in California and Oregon prisons for heroin use. The distinction allows predators to masquerade their activities as super-masculine.

Convicted rapists and child molesters are always targets of prison rapists, but also at grave risk are inmates who are young and naive, short-termers, or those who are effeminate in appearance or manner and not aggressive in defending themselves. Their attackers are generally gang members in for long-term violent offenses.

A former sex criminal, who asked not to be identified, describes how it "goes down," as though relating a trip to the grocery store. Since his release from California's Chuckawalla Valley State Prison, he has become a drug dealer in Southern California and, his acquaintances say, is almost certainly a murderer.

"The biggest man, strongest man [in prison] was a friend of mine, Bo, from Washington, D.C.," the former inmate says. "He raped about 20 men. He had a fetish. On the outside, he raped women for a hobby. That's why he ended up there. But when he got into the penitentiary, a man was a desired thing for him. I helped him set up men and I would partake also. He was a good friend, but if he didn't like you, he'd rape you before he killed you.

"I used to sic Bo on a lot of men. White, black, Mexican. For all kinds of reasons. Maybe someone [would] be sitting here and not get up fast enough. We rolled with the Black Guerrilla Family, part of the nationwide penitentiary circuit." As for homosexuals or men with light skin, "they'd be raped all the time. Once you turned 'em, they gonna be women from then on. Aryan Nation did their own people, too. If we had one who didn't have any backbone, we might trade him to them for a favor and they'd do the same."

Jim Hogshire, 44, is a writer who has looked at bars from the wrong direction. He is the author of "You're Going to Prison," a primer on the criminal justice system. "Prison is a deadly place occupied by weird guys who are usually not very bright, who are very aggressive and often sociopathic," Hogshire says. "These are guys who in the free world, if they can't get an online computer hook-up, they go berserk. Cutting in front of them in the chow line is something huge. It's like being transplanted back to the Middle Ages. Once you understand that, you can accept that rape is an extremely common occurrence, and anyone not morbidly obese or covered with sores faces the likelihood of having to submit to sexual assault."

He says the most vulnerable will be beaten and raped as often as necessary until they seek help from an "old man," a predator who will give protection but will also make sexual demands. "Once you've become someone's punk, you stay a punk and your old man will use you any way he wants. He might send you out to perform sexual acts for a marijuana joint, candy or anything else of value. You have become 'currency.' "

Male victims of prison rape very likely will react to the trauma of rape with similar emotions as female victims: shock, anger, guilt and humiliation, says Lara Stemple, executive director of Stop Prisoner Rape, which is based in Los Angeles. These feelings are intensified if they are raped repeatedly, which sometimes occurs for years. They also feel deep shame at being unable to defend themselves, and that failure destroys their sense of manhood, she says.

There is a perception that prison rapists are black and victims white, but many who have observed it say this is an oversimplification. However, most California prison confrontations--whether over gambling, drugs, sex or debts--do end up being played out along racial lines. Race is the prison fault line. Often, whites fit the prey profile more than blacks or Latinos because they commonly lack street smarts, and a higher proportion are in for nonviolent drug or white-collar crimes. "Race is a factor to the extent that whatever race is predominant, they tend to victimize the minority," Wright says. "It comes down to the pool of prey versus the pool of predators, and whites aren't organized to protect each other and can be more easily picked off one by one."

The international organization Human Rights Watch is less sanguine on the subject. Its four-year study, called "No Escape" and released last year, concluded that "white inmates are disproportionately targeted for abuse." The report noncommittally cites two common theories for this: greater violence in the black criminal subculture and payback for past racial abuses.

Women prisoners are also not immune from sexual attack, but it almost always comes from male guards. The numbers are far fewer, but it is an egregious offense that has received greater public attention. Some who study male rape are critical of what they see as the lack of support from women's rape groups in focusing attention on the problem. "It's just not on the radar screen for anti-rape activists," Wright says. "Rape of men is about where rape of women was 50 years ago in terms of how the public sees it. So victims 'deal with it' and cover it up."

"Put it this way," Vincent Schiraldi says: "You're a women's group waging war on rapists--rapists are men! It's tough to retool, psychologically and organizationally, and expand your outreach. But this might change as the problem becomes better known."

Prison authorities often fall back on the theory that most prison sex is consensual--even though there are not enough homosexual men in prison to support the number of incidents. Additionally, since the range of coercion extends from brutal force to providing "protection" in exchange for exclusive sex, it is difficult to sort things out. Presumably because of that, and because of the fear of AIDS, California prisons officially prohibit all sexual contact between prisoners.

Prisoners nearing the end of their sentences are especially at risk because they fear having their term extended by fighting back. They just want to be left alone to serve their time, but they rarely are. Still, they keep their secrets to themselves. Jim Hogshire explains it by putting himself in the mind of a victim: "OK, I've gotta do this [endure rape], but I'm not telling anyone on the outside. And when I get out, I'll put it behind me.

"To them, the humiliation and hell of being punked-out is not as bad as getting a lifetime sentence for killing someone or even being killed," Hogshire continues. "It's an awful choice, but it's the only choice some guys get. And the choice is final. Many just kill themselves. Those who live and are released reenter society every bit as [screwed up] as you might expect."

The public also has another reason to fear the mental state of prison rape victims who have served their sentences. Many of them are carrying sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV. Prison officials are aware that the combination of sexual assault and the rapid rise of these diseases creates a lethal mix in prisons, but many choose to ignore the problem, says Robert Dumond, a former mental health director with the Massachusetts penal system. As a case in point, he says that virtually no data has been collected nationally showing the extent of infection arising from sexual assault, though "everyone knows it happens commonly."

Citing budget woes, the California Department of Corrections does not, as a rule, give blood tests to new inmates. The department, therefore, has no idea how many inmates have undetected HIV/AIDS or hepatitis, although an earlier state study indicated that about one-third of all new convicts have either hepatitis B or C. The corrections department says it does know that 20,434 inmates have hepatitis B or C; 742 have HIV and another 582 have full-blown AIDS, up from 157 in 1999. All of these sick inmates are housed in the general population. "We don't isolate because there is little risk of infection except through blood or bodily fluids," a spokesman says.

Told of this practice, Dumond responds with a long, mirthless laugh. "That's unbelievable," he says. "No, that's frightening." Dumond now serves as a consultant to Stop Prisoner Rape, the organization co-founded by Stephen Donaldson. Years after being raped while jailed for his war protest, Donaldson was imprisoned again, this time for threatening medical personnel who refused to treat a hand he had injured. Donaldson was raped again--and caught the AIDS virus, which killed him after his release.

Is there anything that prisons can do day-to-day to diminish this predation? Hogshire believes so. He says, with some hyperbole, "They could stop this stuff tomorrow morning. If they sent perpetrators to Pelican Bay [an ultra-maximum-security prison] where they could spend their days in isolation, and if they also transferred their victims to other institutions without the snitch rap in their files [so it could not be learned later that they were informers], they would be scaring the hell out of would-be rapists and, at the same time, telling their victims that speaking up wouldn't mean a shiv in the back."

William Rigg believes that the number of incidents can be greatly reduced by prompt administrative action when a rapist is identified. "Single cell and walk alone," he says, meaning that contact with other inmates is minimized or eliminated.

Craig Haney is a psychology professor at UC Santa Cruz who has studied prison life. He says that one tool prison officials could use is conjugal visits, which are now barred in California prisons for inmates serving life sentences. He believes that such privileges would release pent-up sexual pressures and allow officials give-and-take-away leverage with inmates.

State and federal laws also would help, although finding legislators to champion the cause is nearly hopeless. "Prisoner-rights issues are dogs when it comes to legislation," Schiraldi says. "Helping inmates is nuclear waste, politically."

Just ask Cal Skinner, the former Illinois legislator who pushed for prison reforms. His opponent in the 2000 primary election accused him of being more interested in convicts than in constituents, and he was defeated. Skinner says his greatest frustration, however, was his inability to push through effective laws aimed at stopping prison rape in Illinois. That result is mirrored in other states where legislation also generally fails, he says. "There's no lobbyist crusading against prison rape. For a lawmaker, it's a mission without political reward."

Sacramento is silent on the issue. An official with the California Senate's Public Safety Committee, who asked not to be identified, says that he can't recall any bills introduced on the subject.

Congress is considering action against rape in the form of "The Prison Rape Reduction Act," which has strong bipartisan support. Whether President Bush signs it into law or not is still an open question. The bill, which applies to both state and federal prisons, requires the Justice Department to create a clearinghouse for statistics on prison rape nationwide, ties federal funding for prisons to levels of rape occurrences, provides a hotline for victims and creates a training program for corrections officials. It's not exactly a Magna Carta on the subject, but, as Schiraldi says, "It's a start."

When prison rapes occur, responsibility for prosecuting perpetrators falls on local district attorneys. The problem is, Schiraldi says, that D.A.s are often loath to file charges because those prosecutions could be seen as coming to the defense of criminals. And in most jurisdictions, spending local tax money to protect criminals, even if they're victims, becomes a politically risky act.

Consequently, the main hope for convicts who believe they have been wronged has always been the courts. However, because inmates often have to serve as their own attorneys, the barriers are high, James Robertson says. For an inmate to prove a violation of the 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment, for example, he must show that the prison staff practiced deliberate indifference, which is exceedingly difficult. Historically, inmates file lawsuits in federal courts because they distrust state courts. However, the federal Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996 makes it much more difficult to prevail in federal court, often leaving inmates feeling as if they have no place to go for legal protection.

Forcing prisoners to seek shelter from "cruel and unusual punishment" at the hands of other prisoners is itself an indictment of the American justice system, Vincent Schiraldi says. Or, as the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky said more pointedly in "The House of the Dead," a novel based upon the four years he served for sedition in Russia's abysmal 19th century prisons: The degree to which a society is civilized can be judged by entering its prisons.
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January 1997: Guards at Calipatria State Prison allegedly incited a white supremacist inmate gang to beat up two openly gay prisoners -- Eugene McCann and Jeffery McKilligan -- according to a lawsuit filed in April 2000.

April 2000: The trial opened in the case of eight guards indicted on federal charges of having incited violence by staging ''gladiator style'' fights among prisoners in Corcoran Prison's High Security Unit between 1988 and 1994 -- incidents during which guards shot dozens of unarmed prisoners, seven fatally.

These cases are two of a whole series of incidents in Californian prisons during the past decade, in which guards have been accused of failing to protect prisoners or deliberately setting them up for attack. Amnesty International is concerned that the prison authorities failed to enforce policies, procedures and laws which could have prevented these brutal acts. Although there have been some recent changes in policy, the organization remains concerned that the authorities may not be doing enough to prevent similar abuses from taking place.

• In January 1997 guards at Calipatria State Prison allegedly incited a white supremacist inmate gang to beat up two openly gay prisoners -- Eugene McCann and Jeffery McKilligan -- which came to light in a lawsuit filed in April 2000. The lawsuit alleges that prison officials subsequently conspired to cover up the guards' role in the attack.

Prison guards are accused of having intentionally opened McCann and Mckilligan's cell so that a group of prisoners belonging to a white supremist gang could attack them. On 24 January Mckilligan was stabbed; two days later both McCann and Mckilligan were attacked and severely beaten by the gang. The victims maintained that the guards knew in advance that the attack would happen and were motivated by a hatred of gays.

Amnesty International believes that these attacks are part of an institutional pattern of abuse in the Californian prison system that deny prisoners' rights to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Such treatment is contrary to international standards regarding the treatment of prisoners, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, both of which have been ratified by the US Government.

In August 1999, Amnesty International wrote to the Californian Department of Corrections about guards' failure to protect a gay prisoner who in July 1999 was strangled to death by another inmate known to be dangerous, after he was left alone with him for over an hour in the exercise yard of the Corcoran Security Housing Unit (SHU).

Anthony G. Delgado strangled fellow inmate Kevin Mahoney after being placed alone with him in an exercise yard inside the SHU. It is believed that Kevin Mahoney's homosexuality left him particularly vulnerable as a target for inmate assault. The guard in question was reported never to have manned the exercise yard before and, instead of supervising the whole yard, to have concentrated on supervising another group of inmates in an adjacent yard.

Amnesty International urged the Department of Corrections to ensure that the inquiry into the death of Kevin Mahoney include a thorough review of policy and practice related to a series of incidents, and that the findings of the inquiry, and of other related investigations, be made public.

• In April 2000 the trial opened in the case of eight guards indicted on federal civil rights charges for having incited violence by staging ''gladiator style'' fights among prisoners in Corcoran Prison's High Security Unit between 1988 and 1994. The prison guards allegedly conspired to brutalize prisoners by setting up fights between rival gang members for ''blood sport'', and then shooting when fistfights broke out. Two prison guards who eventually became ''whistle blowers'' exposed a system that allowed use of deadly force to quell inmate fights and resulted in 31 inmate shootings between 1989 and 1995, seven of them fatal. However, the guards who reported the abuse were subsequently threatened, ostracised and forced to resign.

Four of the guards on trial face possible life sentences for civil rights abuses including the fatal shooting of inmate, Preston Tate, during one of the 1994 brawls, moments after a guard allegedly said: ''It's going to be duck hunting season''. The four other officers could receive a 10-year sentence over another 1994 fight. The guards were indicted in 1998 after years of internal investigations and legislative hearings produced no charges. State legislative hearings in 1998 criticized the Department of Corrections for failing to investigate or prevent abuses in prisons and for inadequate discipline and oversight.

• Another disturbing case is the rape of prisoner Eddie Dillard by another inmate in Corcoran Prison in March 1993. Evidence was later uncovered suggesting that guards had deliberately set him up to be attacked by leaving him in the cell of a known sexual predator over a two-day period to punish him for kicking a female guard at another prison. However, a state criminal investigation into the allegations was abandoned in 1997 when prison guards refused to testify against their colleagues. Amnesty International wrote to the authorities to express concern at the dropping of the inquiry based on the ''code of silence'' among officers, especially as there appeared to be other evidence to support the victim's allegations.

The case was later reopened and four guards were eventually charged. However, both denied the allegations and they were acquitted by a jury at their trial in November 1999. The guards had been represented by their union and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association who also waged a media campaign to support them throughout the trial. This case again illustrates the difficulties involved in bringing guards to justice for abuses in the California prison system.

The Californian Department of Corrections has been forced to change some of its procedures in recent years following mounting concern about the scale of abuses and cover-ups in the prison system. It has introduced several changes to its shooting policy and guards are now prohibited from shooting prisoners to break up fights. This has led to a drop in shootings since 1995 (prior to this more prisoners in California were shot by guards than the rest of the country put together). Other measures introduced include tightening use-of-force regulations -- four different bills were passed to improve training, clarify when use of lethal force is necessary and help guards use better judgement.

In a positive move in late 1998 the California Department of Corrections established both a centralized Office of Internal Affairs and an Office of Inspector General to investigate serious complaints of abuses in prisons across the state, rather than, as previously, leaving all internal investigations to the individual prisons. The Inspector General has a much broader role as well as more independence than the Office of Internal Affairs as he reports directly to the governor and has the power to make independent investigations and recommendations. However, it is unclear what proportion of cases are investigated by either body or even how effective this step has been. Amnesty International remains concerned that not enough is being done to protect prisoners from guards who incite attacks on prisoners by other inmates.

On 23 February 2000 it was reported that a riot broke out among 260 prisoners of known rival factions in the B yard at Pelican Bay State Prison. Guards shot 13 inmates, killing one, while apparently trying to stop this riot. Federal authorities charged two ex-Pelican Bay guards with arranging violent attacks on inmates; these indictments came only nine days after the conviction of another former Pelican Bay guard in a 1994 shooting. Amnesty International believes these shootings raise serious questions about the failure of the authorities in insuring a safe environment for prison and staff, about the use of lethal force on prisoners and the practice of placing prisoners from rival factions in the same yard together.

Amnesty International is once again asking the Californian authorities what measures have been put in place to ensure the protection of inmates from abuse, to ensure that correctional officers are under a duty to report abuse of prisoners by fellow officers and urging that any prison officer found to have been involved in abuse is removed from the prison system.

The human rights organization is also reiterating its call to the authorities to develop, implement and rigorously enforce standards for correctional facilities that are consistent with international human rights standards for the treatment of prisoners, and which forbid torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The authorities should consider the adequacy of training and supervision given to wardens and guards in the Security Housing Units, including inmate classification and the manning of exercise yards.

Amnesty International is urging the authorities to take all measures to ensure that violence perpetrated by staff or inmates does not take place in correctional facilities, that alleged incidents be independently investigated and that those responsible be brought to justice.

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Prison guards often ignore inmate rape, and even encourage it to punish prisoners who step out of line.

Eddie Dillard, a 23-year-old gang member from Los Angeles serving time for assault with a deadly weapon in California's Corcoran State Prison, was a prison malcontent. One day Dillard made the mistake of kicking a female guard; for this sin and others he was promoted to the top of the correctional officers' shit list.

Dillard was transferred to the cell of Wayne Robertson, better known as the "Booty Bandit." For a time, his vocation was beating, torturing and sodomizing fellow inmates while prison guards looked the other way. This psychopathic serial rapist was the guards' resident enforcer, one whose specialty was reining in abrasive young toughs.

Dillard protested the transfer, pointing out that Robertson was a known predator. "Since you like hitting women, we've got somebody for you," came the reply. There, in a tiny box with the Booty Bandit, began the tragic re-education of Eddie Dillard.

Lessons commenced with verbal abuse and threats, soon progressing to a violent and bloody assault in which Robertson beat the smaller, younger Dillard into submission. For the next several days Robertson beat, raped, tortured and humiliated Dillard, tearing open his rectum in the process. Guards and other inmates listened to the echoes of the young man screaming, crying for help and begging for mercy.

When the cell door finally opened to let him out, Dillard rushed onto the tier and refused to go back inside. But it was too late: He had been "turned out." He was reduced to a psychologically broken, politically servile "punk" -- in the prison argot, the lowest form of life. Dillard was now jailhouse chattel, to be sodomized, traded and sold like a slave. Robertson, on the other hand, received new tennis shoes and extra food for his services.

When he was released from prison, Dillard told the Los Angeles Times of the trauma he still suffers: "They took something from me that I can never replace. I've tried so many nights to forget about it, but the feeling just doesn't go away. Every time I'm with my wife, it comes back what he did to me. I want a close to the story. I want some salvation. But it keeps going on and on."

Dillard's case is not an isolated incident. Though using rape as a management tactic may sound like an extreme concept, the Dillard case appears not to have been an isolated incident. The Boston Globe, for example, reported that guards in Massachusetts prisons have used known rapists in the same fashion as their California counterparts: "Several prisoners at Shirley [State Prison] said that Slade [a notorious prison rapist] has had a long history of attacks there, but that he is typically reshuffled by the guards into cells with 'fresh fish,' or new inmates."

In the age of AIDS, such prison discipline often amounts to a slow-motion death sentence. As one Massachusetts prison rape survivor put it, "Nowhere in the book of rules was it written that I got to be here to get raped, that I have to have them destroy my mind, that I am supposed to get AIDS." This same inmate, who is HIV-positive, said he went to the guards for protection, but their response was: "Welcome to Shirley. Toughen up, punk."

"Everything and everybody in here worked to keep you a whore -- even the prison," explained James Dunn, a prisoner and onetime sex slave in Louisiana's notorious Angola prison. "If a whore went to the authorities, all they'd do is tell you that since you [are] already a whore, they couldn't do nothing for you, and [that you should] go back to the dorm and settle down and be a good old lady. Hell, they'd even call the whore's old man up and tell him to take you back down and keep you quiet ... the most you'd get out of complaining is some marriage counseling, with them talking to you and your old man to iron out your difficulties."

A veteran corrections officer, also from Louisiana, described a similar situation in a recent letter to a newspaper: "There are prison administrators who use inmate gangs to help manage the prison. Sex and human bodies become the coin of the realm. Is inmate 'X' writing letters to the editor of the local newspaper and filing lawsuits? Or perhaps he threw urine or feces on an employee? 'Well, Joe, you and Willie and Hank work him over, but be sure you don't break any bones and send him to the hospital. If you do a good job, I'll see that you get the blondest boy in the next shipment.'"

When asked to comment on prison rape, Massachusetts Department of Correction spokesman Anthony Carnevale explained: "Well, that's prison ... I don't know what to tell you." Inmate-on-inmate rape in male prisons remains largely ignored, despite the fact that it is central to the politics of incarceration. The group Stop Prison Rape Inc. estimates that 600,000 men and boys are raped every year in American correctional facilities. (Other academic studies place the number much lower.)

Most state prison systems, as well as the Federal Bureau of Prisons, lump all assaults, sexual and otherwise, into a single category; thus, they have no idea how many rapes are reported. Whatever the real figure, rape appears to be an integral part of prison life and one of its most terrifying features.

Prison rights activists say the struggle to bring attention to prison rape is often an uphill one. "Prison rape continues because it's a management tool. It benefits the guards and wardens. There's no way around that fact," explains Tom Cahill, of Stop Prison Rape. Cahill should know. Thirty years ago, as a young political activist in San Antonio, Texas, he was set up by prison guards and gang-raped.

"I was put in a gorilla cage. That's a cell organized by guards for a 'turning out party,'" says Cahill. "They told everyone I was a child molester." Six of Cahill's 30 cellmates beat, tortured and raped him for two days. And like thousands of other survivors, his life was never the same.

"It's the ultimate humiliation, and it works on you for the rest of your life," says Cahill, his voice raising with anger. "I still feel mistrustful of people, and even among my friends I feel stigmatized. I still have flashbacks and bouts of incredible, consuming rage."

Cahill's inner turmoil led to the destruction of his marriage. He ended up on the streets, and got involved in political fights that often landed him back in jail. While proud of his left-wing politics, Cahill now sees much of his sojourn as a macho and quixotic quest for redemption. Today, at age 62, Cahill lives on the bucolic north coast of California, where he channels his anger into activism.

Many survivors are not so lucky. Some never pull out of the psychological nose-dive caused by prison rape and crash into a life of violence, self-destruction and sexual aggression.

Victims of prison rape often turn their anger against innocents when they are set free. John William King -- the young white supremacist who dragged African-American James Byrd to death in Jasper, Texas, in 1998 -- is one such case. King was an ex-con; he'd served 21 months for burglary in the Beto Unit, the toughest joint in Texas. Shortly after arriving in prison, King -- then 5-foot-7 and 140 pounds -- was attacked by black prisoners and raped, according to his attorneys. He emerged from the dungeon transformed.

Prison rape victims often implode psychologically after they return to the outside world. Jeannette Eatton saw that happen to her 19-year-old son, Alan. While serving time for petty theft and under-age drinking Alan was befriended by an older convict named "Cowboy, " who eventually raped his good-looking young friend at knifepoint.

"Alan wasn't the same after that. He withdrew and started disliking people. He'd always been a people person. And he despised gays after that," says Jeannette Eatton.

Six months after his release, a drunken, bitter Alan Eatton crashed his motorcycle and died. He'd just turned 20. In death, the young man from central Illinois drew an unlikely comparison to the famous T.E. Lawrence, who was almost undoubtedly raped in a Turkish prison. Lawrence -- solider, author, adventurer and champion of the Arab cause -- was a classic case of post-rape self-destruction. His dissolution involved self-imposed isolation, rage and depression; he abandoned his career and then died in a motorcycle accident that looked suspiciously suicidal.

More often than not, prison higher-ups ignore the problem. Utah prison officials, for instance, seeking accreditation of the system's medical facilities, maintained that there had never been a single rape in any Utah prison. Among the many nasty facts deflating the claim was a detailed trial transcript in which one inmate was convicted and sentenced to 15 years for raping a fellow prisoner.

In Massachusetts, following the Boston Globe expos?, corrections bureaucrats still felt free to deny reality -- even as a freshly raped convict was in the hospital under going rectal surgery.

Such denials are perfectly rational: To admit that inmates rape each other is to invite lawsuits. In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled in Farmer vs. Brennan that penitentiary officials are responsible for protecting prisoners from sexual predation. The case was launched by Dee Farmer, a pre-op transgender person serving 20 years for credit-card fraud, who was housed in a tank full of violent male prisoners -- where, to no one's surprise, Farmer was promptly and viciously gang raped.

Since then, several other inmates have tried to sue for damages after contracting HIV as jailhouse sex slaves. One Illinois case was filed by Michael Blucker, a 28-year-old, married man serving time for a nonviolent crime. Blucker says he was beaten, gang-raped and then coerced into a form of sex slavery. In at least two cases correctional officers allegedly escorted Blucker from cell to cell, where he was raped and forced to service customers who paid his prison-guard pimps with cigarettes, drugs and candy.

Despite the precedent set in Farmer's case, Blucker was not awarded damages. Upon his release he became a devout born-again Christian who treats his HIV with prayer rather than protease inhibitors.

The transformation from convict to "punk" usually begins in one of two ways. A younger inmate might be taken under the wing of an older inmate; once debt and dependence are established the older inmate will rape and "turn out" the young prisoner.

Alternatively, a gang of inmates may attack a weaker prisoner with overwhelming numbers and "punk" their prey. Once the victim has been "turned out," the aggressors announce their control to the general population, which in turn cements the deal through its tacit or active approval of the victim's new status. The freshly minted punk will find himself vulnerable to assault from all sides, as the prison grapevine informs everyone of his subordinate status. In the interests of survival, the targeted prisoner will usually choose one inmate as his "daddy" or "husband." In exchange for control of the punk, the "man" offers protection against other aggressors.

Although the "daddies" have sex with other men, they are, in the hyper-macho cosmology of prison, not homosexual -- because they are not sexually penetrated themselves. The cult of manhood -- and the struggle to defend, defile and define it -- is the axis around which the prison sex system turns.

The prison world's other subordinate "gender" is the "queens" -- transsexuals and cross-dressers who may embrace homosexual sex and a sexually submissive position in the prison hierarchy. Queens suffer sexual assault, but often they use their sexual powers and feminine charms to play stronger inmates off one another or to find a husband of their own liking.

By whatever route one arrives, the second sex of the Big House are, like many women outside, forced into roles that range from nurturing wife to denigrated, over-worked "whore."

The fatalistic logic of the joint explains away the workings of this system with a sort of macho karma: "He must have wanted it or he would have fought it off." The only one path of escape for the punk or potential punk is to kill his persecutor. But for a young man facing only five years it's a tough choice: be raped or commit murder and face a potential life sentence.

Convict and writer Jack Henry Abbot took the latter path. "I was even told by the pigs who transported me to prison that I was being sent there to be reduced to a punk, to be shorn of my manhood," wrote Abbot in his classic "In the Belly of the Beast." "They felt I would be less arrogant once I had been turned into a cocksucker ... Before I was twenty-one years old I had killed one of the prisoners and wounded another. I never did get out of prison. I never was a punk."

One of the few not-so-dark spots on the landscape is the San Francisco county jail system, run by maverick former lawyer Michael Hennessey and his right-hand man, Michael Marcum -- whose r?sum? includes fratricide and five years' hard time at Folsom Prison.

"The most important thing you can do," explains Hennessey, "is have a thorough system for vetting prisoners. You have to separate violent and nonviolent offenders and, within those categories, the vulnerable from dangerous." San Francisco also has a clear protocol that, unlike most jail and prison systems, does not force victims to name their attackers. Hennessey has also designed his two new jails to avoid "blind spots," the standard terrain of assaults. In 1998 the San Francisco jail system, with a daily population of about 2,000, had nine reported rapes. When asked what he thought the real number of rapes was, Hennessey paused. "I'd like to think it's not too much higher than that."
salon.com | August 23, 1999

HEADLINE: CALIFORNIA AND THE WEST;
TEARFUL VICTIM TESTIFIES ON PRISON RAPE;
COURT: EX-INMATE ALLEGES HE WAS PLACED IN A CELL WITH THE 'BOOTY BANDIT' AS PUNISHMENT FOR KICKING A GUARD. THE DEFENSE PORTRAYS WITNESS AS A MALCONTENT.

BODY:
In graphic and tearful testimony, former inmate Eddie Dillard told a jury here Tuesday that he knew the fate that awaited him when guards transferred him to the cell of Corcoran State Prison's notorious "Booty Bandit."

Telling jurors that his account was too painful to recall in every detail, Dillard said he pleaded with Officer Anthony Sylva that inmate Wayne Robertson was his documented enemy and a well-known rapist as Sylva led him to Robertson's cell that day in March 1993.

He said Sylva ignored his pleas and watched the cell door clang shut, vowing that he would check out Dillard's claim and if true, come back to relocate him.

But Dillard said no one returned and he was raped over and over during the next few days.

"I can't describe it," Dillard told the Superior Court jury, breaking down in tears. "Half of it I don't even want to remember. . . . I just remember him raping me again."

Sylva and colleagues Robert Decker, Joe Sanchez and Dale Brakebill are accused of aiding and abetting the rape of Dillard in the first trial of Corcoran guards in nearly a decade. Prosecutors allege that one of their motives was to punish Dillard, who had kicked a female guard at another prison.

The officers deny knowing about Robertson's history of raping at least a dozen cellmates and contend they had no ill motive in carrying out the cell transfer.

During his three hours on the witness stand Tuesday, Dillard said that after the first attack he told Sanchez that his life was in danger, but was left in Robertson's cell to endure another attack.

" Sanchez told me, 'You can hit a woman, but you can't hit him,' " Dillard said. "He laughed like it was a joke."

Dillard walked into the courtroom Tuesday only moments after Robertson, 6-foot-2 and 220 pounds, head shaved but for a small ponytail, was led from the witness stand in manacles. Robertson, 42, had just finished testifying that the guards brought Dillard to him to "teach him how to do his time."

The contrast between the two men--once members of the same Compton gang--could not have been more stark. Dillard, 130 pounds and swallowed up by a baggy white knit sweater, looked like a skinny teenager.

When he spoke, Dillard's voice came out almost squeaky. At one point, the judge ordered a break in the trial when the 29-year-old man began to sob and couldn't compose himself.

Just 10 feet away, the four officers sat in a row with heads bowed as Dillard recounted the rape.

Sgt. Decker then shook his head and smirked, and defense attorney Wayne Ordos leaned forward to the officers and questioned the sincerity of Dillard's tears. "It's show time," Ordos said, out of earshot of the jury.

Dillard traced his troubles with Robertson to 1991, when they first met at Tehachapi State Prison. Robertson was in for first-degree murder; Dillard had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for his role in a drive-by shooting.

Even though they had belonged to the same gang, Dillard said, they hadn't known each other on the street because of their age difference. He said that shortly after their meeting Robertson asked that they share a cell and made sexual advances. Dillard said he later caught Robertson leering at him in the shower and the two got into a fight, Robertson knocking him back with one punch. After that, prison reports first documented the inmates as enemies.

The fact that they were enemies should have precluded Robertson and Dillard from sharing a cell at Corcoran, according to corrections policy.

Dillard said he repeatedly told the officers about the bad blood between them, but to no avail. He said he was locked in a cell with Dillard for three days before he was able to flee when the cell door finally opened.

He suggested that officers then orchestrated a cover-up, which included canceling his doctor's appointment for a rape exam, spreading the word among other inmates that he was an easy mark, and pressuring him to drop his complaint to corrections officials in Sacramento. Dillard testified that Decker called him out of his new cell three months later and said that if he didn't drop the complaint, he could "put me back in the cell with Robertson."

Defense attorneys sought to portray Dillard as a malcontent who was quick to file complaints against guards.

During cross-examination, Ordos, who represents Sanchez, suggested that any sexual activity between the inmates was consensual. He pointed out that Dillard went to the doctor numerous times in the months after the incident and never mentioned a rape.

The trial is expected to last three more weeks. If convicted, the officers face up to nine years in prison.

Wayne Robertson, the rapist, told the superior court that victim Eddie Dillard should not have been put in his cell. Robertson claimed that the officers knew the rape would occur, but they allowed it to happen in order to teach Dillard a lesson.

"They knew Eddie Dillard was my enemy. And they knew who I was. They put Dillard in my cell for something to happen to him," Robertson testified.

The testimony comes in the fourth week of the Kings County trial of four officers accused of aiding and abetting the rape. If found guilty, the officers could face one to nine years.

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HANFORD, Calif. (AP) - Four guards have gone on trial, accused of using
a known sexual predator to rape an inmate as punishment for kicking a
female guard.

The alleged incident took place at the Corcoran State Prison, where
eight other officers face a later trial for allegedly setting up
gladiator-style battles among inmates for entertainment.

The guards are accused of putting 118-pound Eddie Dillard in the cell of
Wayne J. Robertson, a 230-pound sexual predator serving a life sentence.

Robertson admitted to a grand jury that he sodomized Dillard and
threatened to kill him if he put up a fight during the three days in
1993 when guards left the smaller man in the cell.

``Dillard should have never been put in the cell with me, period,''
Robertson testified to a grand jury. ``The Corrections Department used
me as a pawn to get inmate Dillard.''

for the whole article.. go to the src.
src: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/19991005/us/prison_rape_trial_2.html
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Posted November 4, 1999

BEAT THE DEVIL byAlexander Cockburn

California's Gulag on Trial

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elcome to Corcoran State Prison, 170 miles northwest of Los Angeles in the San Joaquin Valley; built at a cost of $271.9 million on what was once Tulare Lake, home of the Tachi Indians; opened in l988, designed for 3,000 prisoners, now holding 5,030. Kings County has dairies, cotton fields and two other state prisons besides. When they were selecting the jury for the ongoing trial of four correctional officers in the town of Hanford, fifteen miles from Corcoran, more than a third of the 500 residents called for jury duty said they worked at one of the prisons or had a relative in corrections.

This brings us to Eddie Dillard. In March l993 this slight man was sent to Corcoran's Security Housing Unit after kicking an officer. Two guards led him to a cell, opened the door, and Dillard stared up into the face of Wayne Robertson, a k a the Booty Bandit, 6 foot 2. Dillard knew Robertson. The man had made sexual overtures to him and they'd had a fight. Dillard had formally reported that he and Robertson should never be housed together.

"I'm not supposed to be in here," Dillard told the guards, who laughed and strolled away. Robertson knew and has testified to his role. Guards had told him Dillard "needs to learn how to do his time." For two days the Booty Bandit raped Dillard while guards ignored Dillard's hints that he was being attacked. Hints only, because Dillard didn't want to be killed as a snitch. Finally, Dillard, temporarily out of the

SOURCE: Excerpted from the 9 October, 1998, issue of the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition, from an article entitled, "5 Charged in Corcoran Prison Rape." Reprinted in the public service of the national interest of the American people.

Lawyers file for new trial in prison rape case