Sex in Prison --Too Often a Guard Plays a Role in Affair

She was 28, in prison for the first time and scared. Nothing that happened at the federal prison here allayed her fear.

Within a month of her arrival, she said, a guard took her aside and forced her to have sex with him. “I knew the minute it happened that I was pregnant. I don’t know why or how. I just knew,” she said, speaking on condition that her full name not be used.

On Valentine’s Day, 1985, she gave birth to a girl. She was able to spend three days with the baby in a hospital. When she was returned to prison, a foster parent took custody of the baby. That was the last time she saw the girl.

Within days, the federal Bureau of Prisons transferred the woman, named Donna, 3,000 miles to the prison at Alderson, W. Va., then refused to let her return to Alameda County for custody hearings. Now out of prison, pained by the experience, she has given up hope of regaining custody.

Guard Denies Misconduct

“I wanted to keep her because she was a part of me. But she has been in foster care for three years. I haven’t seen her in three years. She doesn’t know me,” said Donna, 32, who served half of an eight-year sentence for bank robbery.

The guard accused by Donna denies any misconduct, although he was fired for having sexual encounters with other inmates. But hers is far from the only complaint of sexual harassment or misconduct within the federal prison system. In some instances, inmates may seduce prison staff into becoming emotionally involved. In others, staff and inmates willingly get involved. But no matter who initiates the affairs, they are grounds for firing and, as a result of a recently enacted law, a crime.

And in almost any given year, more federal prison employees are fired or forced to resign for “inappropriate relationships” with inmates--ranging from sexual encounters to becoming too friendly--than for any other type of malfeasance, Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Kathryn Morse said.

The problem, while not epidemic, is persistent. At three of the five federal prisons that house most of the federal system’s 2,800 women inmates, staff members have been fired or forced to quit at a rate of more than three a year since 1982 for sexual misconduct directed at inmates, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

In 1986, the most recent year for which statistics have been compiled, 17 federal prison employees were fired or suspended throughout the prison system for having “inappropriate relationships” with inmates.

Documents obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act reflect misconduct ranging from alleged rape, to seemingly consensual sex, to correctional staff members who smuggled lover-inmates such niceties as birthday cakes. In such a case, a medical assistant at Pleasanton was fired in 1985 for taking her inmate-lover food and jewelry and joining the woman inmate at an after-hours fling in the infirmary whirlpool. One inmate attempted suicide after allegedly being coerced into having sex with a prison employee.

Hard to Be ‘Firm and Fair’

“We try to be firm and fair in our dealings with the inmate. Well, how can you be firm and fair with the inmates when there’s one of them that you’ve got this emotional thing with?” Pleasanton Warden Rob Roberts asked.

Other officials cited other potential problems: Smitten staff members might help inmate-lovers escape, or freeze in a riot, endangering themselves and other guards, or be blackmailed into smuggling in contraband. Some cases released by the Bureau of Prisons suggest that if staff members did not cross the line into corruption, they came close. In a 1984 Fort Worth case, a female guard obtained money from an inmate with whom she had sex.

“If it does develop into a love relation, all kinds of things can happen,” said Jerry Williford, Western regional director of the federal prison system. “I consider it to be a pretty extreme problem, maybe noti in numbers, but in terms of impact. It totally compromises that staff member’s effectiveness.”

The problem is complicated by difficulties in investigations. An inmate’s word alone will not suffice as grounds for disciplining a staff member, Williford said. At the same time, inmates are reluctant to come forward, fearing staff reprisal, or worried that they won’t be believed or will be labeled a snitch. All of that leads prison officials, critics and inmates to conclude that more sexual misconduct goes on than is reported.

“I think there are more out there. You got the ones we were able to prove,” Williford said.

At prisons like Fort Worth and Pleasanton, which house men and women, rape and other violence common at all-male prisons drops markedly, prison experts say. But officials find that “co-correctional” prisons create their own problems, or at least potential problems. One is that men must guard women.

“Neither staff nor inmates feel comfortable when opposite-sex staff have to supervise private areas such as the bedroom or showers,” said Sue Mahan, who, as an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of El Paso, studied staff and inmate attitudes at the Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Worth in 1985.

According to federal records, between 1982 and 1987 there were 22 investigations involving 26 employees at the five facilities that house women for long periods of time. (There are 47 federal prisons in all.) At the federal prison at Fort Worth, nine were fired or forced out; two were fired at Lexington, Ky., and nine were ousted at Pleasanton. No cases were reported at prisons in Morgantown and Alderson, W. Va.

There were no prosecutions, but that may change. Charles Turnbo, warden at Fort Worth and formerly warden at Pleasanton, pointed to a little-noticed clause in the new Sexual Abuse Act of 1986 making it a crime, punishable by a year in prison, for a prison employee to have sex with an inmate.

‘Position of Power’

“We’re in a position of power over an inmate. Where an inmate says yes, it might not be a voluntary response,” Turnbo said.

Prison critics agree that inmates would find it hard to refuse an unwanted advance or end an affair, knowing that they would be vulnerable to the whims of a spurned lover who also is their keeper.

“There’s an awful lot that a woman can lose. If they don’t cooperate or if a situation becomes unfriendly, they can lose their (release) dates,” said Ellen M. Barry, a San Francisco lawyer who specializes in the rights of women prisoners.

Many prison officials and employees, however, place blame on manipulative and seductive inmates.

“Everyone has their breaking point,” said a former Pleasanton guard who was fired in 1984 for an “inappropriate relationship”--giving his home telephone number to an inmate and accepting collect calls from her. He recalled how inmates offered themselves to him. “It’s a game to them,” he said, adding that men should not be asked to guard women, particularly during late night watches.

However, Bernice Sandler, who has studied sexual harassment for the American Assn. of Colleges, responded by saying: “If these women are tempting the men, and the men (guards) can’t resist their biological urges, they have no business being there.”

Admit Courting Affairs

Some inmates acknowledge that prisoners may court such affairs, believing that they do receive benefits in the form of favored treatment or contraband.

“A lot of time, women are just lonely. It’s just a whim. The opportunity presents itself,” said Samantha Lopez, the convicted bank robber who escaped from Pleasanton in November, 1986, when her fugitive inmate-lover piloted a helicopter into the exercise yard and swooped her away.

But while Lopez also said some inmates see their decision to have sex with a prison employee as being “a small price to pay for getting what they want,” other women are troubled and confused by unwanted advances.

One such inmate was Judy Caranna, sentenced to Fort Worth for fraud and viewed by prison authorities as somewhat unstable. In the Bureau of Prisons report of the case, Caranna alleged that during confinement in the prison infirmary for depression, a physician’s assistant warned that if she refused him she would no longer be allowed to have sex with her inmate-lover. She told of having sex with the man twice, once “voluntarily,” once forced.

Caranna, since released from prison, recalled in an interview that at first she worried that she would be ignored. Frustrated and confused, she slashed her wrists in a suicide attempt.

Good Guys, Bad Guys

“The people who were supposed to be good guys were bad guys. It was too much for me,” Caranna said.

The Bureau of Prisons’ report included allegations that the same man seduced or tried to seduce three other women prisoners. The medical assistant denied any wrongdoing but quit before the investigation was completed, according to Bureau of Prisons documents.

A few months later, in October, 1984, authorities at Pleasanton were faced with another sensitive case. According to Bureau of Prisons reports, the guard involved was Leslie DeVille, 34, a Navy veteran who had gone to work at the prison nine months earlier.

At first inmates would not come forward, saying they feared reprisals from DeVille. But in the end, four prisoners did tell of encounters with him. The Bureau of Prisons investigator wrote that they “appeared to be genuinely ashamed of their actions.” One, he wrote, even broke into tears when she recounted the episode.

In his written response to prison officials, DeVille emphatically denied “having sexual relationship or engaging in any sexual act with any inmate at this institution.” He also offered to take a polygraph test on the allegations.

However, the Bureau of Prisons concluded that DeVille was “incapable of controlling his sexual desire in the work place,” and “appears to have used his position as a correctional officer to impose these desires on women.”

Wanted an Abortion

He was fired on Nov. 20, 1984. Before he was fired, a fifth inmate, Donna, came forward. Three years later, she still finds it all painful to discuss. She had wanted an abortion, she said, but that would have meant telling authorities. She even considered a self-inflicted abortion. But for six months, despite her slight 5-foot-4 frame, she was able to hide her pregnancy. Uncertainty continued, then it was too late.

“I didn’t really know to who to go. They would think I was pushing myself on him. I hadn’t,” she said.

After Donna’s allegations about DeVille, prison officials called in the FBI to investigate, according to Bureau of Prisons documents. The FBI declined to discuss the case, but no charges were filed. The Bureau of Prisons decision to fire DeVille did not mention the allegations by Donna.

Through her attorney, William A. Dougherty of Orange County, Donna sued the government and DeVille over the incident. U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick dismissed the case last year. An appeal is pending in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In an interview, DeVille described himself as a good officer, one who aggressively pursued wrongdoing. He attributed his firing to an incident in which he cited for misconduct an inmate who had influence at the prison and who orchestrated his dismissal.

Never Contacted by FBI

He denied any inappropriate relationships with inmates, including Donna, and said he was never contacted by the FBI.

“What they did was unjust,” he said. “Like I said then, and I’ll say now, and I’ll say it forever, I didn’t do anything wrong.”

For its part, the Bureau of Prisons, as it does each year, produced a statistical report of inmate pregnancies for fiscal year 1984-1985. Forty prisoners became pregnant that year--36 by other inmates, two while on furlough, one in a halfway house, and, in a final notation, the report said, one inmate got pregnant by “staff.” Spokeswoman Morse confirmed the Bureau of Prisons’ belief that the pregnancy was Donna’s and that DeVille was the unidentified staff member.

Officials and critics, meanwhile, consider how to stop such conduct. More training may be an answer. But some officials say they hesitate to point out the obvious, that common sense should dictate that relationships with inmates is wrong.

“The fact is,” Roberts said, “that this prison environment is the worst place in the world to keep a secret. All the correctional workers know that. But they still get involved. . . . The flesh is weak. What do you do to stop it? I don’t know. Wish I did.”