Role of Guard Investigated in Visit to Barry

Federal officials are investigating allegations that a prison guard helped arrange a visit from a woman who allegedly performed oral sex on former Mayor Marion Barry in a public visiting room, a prison spokesman said Sunday.

Barry has denied, through his attorney, that any sexual activity occurred.

“We’re going to go ahead and take a look at it,” Gregory Bogdan, spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, said of the allegation from Floyd Archer Robertson, another inmate.

Federal officials refused to identify the guard who was on duty at the Petersburg, Va., prison at the time of the alleged encounter on Dec. 29. Bogdan would not say whether the guard was reassigned or placed on administrative leave.

Robertson, in jail for distributing a controlled substance, told prison officials that the guard, with Barry’s knowledge, helped to get the woman visitor admitted.

“It was quite implied that (she) was a hooker,” the Washington Times quoted Robertson as saying in its Sunday editions. “I can say with all certainty it was not someone who had been put on the visitors’ list by (Barry).”

Barry, a three-term Washington mayor, was convicted last year of possessing cocaine. He began serving a six-month term Oct. 26.

Barry’s lawyer, Kenneth Mundy, said Barry did have visitors on Dec. 29 but would not identify them.

Bogdan said that if the allegations are found to be true, Barry could face disciplinary action, from curtailment of visiting to transfer to a more secure prison.