City Council questions Rikers officials over handling of sexual assault allegations from detainees

Published Apr 24, 2024 at 6:35 p.m. ET

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Published Apr 24, 2024 at 6:35 p.m. ET

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Far more allegations of sexual assault were recently made by detainees at Rikers Island than the number that the city ultimately reported under a federal law on sexual abuse in jails, New York City Council members said at an oversight hearing on Wednesday.

A City Council analysis of the most recent data from July 2022 to June 2023 showed that while there were nearly 1,400 grievances about sexual-related allegations filed by detainees, the Department of Correction reported just 246 total allegations under a federal mandate called the Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA, which requires prisons and jails to report allegations of sexual assault.

“Can you try and explain this discrepancy?” Councilmember Sandy Nurse asked a bevy of correction officials.

Correction officials said all complaints of sexual misconduct are investigated. But Assistant Commissioner Jonathan Levine added that after complaints are reviewed, some are determined to be not reportable under PREA.

“Every single complaint that comes to my office is taken seriously, and does get investigated,” he said.

Nurse replied, “It just feels like a stretch that that many” allegations would not be reportable under federal law.

Representatives from the city’s jail oversight agency, the Board of Correction, also said at the hearing that not all allegations made by detainees, including that of sexual misconduct, are actually being investigated.

In a PREA filing released on the morning of Wednesday’s hearing – two months late – the Department of Correction acknowledged mistakes. After noticing the “substantial decrease” in PREA-reportable complaints in the second half of 2023, the agency wrote that it conducted a probe and found 14 grievances filed by detainees, which should have received further review; six of those allegations were serious enough to warrant a full investigation under PREA.

“The available data on grievances filed by people in custody demonstrates that these issues weren’t unknown, they were just unaddressed,” Nurse added.

Sarena Townsend, a former deputy commissioner at the Department of Correction who oversaw PREA investigations until she was forced out of the job shortly after Mayor Eric Adams took office, said the discrepancy in reported incidents “is plainly suspicious.”

“On numbers alone, it bucks a historical trend where non-PREA sexual harassment claims outnumbered PREA abuse claims by approximately double – compared to six-fold here,” she said.

City Council members told correction department officials that the process for jail detainees to file grievances about alleged sexual assault and other issues related to their confinement is so cumbersome and opaque that detainees have trouble filing complaints and rarely get responses to the complaints they file.

“The [grievance] process is unnecessarily convoluted, and seems to be rarely actually followed,” Nurse said.

She said less than 15% of all grievances, including those that do not allege sexual misconduct, are formally resolved, according to the correction department’s data.

She cited a recent Gothamist analysis of 719 civil lawsuits documenting decades of alleged sexual assault by jail staffers against detainees. Many of the lawsuits claim that jail officials knew, or should have known, there was systemic sexual abuse occurring behind bars.

“This is why we’re having this hearing, and this is why opportunities to safely file a grievance is so important,” Nurse said.

Levine said two investigators are dispatched to investigate allegations of sexual abuse within 24 hours after they are raised. Claimants are brought to the medical clinic and moved to different housing units after they report misconduct, he said.

Only two of the eight City Council members who sit on the criminal justice committee, which convened the hearing, attended for the bulk of the meeting – Nurse and Councilmember Tiffany Caban.

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Matt Katz reports on public safety, focusing on decarceration and the equitable enforcement of laws. He has investigated abuse in ICE detention and covered former N.J. Gov. Chris Christie, sharing a Peabody Award for coverage of Bridgegate and writing a book, "American Governor: Chris Christie's Bridge to Redemption." Once upon a time, he wrote a syndicated dating column. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 609-217-8355.

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