Ten U.S. female inmates of who say male workers raped and sexually abused them in a state prison were awarded 15.5 million U.S. dollars Friday. The jury's decision was unanimous, and the panel's foreperson took the rare step of apologizing to the women on behalf of citizens of Michigan.
The Department of Corrections plans to appeal. Spokesman Russ Marlan said the department fired workers if the allegations were substantiated, but that many of the allegations did not come out until trial.
He said the women testified that they did not report abuse because they were afraid of retaliation. "If we are to investigate an allegation, we need to know about it," Marlan said.
But one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs said state attorneys called the women liars and questioned the inmates' credibility at trial. The jury agreed with the prisoners, attorney Deborah LaBelle said, finding a sexually hostile prison environment existed at Scott Correctional, the state knew about it and failed to protect the women.
"For the first time, these women were told that they're believed and they're humans and this is not something we do to people in the name of the state," LaBelle said.
In recent years, male guards have been moved out of female prisons in Michigan as required by an agreement reached with the U.S. Justice Department in 1999, which came after the state was sued based on a federal investigation into sexual abuse complaints.
The 10 women in the case will receive amounts ranging from 335,000 dollars to 3.6 million dollars, depending on several factors, including the frequency and extent of abuse, according to the Free-Press. Once interest is tallied, they could receive about 30 million dollars. The lawsuit was filed in 1996 but had been tied up in courts.
Seven of the plaintiffs are current inmates — three serving life terms — and three are former prisoners. They all were or are incarcerated at Robert Scott Correctional Facility in Plymouth, one of Michigan's three female prisons.
Source: Xinhua
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