Women moved from NYC Rikers jail to state prison claim they face violence, abuse; plan class action suit
Women transferred to a state prison because of the crisis at Rikers Island have been threatened with violence and subject to beatings, strip searches and male officers’ ogling as they take showers, says a lawyer planning a lawsuit on their behalf.
“These women are being punished because of the staffing issue at Rikers,” said the lawyer, Tahanie Aboushi. “If the staff doesn’t want to show up, the solution shouldn’t be that these women are transferred wherever and subjected to these conditions.”
The lawsuit, to be filed in Manhattan Federal Court, seeks a court order stopping all transfers of female pre-trial detainees from Rikers to state prisons and reversing the transfers that have taken place.
The filing is expected to name as defendants the city, high-ranking state prison officials and staff at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County.
The women, each of them awaiting trial, were among some 118 transferred through Tuesday from the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers to Bedford Hills.
The transfers were supposed to provide “relief” for “vulnerable populations on Rikers” during the staffing, overcrowding and conditions crisis of the late summer and fall, Gov. Hochul and Mayor de Blasio said when they announced the move Oct. 13.
But the women claim the transfer program has been a nightmare — itself a punishment without due process.
The detainees’ problems go beyond being shipped 44 miles north of the city, further away from their families, the lawsuit is to say.
The women so fear retaliation at Bedford Hills, Aboushi said, they’ll be named in the case under pseudonyms — Sue Brown, Ann Johnson and Mary Davis.
Brown, according to the lawsuit, was attacked by a correction officer Nov. 9. The officer, who outweighed her by 150 pounds, allegedly told her, “You want a f------ problem? You think you’re f------ tough?” and then choked her and threw her against a set of stairs.
The officer then punched her twice in the face, shouting, “What’s up now? You’re state property now.”
Brown was placed in solitary for eight days and then charged with assaulting the officer. But a security video of the incident proved the officer’s assault allegation was false and that he had indeed assaulted her, the lawsuit said.
“There was no discipline against the officer, and they swept it under the rug,” Aboushi said.
Another detainee, Ann Johnson, claims a second officer told a group of the women he would order sentenced inmates to beat up the detainees, the lawsuit claims. The third, Mary Davis, claims she was regularly threatened with physical harm by officers.
All three women claim they underwent extremely invasive strip searches, in violation of their Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures, the lawsuit alleges. Male officers also repeatedly walked in on them in the shower while they were naked, the women said.
In the rush to transfer them, the women claim, they all lost personal possessions and had to throw away food and weren’t allowed to take clothing, costing the three of them hundreds of dollars in lost items in total, the lawsuit claims.
“These are grave constitutional violations. They are not property, they are people,” Aboushi said. “It has delayed their cases and interfered with their attorney’s ability to access them. It’s exacerbated an already difficult situation.”
The transfers were opposed in October by some 50 organizations including the National Organization for Women and the Center for Constitutional Rights. A petition against the move was signed by 128 people in the Singer Center.
Of the 118 who were transferred, there are currently 107 at Bedford, six have been released, four were sentenced and a transgendered detainee asked to be sent back to Rikers, according to the Correction Department.
The city Law Department declined comment, noting that the city has not been served with papers in the case.
