Female Officers Say They Were Assaulted By Inmates At Rikers Island: REPORT

Two female officers said they were assaulted by inmates at Rikers Island in New York, New York, the New York Post reported on Monday.

The female corrections officers are both single moms in their 30s who support their families by working at the understaffed jail, according to the NYP. One of the officers now walks around the facility with her back to the wall after an inmate put his hands on her, and another woman said she has thought about committing suicide after an inmate assaulted and attempted to rape her.

“I have so much anger built up and so much hurt,” a 34-year-old officer from Queens, New York, told the NYP. She said an inmate rescued her from another man who held down and choked her on the floor of a pantry at the Anna M. Kross Center at Rikers in June 2019.

“He doesn’t know what he did to my life,” the officer added, according to the NYP. “When I walk outside, my head is on a swivel. Every day I’m in pain, every day I’m triggered.”

The officer was transferred out of the men’s facility into a unit holding women and transgender people, but her request to move to a position where she wouldn’t be in contact with inmates was denied, the NYP reported.

“Suck my dick” male inmates frequently tell the other female officer, a Brooklyn mom with two children, proceeding to masturbate through holes in the cell doors while she checks on the facility, the NYP reported. Both officers are called “bitch” and “whore” by inmates on a daily basis.

“It’s degrading, especially when you speak to them about their behavior and they don’t feel no remorse. They still try to talk to you crazy and disrespectful,” one officer told the NYP. “Because not much is done, it’s almost as if it becomes like a normal thing — but you know it’s not normal because you sit down with other females and you talk about how gross it is.”

More than 20 Department of Correction employees were sexually assaulted by inmates this year, according to the Correction Officers Benevolent Association union, the NYP reported. Following these incidents, only about half of the inmates were re-arrested and only six were indicted.