1. INMATE ABUSES COST COUNTY
Cincinnati Post, The (OH) - August 8, 2005
Author/Byline: Kevin Eigelbach, Post staff reporter
Edition: Final
Section: News
Page: A4
Readability: >12 grade level (Lexile: 1360)
The Kentucky Association of Counties paid $317,500 this spring to settle five federal lawsuits against the Grant County Detention Center.
The Post obtained the settlement amounts by filing an Open Records Act request with the association.
Through its All Lines Fund, the association insures the jail and Grant County, as well as 113 other Kentucky counties and about 650
taxing districts.
Larry Crigler, the litigation manager for the association, declined to comment on the settlement amounts or the other cases pending
against the jail.
Six cases against the jail are still pending in federal court, and some contain worse accusations against those contained in the ones
settled so far.
For example, two former prisoners are claiming sexual assaults. The Post doesn't publish the names of sexual assault victims. The
victims are:
* An 18-year-old arrested on a traffic violation in February 2003, who says he was stripped, taken to a shower, burned with hot water,
covered in soap or lotion and raped by other prisoners. He was also forced to perform oral sex on at least one prisoner.
He says jailers knew what was going on through an informant in the cell but didn't stop it.
Five months after the assault, two inmates pleaded guilty to assault or sodomy charges in connection with the case.
* A man with a mental disability arrested in November 2002, who says jailers falsely told inmates he was serving time for molesting a
child. He says he was placed with a federal prisoner serving a life sentence, was raped and forced to perform oral sex on another prisoner.
He says he was placed in solitary confinement afterward to cover up his wounds. He was never treated medically or tested for sexually
transmitted diseases before his release.
Those two cases are scheduled for a settlement conference on Sept. 1. Also scheduled for a settlement conference on Sept. 1 is the case
of Billy Jo Killion, who says he was beaten by inmates, then placed in isolation so jailers could teach him a lesson.
Late last month, former inmates James R. Turner and a female, Larri R. Brown, sued the jail and asked the court to make theirs a class-
action suit.
The class would include any prisoners confined at the jail -- from the date of the jail expansion in 2000 to the present -- who feel they
were deprived of their rights by jailers' indifference to their safety.
Brown says she was in jail during 2004, and for one week was kept naked in a restraint jacket until she developed severe chafing and
blistering.
Jailed in December 2004, Turner said that despite his pleas to be placed elsewhere, jailers put him in a cell with inmates who had
threatened him.
In the beating that ensued, he claims he suffered permanent eye damage and had to have a surgical implant placed around his eye.
Upon his return from the hospital, he said he was placed in isolation for a week, then put back in the same cell where he was assaulted.
In another case, Jovanni Mangotti says that prisoners learned in June 2004 that he was a federal informant, but jailers did nothing to
protect him.
Federal records also show the jail settled five cases involving prisoners last spring, some involving beatings of prisoners, neglectful care
or harassment.
Record: 0508090027
Copyright: Copyright (c) 2005 The Cincinnati Post