Juvenile prisons are supposed to rehabilitate troubled teens, but thousands of Indiana's inmates, some as young as 13, have been placed at risk of rampant sexual violence and harassment -- often from the men and women paid to watch over them. Sex crimes inside juvenile prisons have long escaped public scrutiny in Indiana. Although incidents of rape and other sexual assault have broken into news headlines on occasion, the frequency with which state workers -- on the job and paid with tax dollars -- have had sex with young inmates was hidden behind a curtain of denial, unspoken acceptance and complacency.
The scope of the problem finally became clear this year after the U.S. Department of Justice released results of a startling investigation that found that 36.2 percent of inmates at the Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility reported they had been sexually assaulted inside the prison. More than 31 percent of inmates said a staff member had sexually abused them. That was more than four times the percentage of inmates who said they were the victims of sexual offenses committed by other juveniles.
The federal investigators, who visited prisons from June 2008 to April 2009, reported that Pendleton had the second-highest rate of sexual abuse among 195 facilities across the nation.
Shortly before the Justice Department investigation was made public, four female Pendleton employees were accused of having sex with or sending explicit photos of themselves to an 18-year-old inmate. The women were eventually fired and charged with sex-related crimes.
Sex inside prison, especially when it involves a staff member with an inmate, is frequently coerced or forced. "There's no true consent when one party holds the key to another's freedom," said Lovisa Stannow, executive director of Just Detention International, a human-rights organization focused on ending sexual abuse in prisons. A shift in attitudes
Yet, both the public and professionals in the field have long viewed prison rape -- even rape of juveniles -- as an unavoidable consequence of a criminal conviction.
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