PRISON SEXUAL ABUSE CALLED OUT OF CONTROL

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. Former inmate Ashley Turner was not surprised to hear
that investigators had raided a federal prison to arrest guards accused of
having sex with inmates. She said she was pressured by guards at the same
facility.

Wednesday's raid set off a deadly shootout when one of the guards pulled a
handgun on federal agents. But the confrontation also raised new questions
about whether men should be assigned to guard women's prisons.

Turner said she never had sex with guards at the Tallahassee Federal
Correctional Institution, but they coerced her to strip and touch herself
sexually. She said other inmates would have sex with guards in exchange for
cell phones, money and marijuana.

The sex-for-contraband scheme had been going on for years, she said, and
involved more than the six guards who were indicted.

"That list should probably be three times longer," said Turner, who was
released in 2004 for bank fraud. "These are just the ones who hung around
long enough to get arrested."

Authorities said corrections officer Ralph Hill, an Air Force veteran, had
smuggled a gun into the prison and opened fire as FBI agents and Justice
Department investigators arrived.

Hill, 43, and Justice Department special agent William "Buddy" Sentner were
killed in the exchange, and a prison employee helping with the arrests was
wounded.

Just two days earlier, nine former guards at a juvenile facility in
Indianapolis were charged with having sex with female detainees as young as
13, and there have been other allegations throughout the country.

In a 2004 study of more than 2,700 correctional facilities for men and
women, charges of sexual misconduct by employees were made in all but one
state prison surveyed by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. Similar
accusations were made against more than two of every five local jails.

From fiscal years 2000 to 2004, the Justice Department opened
investigations of 351 people accused of sexually abusing federal inmates.

"The bottom line is that women in correctional facilities should be guarded
by women," said Alison Parker, acting director of the New York-based U.S.
Human Rights Watch. "Men have been assigned to inappropriate tasks in
inappropriate locations, for example: Male corrections officials guarding
women where they take showers."

Dr. Roger Guthrie said he was fired from the Carswell Federal Medical
Center in Fort Worth, Texas, after he complained about the sexual abuse of
prisoners, which he said was rampant.

"There is no such thing as consensual sex with an inmate," Guthrie said
Thursday. "It's rape. And it's still going on."

In the Tallahassee case, in addition to bribing the inmates for sex, the
guards were accused of threatening to plant contraband in their belongings
or have them shipped to another facility farther from friends and families
if they reported the illegal activity.

"Sometimes allegation doesn't mean that person is guilty," said Mike
Marrett, assistant director of corrections for the American Federation of
State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 63,000 corrections
officers nationally.

The surviving five Tallahassee guards all pleaded not guilty.

Turner, who now lives in Rome, Ga., said she knew all of the indicted guards.

"One is known as "the Rev," she said. "He's a minister away from the
prison. He was very, very bad. He'd pretend to be ministering with the girls."

She said she is still troubled by what happened while she was imprisoned.

"You don't get over a place like Tallahassee overnight," Turner said. "It's
not doing the time, but it's what happens to you when you're there trying
to do the time."