EX-INMATE'S SUIT OFFERS VIEW INTO SEXUAL SLAVERY IN PRISONS

AUSTIN, Tex., - The inmates at the Allred Unit, a tough Texas
prison, mostly go by names like Monster, Diablo and Animal. They gave
Roderick Johnson, a black gay man with a gentle manner, a different
sort of name when he arrived there in September 2000. They called him
Coco. Under the protocols of the prison gangs at Allred, gay prisoners
must take women's names.

Then they are assigned to one of the gangs. "The Crips already had a
homosexual that was with them," Mr. Johnson explained. "The Gangster
Disciples, from what I understand, hadn't had a homosexual under them
in a while.

So that's why I was automatically, like, given to them."

According to court papers and his own detailed account, the Gangster
Disciples and then other gangs treated Mr. Johnson as a sex slave.

They bought and sold him, and they rented him out. Some sex acts cost
$5, others $10. Last month, a federal appeals court allowed a civil
rights lawsuit that Mr. Johnson has filed against prison officials to
go to trial.

The ruling, the first to acknowledge the equal protection rights of
homosexuals abused in prison, said the evidence in the case was
"horrific." "I was forced into oral sex and anal sex on a daily
basis," said Mr. Johnson, who has been living in a boarding house here
since his release in December. "Not for a month or two. For, like, 18
months." The phenomenon of sexual slavery in prison has only recently
emerged from the shadows.

Prison rape, in general, has received sporadic notice over the years
and sustained attention more recently, with the passage last year of a
federal law that aims to eliminate it. But there has never been a
comprehensive study of incarcerated gay men subjected to sexual abuse.
Discussing any form of prison rape is difficult.

It makes many people uncomfortable. Some find it amusing.

"It has been the subject of mockery and almost sadistic glee," said
Margaret Winter, associate director of the National Prison Project of
the American Civil Liberties Union. "But Roderick is a human being who
doesn't deserve this, not in a civilized society."

The civil liberties union represents Mr. Johnson in his lawsuit, which
will go to trial next summer.

Sipping a beer in the courtyard of a hotel this week, Mr. Johnson
displayed the affable good nature of the restaurant manager and car
salesman he used to be. He is a compact, trim man - 5 feet, 9 inches,
170 pounds - who dresses neatly, talks easily and has bright,
expressive eyes. "I'm the first person in my family to get a taste of
prison," he said, with more than a little shame.

His crimes were relatively minor and all nonviolent - burglary, a bad
check, cocaine possession - but they were enough to send him to
Allred, a maximum security prison 250 miles north of here, on the
Oklahoma border.

According to state prison records, Allred ranked second among the more
than 70 Texas prisons in the number of sexual assaults in the two
years ending in August 2003. It reported 50 out of 635, with the
Telford unit in Bowie County first, with 59. Mr. Johnson's suit says
he begged prison officials to move him to a unit called safekeeping,
where white and Hispanic homosexuals, former gang members and
convicted police officers lived.

He asked seven times, in writing. The officials did nothing, saying
Mr. Johnson's claims could not be corroborated. At prison hearings,
Mr. Johnson said, officials would take pleasure in his plight.

They suggested that he was enjoying the rapes, he said. Mr. Johnson
said they told him he had two choices.

One was to fight.

The other was to engage in sex. The officials deny they mishandled the
complaints and the ugly comments attributed to them. Carl Reynolds,
the general counsel of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which
runs the Texas prisons, said Mr. Johnson's complaints were properly
handled.

"These allegations were investigated by the internal affairs branch of
our agency," he said. "There seems to have been a lot of doubt about
his motives and his ability to present evidence."

He added that the problem of prison rape was real and that Texas was
committed to solving it. The new federal law, the Prison Rape
Elimination Act, says that, by a conservative estimate, 13 percent of
inmates in the United States are sexually assaulted in prison.

The law calls for research into the problem by the Justice Department,
which will recommend policy changes based on the studies.

A 2001 Human Rights Watch report on prison rape touched on the subject
of sexual slavery.

"Six Texas inmates, separately and independently, gave Human Rights
Watch firsthand accounts of being forced into this type of sexual
slavery, having been 'sold' or 'rented' out to other inmates," the
report said. Those inmates, and other Texas prisoners, told the group
that sexual slavery "is commonplace in the system's most dangerous
prison units." The group said it also "collected personal testimonies
form inmates in Illinois, Michigan, California and Arkansas who have
survived situations of sexual slavery." State prison systems elsewhere
in the country told Human Rights Watch that prison rapes were
relatively rare. Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, New Jersey,
Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Wisconsin reported fewer than
10 cases annually.

Arizona, New York and North Carolina reported 10 to 50. Mr. Johnson
filed his lawsuit in Federal District Court in Wichita Falls, Tex., in
April 2002, seeking protection and monetary damages.

His claims were spelled out in legal papers, 300 pages of sworn
testimony and a series of interviews.

Early in Mr. Johnson's time at Allred, a member of the Gangster
Disciples claimed Mr. Johnson as a sort of wife. The gang member
forced Mr. Johnson to make his bed, clean his cell and cook food for
him on a hot pot. He also forced Mr. Johnson to have sex with him.

Mr. Johnson was later sold to the Bloods and then to other gangs, he
said. Once, a bidding war broke out. He was told he was worth $100 in
the open market. "They would prostitute you out, sell you for $5 or
$10 of commissary," he said, referring to credit at the prison store.
"Or cigarettes. Or cash money." Once, Mr. Johnson was raped by eight
men, one after the other, he said in the suit. He was raped in cells
and stairwells, he said, but the showers were the worst. "It's like
throwing a piece of meat to a pack of wolves," he said. Throughout, he
was called Coco. The other prisoners used feminine pronouns - she, her
- - when they talked about him. "If you are homosexual," Mr. Johnson
said, "you are considered a female among these men and you will take
on the name of a female.

You do not go by the name Roderick because that's considered
disrespecting any man that's on the facility." Gang members humiliated
Mr. Johnson and other inmates for sport, in scenes reminiscent of the
abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. On March 17, 2002, according
to Mr. Johnson's court filings, members of a gang called the Mexican
Mafia forced him and a mentally ill man known as Alazar to masturbate
each other in the shower.

They repeatedly forced Alazar to insert his finger into Mr. Johnson's
anus and then to lick his own finger. Thinking back on his ordeal in
prison, Mr. Johnson said: "It broke my spirit. It broke my pride."

He grew up in a large farming family in Marshall, in northeast Texas.
His cousin, Sharon Bailey, recalled, "We all went to church together,
with my mother driving me, Roderick and his sister to Sunday school
each week." He joined the Navy at 17, visiting Thailand, Singapore and
Japan on the U.S.S. Alamo. His troubles started after he was
discharged, he said, when he burglarized a neighbor's house in
Marshall in 1992. He had fallen under the sway of a boyfriend who ran
with a bad crowd, he said. The crime earned him a 90-day sentence and
10 years of probation.

After serving his sentence, he went on to hold a series of decent
jobs, but drug use and the resulting probation violations put him back
in prison. A Texas prison, he said, is no place for a gay man.

"You've got rednecks here in Texas who run these prison systems," Mr.
Johnson said. "A black man suffering, especially a gay black man
suffering, is right up their alley."

At a deposition in 2002, a lawyer for the prison officials, Deven
Desai, questioned Mr. Johnson's religious faith, an issue with no
obvious connection to legal claims in the suit.

"How do you as a Christian man balance your homosexuality with your
Christianity?" Mr. Desai asked.

"I really don't feel that I'm any different from anyone else who
serves God," Mr. Johnson answered.

The doctors say he has post-traumatic stress disorder, and he receives
disability payments from Social Security. He shares a room in a
private boarding house for former prisoners, hard by the highway. He
takes antidepressants and goes to counseling to get through the days.
The nights, he said, are harder. "I'm trying to keep my sanity," he said.