We have a lady here in CCCF that was sexually harassed in Washington County Jail. She says she thought the deputy was going to let her out, so she took her clothes off. He asked her to do it in her cell where the cameras couldn’t see. She said every time he walked by her cell she would dance in her underwear. She never reported him, but he was still fired for doing the same thing to another lady. She can’t work in the kitchen at CCCF because she has a history of self-harm. When she can’t find anything to cut herself with, she pulls her eyelashes out. We are hopeful she’s no longer being sexually harassed in CCCF. Sexual harassment damages a woman’s self-worth and self-respect. We are working with her to try and make sure she finds those important things again. She has decided to leave behind the relationships she had that over-sexualized her and wants to find someone that loves her beyond biology and doesn’t objectify her.
We have another lady here at CCCF that got a disciplinary report for pushing a handicapped lady in a wheelchair. Another lady got a DR as well for sleeping under her bed. The DR said “unauthorized area” because she was out of view. If she was out of view, then how did they see her in the first place? At this point, these disciplinary reports just seem like harassment. It’s not an officer’s job description to harass prisoners and those that feel it is, need to reconsider why they chose the job in the first place.
One lady is being forced to work in the kitchen at CCCF with rheumatoid arthritis and is in a lot of pain. There is a healthy lady whose feet hurt so bad from working, she tried to get in trouble just so she could rest. We had a lady with an artificial back and plates in her face who fell twice while working in the dish room. She said she didn’t want to work there anymore and we saw her being escorted out of the kitchen in handcuffs.
Ladies that self-harm here at CCCF get rewarded by the prison when they don’t do it for certain periods of time. This seems like more encouragement to self-harm because they get things like more time out of their cells and they they get to watch music videos. The ladies that don’t self-harm don’t get these privileges.
One lady at CCCF says that it’s discrimination against her as a minority that they gave her a disciplinary report. She says she really wanted to get into the firefighter’s program and they gave her the report so they could take her level away from her. At CCCF, when a prisoner gets to a higher level, they get more privileges like being hired for better jobs, getting a craft box, and being able to get acrylic nails from cosmetology. This is the same lady that was arrested for using a plastic mug to make coffee and we believe the whole reason she is here is discrimination. She doesn’t even have enough money on her books to purchase stamped envelopes for her legal mail.