Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 26, Number 11, 1 November 2009 — Native Hawaiian women file lawsuits over sex assault at Kentucky prison [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Native Hawaiian women file lawsuits over sex assault at Kentucky prison

By Liza Simon Public Affairs Specialist AKapolei woman who was incarcerated in a Kentucky jail says she was raped by one of the prison guards there. Pania Kalama-Akopian, 35, has heeome the second Hawai'i inmate at Otter Creek Women's Prison to sue the state of Hawai'i and the private prison's parent company, Corrections Corporation of America. In her circuit court lawsuit filed last month, Kalama-Akopian alleges that the state and CCA knew that Otter Creek was wracked by staff sexual misconduct but either covered up or failed to report several incidents. KalamaAkopian is also faulting the state's practice of sending away women inmates - mostly Native Hawaiian in ethnicity - to jails on the continental U.S. She is getting support from several Hawai'i prison reform advocates who argue that locking up inmates away fromhome compromises their safety and rehabilitation. Kalama-Akopian's accused attacker was fired from his prison job by CCA after allegations against him surfaced, according to an e-mail from CCA spokesperson Steve Owen. Charles Prater is Kentucky's first prison worker to face first-degree felony rape charges related to sex assault on the job. Lour Otter Creek employees in the last three years have been brought to trial on misdemeanor charges, Kentucky state records show. Kalama-Akopian last June sent letters about her assault to the governor and Hawai'i media. Her letters also provided names of 28 Hawai'i and Kentucky women inmates claiming to be the victims of similar improprieties committed by jail staff. Puhlie safety officials in Kentucky and Hawai'i responded to her complaints last July by sending investigative teams into Otter Creek. The Kentucky agency's findings, made puhlie in mid-September, show that Otter Creek failed to report seven sex assault complaints of Kentucky women to Kentucky authorities, as required under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act. The same law does not require that

Hawai'i inmates' allegations be reported to Kentucky authorities. Honolulu attorney Myles Breiner, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Kalama-Akopian, said that a CCA rule that incidents must be reported within five days prevented some Hawai'i inmates from exercising their right to file complaints. "With Pania and the others from Hawai'i, there were times when they have been kept in lockdown past the five days. When they do get back, they are told, 'Sorry, too late.' " As a condition of continuing its contract with CCA, the state of Kentucky is asking Otter Creek to fix lax reporting procedures and fully investigate inmate complaints, said spokesperson Jennifer Brislin with the Kentucky Justice and Puhlie Safety Cabinet. The prison is also being required to implement better staff training and electronic monitoring inside the institution and to hire more women to halanee its workforce, whieh is over 80 percent male, Brislin said. Hawai'i's report on Otter Creek has been completed and turned over for review to the office of the state attorney general, said deputy director of corrections Tommy Johnson. He said that under agency policy, the ongoing lawsuits prevent himfrompublicly discussing results of the investigation. Citing the ending the state's term of contract with Otter Creek, Hawai'i puhlie safety officials removed all 116 Hawai'i inmates from Kentucky in late August and September and transferred all but one back to Hawai'i prisons. Only Totie Nalani īauala remains incarcerated in a maximum-security jail in Denver, Colorado. She has 10 years left on two concurrent sentences. She was convicted in 2002 for killing an unarmed man in Waipahu. At the time of the incident, she was awaiting sentencing for a manslaughter conviction related to her being the drunk driver in a car crash, whieh killed her passenger. While at Otter Creek, Johnson said, she faced several disciplinary actions and was convicted in the assault of another inmate earlier this year. "Because of her history, we had no ehoiee but to change her medium-security status and reclassify Totie īauala as a maximum-custody See PRIS0NS on page 08

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We will need to look at the work we do in a different light. We will be held to nūllOU performing at a level where we ean monitor our outputs for results. — Stanton Enomoto, Chief Operating Of£cer, Offce of Hawaiian Affairs

SEEKING J U ST I C E

At a state Capitol protest rally, Lela Hubbard (front left) says her imprisoned relative Totie īauala is being punished for whistleblowing. - Photo: Liza Simon

PRISONS Continued from page 03

prisoner. We don't have the facilities in Hawai'i to maintain long-term and behavioral disruption issues of this type in a way

that is conducive to prisoner rehabilitation," he said. But at a "Bring Totie Home" rally last month, relatives and supporters said īauala is being punished for being a whistleblower and bringing attention to the unsafe conditions affecting Hawai'i inmates in privately run jails in the continental U.S. īauala in August filed the first lawsuit against the state and CCA alleging she was sexually assaulted by an Otter Creek guard in 2007. Pania Kalama-Akopian, who has now completed her seven-year prison sentence on drug-related charges, spoke at the rally: "About eight months into our time (at Otter Creek), they started singling out Hawai'i women . . . just to ruffle our feathers. They put us into lockdown with no write-ups." Kalama-Akopian said the Hawai'i women have no loeal support system and the guards take advantage of the situation. "(In Otter Creek), you are up against a very tight-knit community of prison workers. If you get a

write-up, you go to the adjustment officer and he is related to the guard. You get blind-sided, because everyone is related. What's worse for Hawai'i women is that some have burned their bridges and can't eall home for help," said Kalama-Akopian, who added that she considered herself "lucky" that nine members of her part-Hawaiian family eame to visit her in Wheelwright, Kentucky, last Christmas. Lela Hubbard, a relative of īauala, was at the rally, to ask lawmakers to stop the state's practice of sending inmates to privately run prisons on the U.S. continent. "The obvious reason that they do this is because it's so eheap," said Hubbard, referring to reports in Kentucky and Hawai'i media that Otter Creek workers receive minimum wages, compared to higher pay at federal or state-run facilities. "The thing that blows my mind is that we are supposed to be a country of law and fairness and we are not. The most vulnerable are hurt by the system and we should be protecting their rights. They did wrong, but that doesn't mean that they should have to pay and pay and pay." Hawai'i's exporting of prisoners outside the state eame under scrutiny at the Oct. 17 conference "Unlocking Justice" at Chaminade University. Carrie Ann Shirota, who is conducting research on prison reform under a 2009 fellowship with the Soros Foundation, said the state's practice prevents offering the largely Native Hawaiian prison population culturally based programs, whieh, she said, have been proven to help reduce recidivism and lower the likelihood that children of incarcerated parents will heeome offenders later in life. Johnson said his agency sends prisoners out of Hawai'i, because the state's prison populahon has doubled, while the state has not built a new jail in more than 25 years. "Either we send themaway to be housed andrehabilitated," he said, "or we have the federal government knocking on our door in respect to overcrowded and inhumane conditions." ■

Former Ofter Creek inmale Pania Kalama-Akopian protests incarceration of a Native Hawaiian woman in a Colorado jail. - Photo: Uza Simon