An Investigation Into Accusations of Serial Sexual Abuse on Rikers Island

Title: An Investigation Into Accusations of Serial Sexual Abuse on Rikers Island [theme music]

Matt Katz: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Matt Katz, reporter in the WNYC newsroom, and I'm taking Brian's spot today. For the next 20 minutes or so, we're going to be talking about sexual violence. If that's troubling to you to hear at this moment, please, turn down the radio, come back to us at about 11:15. Our guest is my colleague in the newsroom here at Gothamist and WNYC, Jessy Edwards, who, along with reporter Samantha Max and editor Christopher Werth, has spent months looking at decades of sexual abuse at Rikers Island.

What these journalists did is they went through hundreds and hundreds of lawsuits filed under New York's Adult Survivors Act. Now, that law gave people a one-year window allowing civil lawsuits to be filed over allegations of sexual abuse that might otherwise have been too old to file over. These civil suits were not intended to be for jailed detainees, necessarily, but most of those suits ended up being centered on abuses allegedly perpetrated at Rikers Island.

Over the course of their nine-month investigation, our journalists found about 700 women filed suits alleging sexual assault, particularly at Rosie's, the women's jail at Rikers. They reported the details of those findings earlier this year and you can find their new reporting in stories posted on gothamist.com this week and in a special episode of NYC Now, our daily podcast, which will air on Saturday. This new reporting centers on two specific correction officers allegedly responsible for some of these sexual assaults, and it dives deeply into the stories of some of their victims. Jessy's articles also explain what city officials are doing, or more to the point, not doing about all of this. Hi, Jessy.

Jessy Edwards: Hi, Matt.

Matt Katz: Thanks for coming on. When you started going through these lawsuits from women alleging they were sexually assaulted at Rikers, certain officer's names kept popping up. Did you start just noticing this as you were going through these suits, as you were going through these files?

Jessy Edwards: Yes. We first got a list of all of the lawsuits filed under the Adult Survivors Act back in December, and we narrowed down into looking at the lawsuits filed in New York City. It was there that we found that more than 700 of these lawsuits contained allegations from women who were formerly detained at the women's jail, Rosie's, who said that they were sexually assaulted by jail staff. Samantha Max and I, we were pouring through these lawsuits.

We made a spreadsheet, and we spent months actually going through it, nights, weekends, and logging details from the lawsuits as we went. If there was an officer named in the lawsuit, in these allegations, we would log their name. We logged the places where the alleged assaults took place, the dates, obviously. As we were going through over this months-long process, we started to notice certain names coming up over and over again. I should note, many of the women, they only knew the last names of the officers they say assaulted them.

We're going through, and some names are coming up over and over again. For example, the name Officer Brown came up more than 50 times. It's a very common name. Then we noticed this uncommon name was coming up very frequently and that name was Officer Champagne. All up, after we finished going through all 700 of the lawsuits, we found that there were 23 lawsuits that named this one Officer Champagne and it was really startling.

First of all, because it's a strange name, and second of all, because when I reached out to the city's Office of Payroll Administration to ask, what is the first name of the city employee, the office told me that it didn't have any record of an officer with the name Champagne working at the Department of Correction during the claim dates so it was a mystery. We went back through the lawsuits with a fine tooth comb, and that's when we realized that in four of these lawsuits, the woman said that they believed this name, Champagne might be a nickname and that they, in fact, knew the real name of this officer, which they said was Fant.

Matt Katz: It was a nickname in that he-- This is what he went by. This was on his badge or a name tag. Is that how they explained it?

Jessy Edwards: That's right. I ended up speaking with four of the women who have allegations that this C.O. Champagne, this Officer Champagne, sexually assaulted them while they were in jail. These women told me that they all knew this officer by the name Champagne and that he wore that name on a silver name tag, which is against department policy. You have to wear your real name, obviously, while working as an officer on Riker's Island.

Matt Katz: He had his own nametag made up, and then they didn't know his real name because that's the name that was on there. Incredible. What were the allegations about Champagne or this officer, "Champagne?"

Jessy Edwards: The allegations, they go back from the late '80s right through to the early 2000s. These women who were detained at that time, the allegations vary, but some say that he groped them, some say that he forced them to perform oral sex, and others say that this officer raped them. I actually spoke with one woman who filed allegations against Correction Officer Champagne, who says that she went into jail and took a pregnancy test and she was not pregnant when she went in, and that she alleges that this Officer Champagne impregnated her.

She says that she actually had a miscarriage in jail and she says that jail staff took her to Elmhurst Hospital, where she had a procedure to remove the tissue from her uterus and that she was sent back to jail with no inquiry into how she might have got pregnant in the woman's jail.

Matt Katz: This is Lisa. Is that the victim?

Jessy Edwards: This is Lisa, yes.

Matt Katz: You have this haunting line in your story, "No one ever asked how she came to be pregnant inside a woman's only jail." There was no follow-up, she said there was no investigation, there was no questions about this thing that happened.

Jessy Edwards: No, that's right. Another woman who I spoke to who alleges she was raped by Officer Champagne in 1999, she says that she tried to report her allegations at the time and instead of there being an investigation, she was put into a mental observation unit and given medication, Prozac and Seroquel, which she thought was her punishment for speaking up. I want to note as well, these lawsuits are filed against the city of New York. They're not filed against the individual officers.

The women are saying that the city of New York and jail officials allowed this alleged abuse to happen and that they're responsible for allowing women in their care to be assaulted by jail staff.

Matt Katz: Listeners, have you been incarcerated at Rikers Island, maybe at Rosie's? Do you have family members who have been at Rikers or have you worked there? Do you know anything about incidents of sexual assault there, the way investigations are handled or not? Or do you have questions for Jessy Edwards about her reporting? Give us a call, 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Jessy, we have a recording of an interview that you did with that woman. This is Karen Klines, right?

Jessy Edwards: Karen Klines, yes.

Matt Katz: She said she was addicted to crack cocaine at the time. This is during the Giuliani administration. She was swept up. Give us a little context of what was going on at the time in terms of the number of women who were being incarcerated in the city of New York.

Jessy Edwards: Yes. Many of these claims that include the name Officer Champagne, the allegations are in the 1990s. This is a period of mass incarceration for women in the city. As you mentioned, Rudy Giuliani is mayor at broken windows, at stop-and-frisk. In 1996, the city actually recorded the highest number of women detained pre-trial at Rosie's ever on record. More than 13,700 women. It was overflowing with women. They had to keep women in an adjacent men's jail.

One of the women I spoke to describes how when she went in, it was so packed, it was like a beauty pageant. That's the period. That's the exact year that one of the women I spoke to, Tasha Carter Beasley, was detained and Karen Klines was detained at that time as well.

Matt Katz: Let's hear a little bit from your interview with Karen Klines.

Karen Klines: They labeled me as crazy.

Jessy Edwards: Did they investigate it? What happened?

Karen Klines: They said no more to me about it. Then I was under the influence of so much medication, I just suppressed it because I felt that was my reason for ending up at a general population now because I didn't open my mouth. No one cared. No one cared.

Matt Katz: That's from the excerpt from your interview with Karen, and that will air this weekend on NYC Now in the podcast.

Jessy Edwards: That's right. Yes, we have a podcast coming out this Saturday where you can hear more about the story and hear the allegations in the survivor's voices. Also here, an interview that I did with the accused officer who we tracked down, the Officer Fant. We actually identified who this C.O. Champagne was through countless city records requests, going through payroll records, and we found that there was actually only one officer by the name Fant who worked at the women's jail during the period of the allegations.

The allegations, which, as I said, span from the late '80s to the early 2000s, they align with the period that this Officer Fant was working. His full name is Keith Fant. I did get him on the phone, and we spoke for about 90 minutes. I want to make it clear that Fant, he denies all of these allegations. He was shocked to hear about them when I spoke with him. It was his first time hearing about it. He did tell me that he went by the name Champagne while he was working at the women's jail.

He told me that it was a nickname that detainees gave him because of his, "bubbly personality." He told me that a colleague of his had made him a badge, a name tag that said "Champagne," and that he did wear it sometimes at the facility but he outright denies all of the claims and he believes that the woman may be seeking money, he says, a financial payout with these claims.

Matt Katz: These are civil suits so these women if they did win the suit, they do stand to get money from the city but he had no explanation why two dozen of these women had mentioned this name. He said that he had no explanation for that.

Jessy Edwards: He considered that because the name Champagne is memorable, that could be a reason but he also told me that he hardly ever wore this name tag, Champagne. To your point, yes, these are civil lawsuits. The women who name Officer Champagne in their lawsuit to identify him are seeking more than $500 million from the city but the women who I've spoken to say that they're not seeking money, and many of them want accountability, actually.

Matt Katz: You're listening to The Brian Lehrer Show. We're talking to Jessy Edwards about her reporting on decades of alleged sexual abuse at Rikers. We have a couple of callers. Olivia in Brooklyn. Hi, Olivia. Thank you for calling in.

Olivia: Hi. I was a birth worker. I was a doula to many women in Rikers a few years ago and I can completely corroborate the stories of sexual assault. A lot of these women were impregnated by staff of the prison. I can't really elaborate, but there was a lot of assaults and a lot of babies being born and being sent straight to CPS due to Riker's sexual assault.

Matt Katz: Wow.

Olivia: I was with these women when they were giving birth and it makes me emotional to think about. It's a story that needs to be told. I'm really glad that you guys are sharing this.

Matt Katz: Olivia, thank you so much. These are women who did not get pregnant before they got to Rikers they were impregnated while they were there?

Olivia: Correct. There were a few that arrived pregnant, but the majority of the women that I worked for were impregnated while in prison. Something that you guys mentioned a few minutes ago was nobody asked what happened. Nobody asked why they were pregnant. Nobody was asking these questions and that's a problem.

Matt Katz: It was just assumed, this is what happens at Rikers. It's extraordinary. Oh, wow.

Olivia: We were brought in moments before the delivery, we didn't even know these women. A lot of times they're actually all induced at the same time and they're brought into the same hospital and that's the process of that. I was just in the room with them alone, and I heard a lot of their stories, and I'm not sure what happened to anybody afterwards.

Matt Katz: Olivia, thank you so much for calling. If you don't mind holding on for a moment. If you could give your contact information to our producer, then maybe Jessy could follow up with you if she has any clarifying questions. Really appreciate you calling in. If you could hold on.

Jessy Edwards: Thank you so much, Olivia. When were you working at Rikers?

Olivia: Gosh. I started in 2010, and it was a very small group of us. We were able to get with the Doula Initiative and then there were a few Brooklyn doula organizations that were able to, I guess, connect to a few of the women's prisons and they were able to bring us in. I don't even know that the program we were working for is still going on. I don't live in New York anymore, but I can find this all out for you. I'm really glad that this is being talked about.

Matt Katz: Olivia, thank you very much for calling in. Really appreciate. Hold on just a moment so Jessy can get your contact info. We have another caller, Dennis in San Francisco. Hi, Dennis.

Dennis: Hi. Good morning. Afternoon.

Matt Katz: Yes, good morning.

Dennis: Thanks for taking my call.

Matt Katz: What's your familiarity with this issue?

Dennis: In the late '70s, I spent several years teaching at Rikers Island. It was a program sponsored by John Jay College and it was a wonderful college credit program, which I taught in the women's house of detention. One of the writing exercises I used to do with my students is write what I didn't say either because nobody was interested or I didn't have the courage or I didn't have the words at the time, and I can't tell you how many times.

I tried to alert people that women talked about being groped and grabbed and sexually abused by folks at Rikers Island, by guards, and it was troubling. I'm sure I still have a pack of essays somewhere in which, women talked about this and how they complained and nobody was listening.

Matt Katz: Wow, that's amazing. Thank you very much for calling in and sharing that story. That's from long ago, right, Jessy? That culture of silence, of not talking about this, of not investigating this continues to be pervasive. There's another officer whose record you dove into. That's a story that, I believe, is posted today at Gothamist. Right?

Jessy Edwards: That's right.

Matt Katz: Tell me how you first came across the name of Correction Officer Anthony Martin Jr.

Jessy Edwards: As I mentioned, we were poring through these lawsuits and noting down the officers who were identified in these suits. In April, there was a news article in the New York Daily News about a correction officer who had been arrested on a rape charge. He is facing charges of raping a woman while off duty at a house in Queens. I recognized the name. I recognized the name because I'd seen it going through the lawsuits, Martin Jr. I went back and I took a look and I ended up connecting with the woman who had filed this lawsuit.

There was a lawsuit filed under the Adult Survivors Act by a woman named Karina Collado. Collado alleges that she was sexually assaulted on Rikers Island by an officer named Anthony Martin Jr. in 2020. When I shared the New York Daily News article with her, she asserted that, "Yes, it was the same Martin Jr." I went back to city payroll records and he was the only Anthony Martin Jr. accused of raping a woman in Queens. Martin Jr. was the only-- Sorry, let me collect my thoughts.

Matt Katz: Sure.

Jessy Edwards: The only officer with the name Martin Jr. working at Rikers Island in the past 10, 15 years is this Anthony Martin Jr., and Karina also visually IDD him.

Matt Katz: She alleges that Anthony Martin Jr. was the officer who raped her in 2020 in the jail, and then three years later, he's arrested for rape in Queens.

Jessy Edwards: That's right. Talking about women who tried to speak up, this is one of those stories, Karina, says. She alleges that Officer Martin Jr., he cornered her while she was doing a work detail on Rikers Island in 2020. He had selected her to do a job with him, which was organizing boxes in a storage area. She says she was in the storage area with him one day in a dark corner when he came up behind her and put his hand over her mouth and forced his fingers into her vagina. She says that he performed oral sex on her, which is when she was able to kick him off. Karina says that she was too afraid to report it at the time at Rikers Island.

Matt Katz: As a result, or maybe as a consequence of that, he's a free man, and that he's arrested for rape three years later. We have a clip of Karina talking about the abuse she experienced.

Karina Collado: He threatened me saying that if I were to open my mouth, he was going to put me into solitary confinement. He was going to change the events of what actually took place and he was going to say that I came on to him. He even said that he would have inmates coming for me. I was scared to go to sleep, I was scared to even shower. I was scared to even be in that jail, knowing the power of authority that he had.

Matt Katz: That's a clip, again, from the podcast episode that Jessy Edwards worked on that airs this weekend on NYC Now, our daily podcast, airs on Saturday. You can also find a reporting gothamist.com. Let's go to the phone lines again. John in Hempstead. Hi, John. Thanks for calling in.

John: Hi. How are you?

Matt Katz: Doing good. Thank you.

John: Yes, I was an inmate in Rikers Island in 1998, again, in '99. It was so widely known that male guards were having relations with female inmates. They would often brag to us which ones they were with, which ones they had kids with on the outside. This was before cell phones, so they would have Polaroid pictures of the female inmates they were hooking up with. It was just commonly known.

Matt Katz: Wow.

John: Even male inmates would offer family members on the outside. "Oh, you can have sex with her in order to get favorable treatment, protection."

Matt Katz: John, you remember seeing the photos that guards would show you of the women that they said that they were having sex with?

John: Oh, yes. They had them like they were trading cards.

Jessy Edwards: Wow. It's worth noting as well that there is no legally consensual relationships between officers and detainees.

Matt Katz: There's no such thing as consensual sex in that environment.

Jessy Edwards: There is no such thing. New York State legislated that a detainee or a prisoner cannot possibly legally consent due to the power imbalance while incarcerated.

Matt Katz: When you first did a story, this is now several months ago, about these lawsuits, these 700 lawsuits filed by sexual assault survivors. Mayor Adams promised a thorough investigation. This was your initial story many months ago that you did with reporter Samantha Max. Just looking at all of these suits. This is before you drilled down and identified some of these specific officers. Mayor Adams promises this investigation.

Jessy Edwards: Yes.

Matt Katz: How's that investigation going?

Jessy Edwards: I followed up with his office a couple of weeks ago, knowing that these other two stories were coming out. As you said, the mayor promised an investigation. After we brought to light, there's more than 700 lawsuits alleging sexual assault by jail staff from Rikers. A couple of weeks ago, his office told me that the only agency that's looking into it is the city law department. The thing is, the city law department, that's the agency that's in charge of defending the city against civil lawsuits like the ones that have been lodged under the Adult Survivors Act.

Matt Katz: I want to play a clip of Adams referring to this. Maybe you can give us a response afterwards. This is just yesterday when he was asked to, again, about your most recent findings.

Mayor Eric Adams: If there's a lawsuit that's taking place, you got to investigate exactly what happened. This happened decades ago, so I want to be clear that the public is not under the impression that this is something that happened under this administration. When the lawsuit is underplayed, there's an investigation that is taking place to respond to it.

Matt Katz: Again, this was Tuesday, not yesterday, that the mayor said this. Jessy, you said the law department is the one that he's referring to here, that's investigating it, not law enforcement agencies. The law department that's also responsible for defending the correction department.

Jessy Edwards: That's right. Nobody with independent oversight is looking into these lawsuits. What we've actually found is such a reluctance from city officials and those who might be able to really put a thorough investigation. We've seen a real reluctance.

Of course, I reached out to the mayor. He could open an investigation, but it's only the law department that's looking into it from that side. The prosecutor that has jurisdiction over Rikers Island, Darcel Clark, she's the Bronx district attorney. We have been in touch with her office since we started reporting about the 700 lawsuits. We've also seen a reluctance to proactively investigate the claims, I would say. Her office did open an email hotline that women could write into after our first story back in April.

She said she hasn't got any emails. We asked, "Would you proactively investigate these 700 lawsuits?" We've been pestering, I will say, pestering and pestering over the last couple of weeks, and Clark's office said that they are now going to review the lawsuits for leads and see if there is a chance of opening a criminal investigation. I want to also point out the Department of Investigation. The Department of Investigation is the city agency that's really responsible for looking into misconduct, even criminal misconduct, by city employees.

It has the power to investigate claims made in civil lawsuits. In fact, the Department of Investigation, on its website, says that it has the power to do investigations that can lead to systemic change. It would potentially be a good choice for looking into the allegations. We reached out to the Department of Investigation. It won't confirm whether it's looking into these lawsuits.

Matt Katz: Wow. What about the Department of Correction? This is the agency that runs the jails and continues to run the jails.

Jessy Edwards: Yes.

Matt Katz: What did they say?

Jessy Edwards: I've sent them long lists of questions pertaining to the allegations in these lawsuits, asking if the department will be looking into them and really putting every single allegation that's come up to the department. It hasn't answered any of my questions. The department just keeps giving me the same boilerplate answer each time, which is that it has a zero tolerance for sexual assault at the Rikers Island jails and that it can't comment on pending litigation.

Matt Katz: Jessy Edwards's reporting can be found at gothamist.com. Again, her report can also be heard this weekend on NYC Now. Wherever you get your podcasts, if you have a tip about sexual abuse at Rikers, you can contact her colleague, Samantha Max at smax@nyc.org. Jessy, did you want to add any information to that?

Jessy Edwards: Yes, I just wanted to add that the Officer Anthony Martin Jr., he has pleaded not guilty to the rape charge, and he's also denied the allegations and the civil lawsuits.

Matt Katz: Yes. Thank you very much for circling back on that. As far as we know, he is not under criminal investigation for the allegations of what allegedly happened at Rikers, just for what happened on the outside.

Jessy Edwards: That's right. Matt.

Matt Katz: Jessy, thank you so much for doing these stories. This is among the most towering reporting a journalist can do, but it's a service to the city and it's a service to these women. Thank you for coming on the show.

Jessy Edwards: Thanks for having me.

 

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