41-d-2 Sexual Harassment

• Library: A Jailhouse Lawyer's Manual (2020 Edition)

41-D-2. Sexual Harassment

Just because you are in prison does not mean you give up your right to be free from unwanted sexual activity. Any unwanted sexual attention that you experience, like leering, pinching, patting, verbal comments, or pressure to engage in sexual activity can be considered sexual assault or harassment.

Female prisoners should never feel forced to engage in sexual activity with abusive staff who promise better treatment or threaten disciplinary action.¹²⁴ You have the right to be free from any unwanted sexual attention. If an officer acts inappropriately towards you in a sexual manner, it may be considered cruel and unusual punishment in violation of your Eighth Amendment rights.

To qualify as a violation of the Eighth Amendment, the behavior must be serious enough, and the officer must have been deliberately indifferent (ignored a risk to your health or safety that the officer either knows about or that is so obvious he should have known about it).¹²⁵ However, because sexually abusive officers are the ones creating the risk to your health or safety, they naturally know about it."¹²⁶ It is somewhat harder to prove that the behavior is serious enough. For some courts, the fewer times abuse has occurred, the more severe it must have been Likewise, the less sever it was, the more times it must have occurred.¹²⁷

If you cannot bring an Eighth Amendment claim against the prison official who harassed you, you may be able to bring an Eighth Amendment claim against supervisory officials for failing to protect you from unwanted sexual conduct. To do this, you have to show that supervisors...