Editor’s note: The story discusses sexual assault. “Guarded by Predators” is a new investigative series exposing rape and abuse by Idaho’s prison guards and the system that shields them. Find the entire series at investigatewest.org/guarded-by-predators.
A new investigation finds sexual abuse inside Idaho’s women’s prisons has been widespread — and largely ignored. Over the last decade, at least 37 corrections employees have been accused of abusing women in custody, with few facing criminal charges.
The InvestigateWest series reveals how a lack of oversight and accountability has allowed the problem to persist across all three women’s facilities in the state. Reporter Whitney Bryen joined Morning Edition’s George Prentice to talk about what she uncovered — and why so many of these women are speaking out for the first time.
Read the transcript below.
PRENTICE: It's Morning Edition. Good morning, I'm George Prentice. Headline: sex abuse in Idaho women's prisons has gone largely unchecked. Indeed, that is a headline from a series of stunning reports. InvestigateWest has unveiled a long list of sexual abuse incidents sexual abuse by guards on women inmates. Whitney Bryen is here. She is part of the team at Investigate West. That brings us what will be a must read series of reports. Six all in being released over five days. Whitney Bryen good morning.
BRYEN: Good morning George.
PRENTICE: First off, I have to ask and I'm pretty sure I know what the answer to this is. Can I assume that the abuse of a guard upon a woman inside prison walls has not been an isolated case? Give me a sense of do you have an idea of how many cases we're talking about?
BRYEN: Well, that's a great question. First of all, no, we found it is not an isolated case. We found cases of this happening across all three facilities in Idaho that incarcerate women. We also found multiple cases at each of those facilities. The problem is we can give numbers for what we have found in our reporting. Documented allegations, the number of victims that we've spoken to who told us about their experiences. But we know that those are underreported. And we know that because many of the women we spoke to said this is the first time they've ever spoken about that abuse. Sexual abuse is already, I think, as most of your listeners probably know, um, very underreported in general. And you you can imagine why women who are incarcerated, who are under the control of their abusers would be even more, you know, dissuaded from reporting that abuse. So what what we do know is we've seen 37 prison workers accused of abuse in the last decade. Those are situations that we have interviewed women about or seen documented reports of.
PRENTICE: 37. Can I also assume with very different outcomes?
BRYEN: Absolutely. So of of the 37 that we've identified, we know that 18 of those guards, mostly men, they resigned shortly after the alleged abuse happened or right after it was reported. Um, eight of those men were fired and three of them were criminally charged with a felony in the state of Idaho.
PRENTICE: I have to ask, to the best of your knowledge, are any of them still employed by the Department of Correction?
BRYEN: Of the 37 that we have found, yes. There are a couple of people who were accused of this kind of abuse who do still work for the department as far as we know.
PRENTICE: So how did all of this start for you and your colleagues? Was it a tip? Was it a letter, a phone call? How did all of this start?
BRYEN: We got a tip. As the greatest stories in journalism tend to start, someone reached out to us. Someone who was actually advocating for one of these victims, who was accusing a guard, uh, multiple guards actually, of assaulting her while she was behind bars, reached out and said, you know, this woman has been sharing her stories with us. We think, uh, we believe her. We think this is a bigger problem than just this one woman's experience, and she's willing to talk to you about it. So it really all started with, um, a tip from from this woman's advocate. And, uh, we quickly connected with the woman herself. She was at that time, she was behind bars at a jail. She had been arrested, um, for a new charge and was reporting instances of abuse that occurred years earlier while she was incarcerated in prison.
PRENTICE: When you get to a number like this, a number of incidents and the reoccurrence for years, it's fair to say that it's a probable crisis or a culture problem to which the Department of Corrections says, what?
BRYEN: Well, the Department of Correction would deny that they have. They have said to us, we do not believe that we have a culture problem. Um, I spoke with the director of the Department of Correction, Bree Derrick. She actually took over that position earlier this year in April. Um, she was the deputy director previous to that. Um, and and I explained our findings to her and she said, you know, we don't think we have a culture problem. And she laid out for me, um, many of the policies that the Department of Correction has for just this type of situation. Um, you know, she admitted that that they know that this kind of thing can happen in prison settings. It's going to happen in prison settings. And so there is policy and procedure to address what happens when it does occur, when it is reported. The problem though, what we found is those follow those policies, they're not being followed. And there is no oversight, um, in the facilities themselves to ensure that the policies are properly being followed. So you know that they are arguing, no, it's not a culture problem, but are also admitting, um, to us that there there's not a procedure for overseeing the direct facilities where these instances are occurring and where they're not being properly investigated. And, um, and dealt with.
PRENTICE: To that end, you got no sense of any wholesale changes, just a reliance on existing policies and practices.
BRYEN: That's correct. There were no drastic or, um, proposed changes to policy or oversight that I'm aware of. Uh, that that was not discussed when I spoke with, uh, Director Derrick.
PRENTICE: Were you surprised at all at anything the director had to say in that conversation?
BRYEN: I think that the biggest surprise for me, um, in talking with the director, we spoke in person, and I believe that she was surprised to hear our findings. She seemed to not be aware of how big this problem is in Idaho women's prisons. She, of course, again acknowledged that these sexual abuses do sometimes occur in prisons. And that's why there are both federal standards and state policies, department policies that need to be followed to ensure that when it does happen, you know, it's properly responded to and guards are held accountable. But she seemed genuinely surprised to hear the number of. Um, abusive workers that are being accused by women who are currently or have recently been behind bars.
PRENTICE: Uh, absolutely. Because I think the thing that hits me is the magnitude. And I have, uh, had access to just three of these reports, and you're going to be publish, publish, publish, publish, you know, six reports in all. It is quite jaw dropping. And whether the department chooses to do anything about it, I guess what's different this time is just the magnitude of this.
BRYEN: That's what struck us. Also, George, as I mentioned, we started this reporting with, you know, one woman who explained her experience to us. Um, that woman had multiple experiences with sexual abuse perpetrated against her by more than one guard during her time behind bars in Idaho prisons. And that woman knew of many others that she said, you know, had expressed their experiences to her also while she was in in jail this summer. That's where I spoke to her. She, uh, she filed an official complaint against these men who had abused her for the first time ever. Some of some of these complaints were against men who no longer work at the department. Um, and who perpetrated abuse, you know, nearly a decade ago. But she had reached her limit this summer, and she was now facing, you know, another prison sentence where she might be sent back into these facilities with some of these abusers. And so she, you know, she felt inspired, motivated to report the abuse and in hopes that it would be taken seriously and that she would be better protected this time after she reported that from jail, she started telling other women that were there at the jail with her. What she did, and she started hearing more and more cases. You know me too. That happened to me too. I had a similar experience and so many people started coming forward. Um, you know, after she sort of lit this fire and many of them agreed to speak to us about their experiences, um, over time in, in women's prisons. So it certainly felt to me as, as a reporter, you know, I'm thinking a lot about the MeToo movement, um, women's sexual abuse outside of prison walls. Um, I think most of your, your audience has, you know, read and heard about those instances and, and that movement, that's a bit of what I was thinking about while interviewing these women. It certainly feels like a similar situation.
PRENTICE: With your permission, I want to take a few minutes to dive into one of your case studies, and that involves Jamie Hamilton. She is identified as Jamie Hamilton, serving a sentence for repeat driving under the influence. Uh, Derek Stetler was indeed a guard. Uh, quote. And this is from your reporting quote. He would always tell me you're not the type of person that should be in here. She says it made her feel special. Human in a place with little humanity. Their bond grew more intense. He would pass her love notes. They would flirt. He would grope and kiss her in linen closets away from the cameras. And then there were an increasing number of, well, sexual, uh, events to which she said, what am I supposed to do? She asked her mom on the phone from prison. Am I supposed to yell? Am I supposed to fight him off? Well, am I supposed to put my time behind bars at risk? This was at the Pocatello prison. They began investigating, uh, in spring of 2022. The woman, Jamie Hamilton, was transferred to South Idaho Correctional Institution. Within months, Prosecutors charged Stetler with rape, but then she was ostracized by other women who called her a rat. After he got fired, he did take his own life. A month later, we all remember that news story. But she, Jamie Hamilton, was blamed by staff at the prison. She says, I was called a murderer. I was called a black widow. And this is an important part of this report as well. And that is these women, these victims being labeled as instigators.
BRYEN: Absolutely. That is something that we heard over and over again. Um, you know, over the past 11 months or so that I've been working on this project, I've personally interviewed a couple of dozen women who spent time in Idaho prisons and who either had a personal experience being abused by a guard or a prison worker, or who witnessed, uh, knew about other instances of that type of alleged abuse. And this came up in, I would say, most of those conversations, women who did report something that happened to them were, as you said, you know, ostracized by both other inmates as well as staff members who, you know, blame the the the victim in these cases for getting, you know, their colleague, their coworker in trouble, um, for manipulating. That's a word we heard a lot manipulating these, uh, these men, these guards into doing, you know, sexual acts with them to so that the inmate can get what they want. Right. That's that was often, uh, what we were told that sort of the, the idea of, of other guards was the. Oh, that the inmate must have wanted something and therefore, you know, coaxed my coworker into doing these sexual acts with her so that she could exchange sexual favors for contraband for, you know, in one case, a woman was given a cell phone, um, in exchange for doing a sexual favor for a guard. Other women told us they got candy and sodas. They got, um, sunglasses. Uh, one woman got a sweatshirt that she wasn't supposed to have, but, um, these are all, you know, high commodities inside of a prison where your living situation is very restricted. Your communication with the outside very restricted. Um, and so those are those are appealing offers to some of these women in the moment. And so they're often, you know, made to be the criminal in these cases rather than the victim.
PRENTICE: I'm thinking of a series of previous reports that did affect change. I'm thinking of investigative Pieces that, uh, put daylight on inmates. Using prisoners as gladiators. I'm thinking of Idaho's continued intention of sending inmates out of state. I'm thinking of Idaho's use of dry cells within prison walls. Change has been affected by previous investigative pieces. I know that that's not your intent here, but it is about what? Putting daylight on this. Right?
BRYEN: Absolutely. And I would say that while, you know, we our job is to provide as much information to the public as possible. We want the public to be able to understand as fully as possible what's happening inside these prisons, what we've found and what these women are describing to us. We also want them to understand, you know, the processes that are currently in place, what the department says it it is and should be doing when these things are reported. Um, so that the public can make a decision as to what needs to change. Right. Clearly, there's a problem here. Um, I don't think that the director, uh, director Derrick at the Department of Correction would argue with that. Um, she didn't argue with that when I spoke with her. But as to what needs to be done to, you know, to to change things for the better. I don't have the answer to that. I'm sure nobody has a single answer, but there are certain, um, there are certainly steps that can be taken to, you know, increase oversight in these facilities and ensure that at least existing policies are being followed.
PRENTICE: Whitney Bryen is part of the Investigate West team. That brings us these reports, a series of reports all in six, uh, being delivered to us over the next five days. Whitney Bryen, thank you for what you do every day. And thanks for giving me some time this morning.
BRYEN: Thank you so much, George.
