Posted on 04/15/2008 10:54:57 AM PDT by SmithL
SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court has upheld $600,000 in damages to a state prison guard who said she was fired after complaining that she was being harassed by naked male inmates.
The complaints by Deanna Freitag led to an investigation by the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's inspector general, who found in 2000 that maximum-security inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison had regularly subjected female guards to "lewd exhibitionism and exhibitionist masturbation" and that the warden and other officials were doing little to stop it.
Freitag, who had worked at the prison in Del Norte County since 1996, was fired by Pelican Bay officials shortly before those findings were issued. Her bosses accused her of fabricating incidents in the reports she had been filing since September 1998.
In her lawsuit, Freitag said officials brushed off her complaints and disciplined the prisoners mildly, if at all.
A federal court jury in San Francisco awarded Freitag $500,000 for lost wages and $100,000 for emotional distress in a March 2003 verdict against the department, the warden and other prison officials.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2006 that the corrections department had failed to protect Freitag from sexual harassment. But the court returned her case to the trial judge to consider the effect of a new U.S. Supreme Court ruling that limited government employees' protection from retaliation for criticizing workplace conditions.
In a 2-1 ruling Friday, the appeals court upheld Freitag's damage award, agreeing with U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Did this woman think that she was getting hired to take care of a bunch of schoolboys? Sheesh! What did she expect to see in a male prison?
I wonder how the guards manage to deal with it at Gitmo.
Did the prisoners receive grants from the National Endowment for the Arts?
could someone explain to me why a woman is working at a male prison????
Maybe it was her?
LOL, I said something similar and got bashed by a few butch types some time back. Women have no business in a male prison, Like men have no business in a female prison.
National endowment... LOL
Actually, so what these guys are inmates? Doesn’t mean they should be allowed to act like animals. The first step to getting out ought to be classes on how to be a gentleman, how to lead a normal life without committing crime and it damned sure ought to start right there in prison.
I’m glad the state has to pay something for that crap.
The prisoners are there to be punished. They should have been punished for their unacceptable behavior. They don’t get to act the way they want. I would suggest that cattle prods might work well.
I think that she expected the warden to discipline prisoners engaging in this lewd behavior. It seems that disciplining inmates for lewd behavior is a reasonable expectation. I do not know the specifics of this case. Perhaps the warden did try disciplining or she had some role in encouraging the behavior. I do not know if the award is justified. Female guards should not subjected to lewd behavior as a matter of employment.
It’s not logical Captain.
At, perhaps, its most absurd; a male exhibitionist could be put into a prison — where he’ll henceforth have no privacy from female guards.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Max at Pelican Bay is where all the other prisons in CA send the worst of the worst that can't be handled, women have no business working max there.
Females should not be guarding male prisoners.
I think she should have told the lewd little twits that if she was a guy with an organ that small, she’d keep it under wraps and wouldn’t flaunt it.
What we have here is a failure to communicate...
scared straight!!!!!!!!!!!
She's the guard. Why didn't she discipline them?
The prison can't prevent such actions by prisoners, but when the prisoner's do such things, the administrators of the prison do need to take appropriate actions rather than just ignore the incidents.
Well, we can all say what we like about women working in prisons, or being in combat. Personally, I’ve been in the Supermax here in Colorado and there are women working there as well....
So, you have your opinion, I have mine. Men, in prison need to start acting like human beings before they are let out.
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