Prison Sexual Assaults: Unreported and Ignored

The Uniting Church is the community partner in a confronting new study released today which reveals a shocking level of sexual assault happening in WA’s prisons. The report, called ‘Predator or Prey’, is based on interviews with 150 male ex-prisoners. More than 75% of them knew about a sexual assault behind bars and that 37% of the men had either been assaulted or felt some pressure to perform a sexual act during their time in prison.

The ex-prisoners, who had served time in prisons in and around the Perth metropolitan area, were interviewed by Dr Dot Goulding and Dr Brian Steels from Murdoch University’s Centre for Social and Community Research.

“These statistics are confronting and cannot be ignored by the State Government, the Department of Corrective Services and the general public,’ said Dr Goulding.

“For too long prison authorities have claimed that prison rape is a rare occurrence, our study has disproven that.”

Dr Goulding and Dr Steels said one of the study’s main aims was to gauge the levels of both reported and unreported sexual assaults. The researchers also explored the flow-on effects of being sexually assaulted, such as self harm and thoughts of suicide, and the impact on witnesses, prison staff and the family of victims. They also looked at the connection between being a sexual assault victim and the likelihood becoming a sexual predator.

The study found that young men, gay men, first time prisoners and drug dependent prisoners are most at risk of being sexually assaulted.

The report also found that of the 150 ex-prisoners:

1. 54% or 81 participants said they had knowledge of sexual assault in Western Australian prisons;
2. 23.3% or 35 participants said that they had been placed under pressure to provide unwanted sexual acts. The majority claimed that these incidents occurred within the first six months of their sentence;
3. 14% or 21 participants said they had been sexually assaulted whilst held in a WA prison;
4. 4% or six participants admitted to predatory sexual behaviour in prison. Four of these said they had previously been sexually assaulted in prison;
5. 4.6% or seven participants were unsure if sexual assault occurred in prisons; and
6. 2.6% or four participants claimed sexual assaults do not occur in prisons.

“A modern, compassionate society is measured by its ability to apply basic, human rights to everyone, even to people that are in prison. The fact that prisoners are the victims of sexual abuse in these institutions is a sad indictment on a system that turns a blind eye,” said Dr Dot Goulding.

“Until this study, prison sexual assault was largely hidden from public view, is usually left out of corrective services’ annual reports, is frequently ignored by senior policy makers, and goes largely unchallenged by judges and lawyers, creating little more than a disinterested whisper outside of prison walls.”

The study was funded by Lotterywest and strongly supported by the Uniting Church because of their ongoing concern about the treatment of people in the prison system.

“It is in nobody’s interests to have people come out of prisons more damaged than when they went in. We want to see governments and politicians on both sides of the debate work with that end in view and for the public to support them,” said Uniting Church Moderator Rev Ken Williams.

Of the 21 prisoners who were sexually assaulted, only eight of these sexual assaults were officially reported to the authorities.

“The non-reporting of sexual assault within the prisons environment is often put down to the high levels of personal shame associated with male-to-male rape and most importantly, a real fear of ongoing and escalating violence if the assaults are reported to the authorities,” said Dr Dot Goulding.

“Over the past 20 years we’ve seen amazing changes in the way a sexual assault victim and their case is handled, but for some reason that hasn’t happened beyond the prison door.

“Although support services are available, they operate only within business hours, meaning victims have to wait up to three days for a response if an offence occurs over a weekend.”

As part of the study, seven male and four female prison officers were interviewed. Two of them had recently retired.

While some officers claimed that ‘rape rarely happens’ others said it ‘happens too frequently’ but they all agreed that prison rape occurs.

Three out of four of the female officers believed that prison rape happened regularly. They also said that not enough support was available for officers or prisoners and that the issue of sexual assault was often buried at the unit level.

The “Predator or Prey” report found that overcrowding and safety issues in high risk areas of a prison needed to be tackled to curb the number of sexual assaults.

For these and other reasons, the Uniting Church along with the Anglican Church in September called on the WA Government to take measures to reduce the chronic overcrowding of WA prisons.

As well as having prisoners kept in single cells and reducing blind spots in prisons, the report recommends:

• holding perpetrators of sexual assault accountable and ensuring that they receive adequate support to challenge their behaviour
• initiating positive strategies that encourage reporting of abuse by prison staff and prisoners, and reduce the likelihood of violent payback
• establishing a systematic reporting protocol that details both rates and effects of prisoner sexual assault
• providing secured ongoing funding to a non-government agency to support all prisoners of sexual abuse
• establishing a confidential phone counselling support line for prison staff, prisoners and concerned family members.

For more information contact the WA Uniting Church on (08) 9260 9800.

Read the report in its entirety.

SOURCE: http://www.wa.uca.org.au/home/blog/prison-sexual-assaults/

REPORT ALSO HERE: http://deathsincustody.org.au/sites/default/files/PredatorPrey.pdf