The federal government has agreed to pay $67,500 to settle a lawsuit filed by a woman who says she was raped by a prison employee at the federal detention center.
Government lawyer Edric Ming-Kai Ching announced the settlement Monday in U.S. District Court.
The woman, who filed the lawsuit under the pseudonym Jane Doe, said former Bureau of Prisons electrician Markell Milsap sexually assaulted her in September 2007 in a closet at the Honolulu detention facility not monitored by cameras.
She sued the government and Milsap in November 2008 and added prison guard Jeffry Cruz to the lawsuit in May 2010. She claimed that the government failed to provide her a safe environment while in custody and that Cruz was the one who unlocked the closet and allowed Milsap and her to remain in there unsupervised.
The $67,500 settles the government’s and Cruz’s portions of the lawsuit.
Milsap, 41, pleaded guilty in October 2008 to sexually abusing a person in official detention and was later sentenced to 10 months behind bars.
He claimed the sex was consensual. Federal and state laws, however, prohibit any kind of sex between prison employees and prisoners.
Milsap paid his accuser $3,000 in October 2009 to settle his portion of the suit.
In January 2011, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Kurren dismissed the lawsuit against the government and Cruz, and three months later denied the woman’s request for him to reconsider.
The woman appealed.
This past February the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal and sent the case back to the District Court.
The woman was in the detention center in September 2007 for allegedly testing positive for cocaine use, a violation of her supervised release. She had already completed the incarceration portion of a sentence for bank robbery.
She claimed the drug test was flawed and should not have been considered by the court to revoke her supervised release. She appealed, and in 2008 the 9th Circuit sided with her and ordered her immediate release.
