More than 700 women have sued the city of New York, alleging they were sexually assaulted by staff while detained on Rikers Island over the last 50 years. But even though the lawsuits have been publicly available for months, the only city agency known to be investigating the complaints is the Law Department, which is responsible for defending the city against the litigation.
Several city and state agencies have a responsibility to hold the jail and its staff accountable for misconduct, including Mayor Eric Adams’ office and the independent Department of Investigation. Federal guidelines require the city to investigate allegations of sexual harassment and assault at Rikers.
But officers accused of sexual assault in multiple lawsuits and currently employed officers identified in lawsuits told Gothamist no one had notified them about the allegations, signaling there has been no material investigation into the hundreds of claims. That’s despite Adams promising a “thorough investigation” in March.
Gothamist asked city, state and federal agencies what actions — if any — they’re taking to investigate the allegations. Many would not answer questions about the allegations or whether they were investigating them at all, citing pending litigation.
These agencies are directly responsible for the jail and its staff, or have the power to investigate alleged misconduct.
Department of Correction
The city’s Department of Correction is responsible for supervising employees and disciplining correction officers and other staff who violate policy. Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, who was appointed by the mayor in December 2023 and serves at his discretion, has not agreed to an interview with Gothamist, and her press team has repeatedly declined to comment on specific claims while they’re being litigated in court.
Maginley-Liddie said in a statement that the agency has a “zero-tolerance policy toward all forms of sexual abuse” and now trains all staff, volunteers and contractors in city jails to “prevent, detect and report sexual abuse or sexual harassment.” Spokesperson Annais Morales also said all allegations are investigated thoroughly and referred to outside agencies, like prosecutors or the Department of Investigation, when serious misconduct is believed to have occurred.
But the correction department’s own data shows the agency rarely punishes officers or detainees for alleged sexual assault and harassment. Out of 177 sexual abuse cases reported in 2023, only six were substantiated, according to a Board of Correction report from earlier this year, suggesting that allegations are not being fully investigated.
Sarena Townsend, a former deputy commissioner with the Department of Correction who used to oversee the unit that investigates complaints against jail staff, said a confluence of factors contributed to the low substantiation rate for sexual assault and harassment complaints when she worked at Rikers between 2016 and 2022. She said incarcerated people sometimes make false reports. But she said backlogs and challenges with gathering evidence in jail also made it difficult to prove that abuse had occurred.
“The ones that we did substantiate, we were really serious about, because if we were able to substantiate it, we were absolutely convinced that it happened,” Townsend said in an interview earlier this year.
In the past, judges have ordered the Department of Correction to change its practices — such as its use of force policies and its discharge protocols for detainees with mental illness — in response to lawsuits from people who said their rights were violated while in custody.
The mayor’s office
As mayor, Adams has control over the city’s jails and oversees the department’s commissioner. In addition to calling for a “thorough investigation” that never materialized, Adams has repeatedly stressed that the allegations are decades old. However, at least 40 of the people who filed lawsuits claim they were assaulted at Rikers in the last six years. At least five said the abuse happened during Adams’ term. Several current officers accused of assault in the lawsuits remain employed by the city. Some are still working with female detainees at the women’s jail on Rikers.
At a press conference last week, Adams declined to comment on whether the current correction officers identified in the lawsuits should be placed on leave until the allegations against them can be investigated. But criticisms over his handling of the matter and calls for him to take action — including from his rivals in next year’s mayoral contest — are growing louder.
Rikers Island is home to the Rose M. Singer Center, the city’s women’s jail that’s better known as Rosie’s. Hundreds of women claim they were sexually assaulted there by jail staff, some as recently as the last several years.
Andrew Lichtenstein
Comptroller Brad Lander said on social media last Tuesday that the city “must immediately launch an investigation” into the Department of Correction’s “failure to protect women in its custody from sexual abuse.” The comptroller’s office has its own investigative powers, but its probes are largely focused on city spending. Lander has said the jail system and other agencies should receive less money in their budgets if the city is forced to pay exorbitant settlements for lawsuits filed against them.
“That would promote not just accountability for potential wrongdoing, but fiscal accountability for claims, as well,” Lander said when asked about the Rikers allegations at a press conference last month.
Scott Stringer and state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, who are both mayoral hopefuls, have also called for more to be done to protect people in custody.
The revelations come as the mayor awaits a federal judge’s decision on whether to strip him of his control over the jails and hand it over to the federal government. That move has garnered support from many local lawmakers, the U.S. attorney’s office and criminal justice reform advocates.
Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who chairs the Criminal Justice Committee, said the mayor has failed to take steps to address the hundreds of allegations, like convening a task force or hiring an outside investigative firm.
“The mayor did not create the conditions for what has occurred at Rikers,” Nurse said. “But he did sign up to be the executive of the city, and he did then sign up to inherit these problems.”
Nurse’s own authority to address the issue is largely limited to pulling correction department officials in front of her committee for hearings and requiring them to turn over records. But agency officials often decline to answer lawmakers’ questions when their agencies are facing pending lawsuits.
The Bronx DA’s office
Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark’s office is responsible for investigating and prosecuting most crimes committed on Rikers Island.
She has faced criticism for accepting at least $27,000 in campaign contributions from the Correction Officers Benevolent Association, according to state records, making the union one of her largest donors to her 2019 campaign. State records don’t show any contributions from the union to her most recent campaign.
After Gothamist initially reported on the lawsuits alleging sexual assault at Rikers, Clark’s office declined to promise a review of the lawsuits for possible criminal charges. Reporters read through all 719 lawsuits and identified more than a half-dozen guards and other correction staff named in the litigation using a combination of personnel files, payroll records and copies of an employee ledger book obtained through a records request. Most of the women only knew the last names of the staffers who they say attacked them.
Prosecutors instead created a tip line in April for plaintiffs who want to pursue criminal charges. Not a single person had contacted the tip line as of mid-July, according to spokesperson Patrice O’Shaughnessy, who said the agency had also not received cooperation from the law firms representing hundreds of former detainees who filed lawsuits.
“For those victims who chose not to report to law enforcement — which is their absolute right to do so — we are limited in what we can and cannot do,” she said in an emailed statement in July.
Attorney Anna Kull, who represents many of the plaintiffs, said her clients have so far declined to talk to prosecutors because they’ve had negative experiences with the criminal justice system as detainees that “caused them to fall prey to sexual predators.”
Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark’s office said in July that it will review the lawsuits alleging sexual assault at Rikers, but it did not say what that review will ential.
Pacific Press
Only after repeated questions from Gothamist about whether the Bronx DA would take a more proactive approach to examine the lawsuits, O’Shaughnessy said the office would review the allegations to determine if criminal investigations should be opened into current and former staffers, but she did not respond to questions about how expansive that review will be. She also said she could not comment on pending reviews and investigations. Clark’s office has not announced any criminal charges against staff accused in the hundreds of lawsuits.
Sexual assault cases are notoriously difficult to investigate, and experts said the allegations in the lawsuits are specifically challenging because they are often years or even decades old. But attorneys for the women have said there are enough details for investigators to review. At least two women told Gothamist they would be willing to speak with prosecutors and other officials if they were approached.
New York City Department of Investigation
The New York City Department of Investigation, headed by Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber, is independent from the mayor’s office and can investigate any city agency or official, including the Department of Correction and people who work within its jails. It has an inspector general and a squad of investigators dedicated to correction department oversight.
Spokesperson Diane Struzzi said she couldn’t comment on whether the agency is reviewing accusations made in the 719 lawsuits against the city.
In the past, the DOI has investigated how the department searched jail visitors, hired correction officers and oversaw its prior contractor for medical care. Since 2016, the agency has made 28 recommendations to the Department of Correction to strengthen its ability to detect and address illegal sexual contact between staff and people in detention, Struzzi said.
DOI records show jail officials have rejected several of those recommendations, including suggestions to retain video footage from the women’s jail for a year and to ensure that all officer escorts and work assignments are supervised by two officers — at least one of them female.
New York state attorney general
Because Rikers is a city-run jail complex and not a state facility, the attorney general would need a referral from the Bronx DA or the governor to investigate crimes committed on the island, according to state law.
The Bronx DA’s office would not say whether it is considering asking the attorney general’s office for assistance. The governor’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The U.S. Department of Justice
The Department of Justice has the power to take on broad investigations independent of local elected officials who might face political pressure not to probe allegations of misconduct within city government. It can also launch an inquiry if federal officials believe that jail staff are breaking federal laws or violating detainees’ civil rights, including through sexual misconduct.
In the past two years, the department has committed to tackling what Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco has called the “crisis of sexual assault” by correctional staff in federal lock-ups, and has pushed for harsher criminal penalties for guards who sexually abuse people in custody. Earlier this year, the department’s Bureau of Prisons closed a California women’s prison that the FBI raided and found to be rife with sexual abuse by staff.
A 2011-12 Justice Department survey on sexual victimization in prisons and jails found the Rikers women’s jail had one of the highest rates of staff sexual misconduct nationwide. But while the department has investigated correctional centers across the country, including in Georgia, South Carolina and Brooklyn, it so far has not announced an investigation into allegations of widespread sexual abuse on Rikers Island and declined to comment for this story.
Jessy Edwards and Jared Marcelle contributed reporting.