{"id":4,"date":"2026-11-02T08:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T08:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/?p=4"},"modified":"2026-11-02T08:01:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T08:01:00","slug":"philsugar-new-york-offers-a-path-to-justice-for-incarcerated-survivors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/?p=4","title":{"rendered":"PhilSugar | New York offers a path to justice for incarcerated survivors"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK, NY – FEBRUARY 28: A demonstrator holds a sign overhead at a rally in support of the Adult Survivors Act on Feb. 28, 2020, in New York City. (Photo by Scott Heins\/Getty Images)
\nCW: Mentions and descriptions of sexual assault and abuse in prison
\nThe two women huddle next to each other, trying to get in view of the iPhone camera set up on a tripod in front of them. To the left, Julie begins reading aloud her poem \u201cAll I Ever Wanted,\u201d as her friend Jennifer listens supportively.
\n\u201cAll I ever wanted was justice without a price,\u201d Julie recites, \u201cAll I ever got was raped with a smile.\u201d
\nThe poem is just one tool used by these two women and countless others across New York State who are beginning to speak up about the years of abuse they faced behind the bars of state correctional facilities. After years of forced silence and expired statutes of limitation, the women are seizing a new chance to share their stories.
\nThe moment between Julie and Jennifer is a brief but powerful scene in \u201c
\nLife After Abuse in Prison
\n,\u201d
\na web documentary produced by Brut America that highlights the New York Adult Survivors Act. The recently passed legislation creates a one-time window for survivors of sexual abuse to file civil lawsuits even if the statutes of limitation have expired. The short film also provides a peek verified sugar daddy sa Philippines<\/a> into the women\u2019s experience working with the New York law firm Levy Konigsberg, which represents hundreds of formerly incarcerated women filing under the new law.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s important that women know the rights that they have before they lose them again,\u201d says Anna Kull, a survivors\u2019 rights attorney at Levy Konigsberg, in the film.
\nWhen Vanessa Santiago, a formerly incarcerated woman who returned home just at the start of the pandemic, saw the video, she knew it was time for her to speak up.
\n\u201cI said, \u2018Shit, if they could talk, I can talk too,\u2019 because I know a lot of stuff, and I\u2019ve been through a lot of stuff in there,\u201d said Santiago in an interview with Prism. \u201cRight now, my whole purpose is to expose the penal system. People need to know what happened, and people know when I speak, it\u2019s the truth, and I have proof of what I went through.\u201d
\nSantiago\u2019s story has been a winding road through multiple women\u2019s prisons across the state, including Albion, Taconic, Bedford Hills, and Bayview. Throughout more than two decades of incarceration, Santiago was both a witness to sexual abuse and a victim of it. Today, she carries stories that reveal how sexual violence pervades every corner of prison life, from the near-constant surveillance to the whispers of which officers to avoid and which have been quietly terminated following allegations of rape to the fondles, gropes, and touches that prison staff subjected women to either in private or under the eye of other officers.
\n\u201cI feel like I\u2019m the voice for some of the women in there because I have a lot of friends that are still in there that are currently still going through sexual abuse,\u201d said Santiago.
\nPassed by the New York State Assembly in May 2022, the Adult Survivors Act (ASA) allows individuals who were age 18 or older at the time of their abuse to file a civil lawsuit even if the statute of limitations has expired. There\u2019s only a year to take advantage of the one-time opportunity, and the window for filing closes in November. The ASA is modeled after the New York Child Victims Act, passed in 2019 after a 13-year legislative fight. The Child Victims Act similarly created a one-year window for child survivors of sexual abuse to file civil suits. The window was extended to two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulted in more than
\n10,000 lawsuits
\n\u2014many aimed at large No. 1 sugar daddy site Philippines<\/a> institutions like the Boy Scouts of America and the Catholic Church.
\nSimilar to how the Child Victims Act served as a way to illuminate abuse that occurred within\u2014and was condoned by\u2014large institutions, the Adult Survivors Act has brought to light the stories of formerly and currently incarcerated women who faced sexual abuse at the hands of authorities in New York State prisons. While sexual violence inside has been a known plague inside the carceral system, shoddy internal reporting mechanisms, constant threats of retaliation, and a pervasive stigma that often keeps society unsympathetic to the plight of those inside have allowed such abuse to run rampant and unchecked. However, the ASA may serve as an opportunity for women to share their stories and become a watershed moment that lowers our collective tolerance for such violence.
\nThat sea change may already be underway, as evidenced by the sheer number of survivors who have come forward thus far. In an interview with Prism, Kull says Levy Konisgberg is in the process of filing more than 350 cases, with new ones coming in every day.
\n\u201cEven with the research that I have done on these issues,\u201d said Kull, \u201cI was still astounded to see how many survivors were coming forward. Mostly because so many of these survivors are recounting very similar experiences, and in many cases, they are also recounting abuse by the same individuals.\u201d
\n\u201cWe always get sued. It doesn\u2019t matter\u201d
\nIn addition to repeat offenders, Kull says that what is uniquely chilling about these cases is the sheer fact that state employees are on the job committing sexual crimes while both their employer and society look the other way. fake sugar daddy Philippines<\/a> The fact that this occurs within a context that purports to be rehabilitative is all the more disturbing.
\nThe cases that have been reviewed thus far also illuminate how each prison\u2019s unique features\u2014location or infrastructure\u2014lend themselves to this type of violence occurring unchecked while also informing how specifically that coercion and exploitation would take place.
\nFor example, Bayview Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison formerly located in lower Manhattan, serves as the site for numerous cases filed by Levy Konigsberg. Women incarcerated at Bayview were typically toward the end of their sentences, and given its location in the city, women inside had access to more frequent visitation. They could even sometimes participate in work release programs.
\n\u201cThey had a lot of privileges that were not afforded to them at upstate facilities that had more stringent security requirements,\u201d said Kull. \u201cAnd that in and of itself created an opportunity for correctional officers who were seeking to abuse their authority to use those privileges as leverage.\u201d
\nWhile Bayview\u2019s proximity to loved ones and the prospect of returning home creeping ever closer on the horizon would appear to have created more opportunities for women to speak out when they experienced or witnessed sexual abuse, it actually allowed for the opposite. Bayview officers routinely used those features as bait to keep women silent. Kull says that women who did speak up ran the risk of being framed and written up. A write-up by an officer could trigger time being added to their sentence and a transfer to higher-security facilities upstate.
\nMeanwhile, the physical structure of some prisons can also facilitate abuse by keeping the violence out of sight. In Bedford Hills, the maximum-security women\u2019s prison in Westchester County, the absence of cameras in some areas helped correctional officers commit acts of abuse without being seen. In contrast, the presence of cameras in other areas turned private and intimate spaces into sites of surveillance.
\nSantiago recalls that when she was placed in Bedford\u2019s Special Housing Unit (or SHU), she noticed the community recreation area had only two cameras, and officers stationed themselves in a blind spot.
\n\u201cWhat happens is you\u2019ll be walking down the hallway and\u2014this is before all the cameras were put up\u2014so they would catch you in an area and do stuff to you, touch you, or whatever and get away with it,\u201d said Santiago. \u201cIt\u2019s not like [there were] officers all around; it\u2019s sometimes just one officer in that area. When I was there in the beginning, it was one officer in the daytime and two officers that night on the unit. But [there weren\u2019t] officers all the time, and there were definitely no cameras\u2014you can forget about that.\u201d
\nOn the other hand, the room where gynecology exams and pap smears were performed in Bedford was replete with cameras, eliminating all sense of personal privacy. When Santiago was incarcerated in Albion Correctional Facility, a women\u2019s prison in New York\u2019s Orleans County, she said male corrections sergeants routinely walked into the washrooms while women were showering.
\n\u201cThey would walk through your shower while you\u2019re taking a shower,\u201d said Santiago. \u201cThis was all the time. You know, it was just ridiculous. Like, why is that allowed? It\u2019s not like the shower curtains are pitch black; you can see through [them] \u2026 I don\u2019t understand where the privacy is.\u201d
\nThe rise of cross-gender supervision (or male correctional officers stationed in women\u2019s prisons) and the fact that correctional officers often oversee entire floors by themselves routinely create not just the ground for sexual violence but the impossibility of even oversight by colleagues.
\nBut even when prison officials are made aware of such abuses, their duty to respond is often placed second to the personal relationships shared with their abusive colleagues or even the stigmas they hold about the women they are employed to help protect. Santiago, who had been outspoken about her experiences, was repeatedly silenced until she realized speaking out would be futile, if not dangerous.
\nThere was the psychologist at Bayview who told her that she was \u201ctoo smart for her own good\u201d after she reported being attacked by a correctional officer who groped and choked her while she was working a cleaning shift. And the superintendent at Bedford Hills who shrugged off her threat to sue the facility after she was groped and violated by an officer. The superintendent allegedly asserted, \u201cWe always get sued. It doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d
\nThat laissez-faire attitude toward sugar dating membership cost<\/a> litigation only underscored how long the system has
\noperated with impunity
\n. Even officials who were meant to ensure that the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) was adequately enforced proved to be ineffective for women who filed internal claims. Santiago recalls a former assistant deputy superintendent and PREA compliance manager at Bedford who prioritized her alliances with corrections officers over complaints made by women inside. In 2021, the PREA manager was named
\nin a lawsuit
\nfiled against leadership of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision sugar baby dating safety Philippines<\/a> [DOCCS] and Bedford Hills. The suit alleges that after the plaintiff reported being sexually assaulted by two correctional officers, the compliance manager \u201cdid nothing to help her and did not report the rapes to [her] supervisors or otherwise ensure that a proper investigation was conducted.\u201d
\n\u201cThey\u2019ve been there for over 20 years, and so they develop these relationships,\u201d recalled Santiago. \u201cSo when you report an officer or lieutenant, if they don\u2019t like what you said, they come after you, and that\u2019s what happened to me \u2026 She didn\u2019t want women to wear attire that was tight fitting on their bodies, but the minute a woman reported an incident it was ignored.\u201d
\nThat cycle of experiencing abuse, reporting it, and then having it go unanswered or be the source of ongoing retaliation is one that Santiago is deeply familiar with. It echoes some of her earliest memories of suffering sexual abuse as a child, and then having those meant to protect her\u2014whether it be parental figures or school counselors\u2014compound the pain with additional violation. Recollections of those early traumas came to the surface at moments throughout her incarceration, including at Taconic, a women\u2019s prison in upstate New York. There, she was groped from behind by a male corrections officer while in the facility\u2019s clerk office. She had to yell at him to get off of her.
\n\u201cEvery time I went for help, somebody else would do it to me,\u201d said Santiago. \u201cBut by the lieutenant\u2019s not reacting to it, or the psychiatrist not reacting to it\u2014it enforced my belief that authority figures were not to be trusted \u2026 I became really messed up because of the things that I went through, and it just continued and never stopped. That incident in Taconic sugar dating member quality<\/a> made me very angry because I felt like I was an adult now: \u2018Why am I letting people touch me?\u2019\u201d
\nWhile the shades and contours of each survivor are different, the fact that Santiago was a survivor of sexual violence before even entering prison is an experience
\nshared by many women inside
\n. In fact, according to a
\n2016 report
\nfrom the Vera Insitute for Justice, 86% of women in jail report having experienced sexual violence in their wealthy men BGC<\/a> lifetime. Further, intimate partner violence and attempts at self-protection are often the reason for their incarceration.
\n\u201cThese women are coming to prison with their own traumas and then have to leave prison and grapple with layers of abuse,\u201d said Kull. \u201cA wound can\u2019t heal if it keeps reopening.\u201d
\nEndless hurdles
\nThe looming threat of retaliation informs any incarcerated survivor\u2019s decision to report abuse. For those who do decide to report, a slew of new challenges awaits them as their case travels through a legal system that is not always poised to respond to their grievances favorably.
\nIn a 2008 report by the National Institute of Corrections Project on Addressing Prison Rape at sugar dating boundaries<\/a> the Washington College of Law, analysis of both government reports and testimony by former prosecutors revealed that prosecutors are often either
\nreluctant or unwilling
\nto pursue cases of sexual violence that occur in prisons and jails. Contributing to this hesitancy is the perception that these cases are \u201cnot high profile, high value\u201d and could actually weaken a prosecutor\u2019s standing in their community as defending incarcerated individuals might make them appear \u201csoft on criminals.\u201d
\n\u201cCustodial sexual abuse cases are even more difficult and expose prosecutors to the possibility of expending valuable resources on a case that may not have a high likelihood of prosecutorial success\u2014either a plea or conviction,\u201d the report states.
\nFurther, the study draws out that in many jurisdictions, correctional officers and other prison staff are sworn peace officers, and thus they also serve as individuals whom prosecutors may rely upon for testimony in other criminal cases. Thus, pursuing sexual abuse cases against them can potentially fracture those relationships. Logistically, while sexual assault cases are often difficult to win in general, additional barriers such as delayed reports, lack of physical evidence, and poorly executed investigations can make them even more challenging when they occur within correctional confinement.
\nThis lack of evidence and absence of eyewitness testimony means that sexual assault cases occurring behind bars place a higher burden on the survivor to prove their case. That burden is further compounded by the heightened skepticism already facing them simply by virtue of their incarcerated status.
\n\u201cIn sexual assault cases\u2014especially under these circumstances where the woman is in prison, and the assailant is the authority figure\u2014many times the victim is the exclusive source of the facts, and so her credibility is of paramount importance,\u201d said Kull. \u201cAnd when that is questioned from the door, women are less likely to come forward.\u201d
\nIn an interview with
\nThe Appeal
\nabout the ASA, Kim Shayo Buchanan, senior research scholar at the Center for Policing Equity, pointed out how incarcerated survivors who come forward must also contend with stereotypes and prejudices that often render their experiences invisible.
\n\u201cWhatever the law says, gender-normative expectations and racial biases are going to shape the perception of whether what happened to them counts as sexual abuse,\u201d Buchanan said. \u201cThat being said, the only way to change that is for people to insist on their full humanity.\u201d
\nThose expectations, biases, and misperceptions don\u2019t just shape the experiences of incarcerated people in New York prisons or solely in women\u2019s prisons. The sexual violence that has informed life inside facilities like Bedford Hills and Bayview is endemic to the carceral system as a whole and takes shape in a myriad of different ways. In addition to abuse at the hands of prison authorities, gendered violence inside has also looked like seizing control of incarcerated women\u2019s autonomy over their own bodies and reproductive capacities. As Briana Perry, the interim executive director of Healthy and Free Tennessee, wrote in an
\nessay for Prism
\n, \u201cjails and prisons were designed as sites of reproductive coercion.\u201d That legacy continues in the form of non-consensual sterilization, gynecological experimentation, inadequate prenatal care, and even shackling during childbirth. find sugar daddies Makati<\/a> For many survivors, incarceration is also not just a site of gendered violence but an extension of past traumas, as survivors of intimate partner abuse are often funneled into the system after attempting to defend themselves.
\nIn a piece written for Prism last Spring, K Agbebiyi discussed how sexual violence is used to
\ncement preexisting power imbalances in prison
\nand how public complacency aids and abets that process. Assumptions about innocence, guilt, and a thirst for punishment allow the public to ignore that violence and disconnect it from broader movements against sexual abuse such as #MeToo.
\n\u201cAbolitionists are demanding that people realize that a person\u2019s perceived innocence serving as the determining factor for whether or not they are deserving of sexual violence hurts all survivors,\u201d writes K. \u201cSexual assault is not a well-deserved punishment reserved for certain types of people; it is a violent tool of repression that can completely destabilize the victim.\u201d
\nThe same carceral mindset that allows much of the public to look away from sexual violence is rife with logical pitfalls that reveal the system\u2019s failure to achieve what people believe it does. It is unrealistic, K writes, \u201cto expect prisons to \u2018hold people accountable\u2019 for various types of violence outside of prisons while there is violence taking place within prisons themselves.\u201d
\nInterestingly, and yet not entirely surprisingly, violence inside prison has yet to trigger the same level of moral outrage that we, as a society, have developed around American slavery, even though sexual violence pervaded both institutions. Just as in the cell block, sexual violence and coercion were utilized to foment power dynamics on the plantation among overseers, enslavers, and those they enslaved.
\nA compassionate approach
\nWhile the goal of advocates is to have the whole of society eventually insist on the humanity of all survivors, to take full advantage of legislation like ASA\u2014and the limited window for action that it provides\u2014that culture shift must urgently happen within the legal field. At Levy Konigsberg attorneys like Kull hope to demonstrate what this type of trauma-informed approach might look like and the impact it could have on clients. Kull says her entire team is well-versed in handling trauma and managing cases involving sexual abuse. Further, she makes it known to clients that they can contact her at any time.
\nThe Brut America video that helped inspire Santiago to file her case also features Jubi Williams, the firm\u2019s victim advocate, as she speaks about her work on Jennifer\u2019s case. She explains that her main goal was for Jennifer to feel \u201ccomforted and safe because it\u2019s such a vulnerable experience.\u201d
\nThe approach has worked in fostering trust with clients like Santiago and, in doing so, creating one of the first times that the stories of her experiences were met with compassion and understanding.
\n\u201cI saw that Miss Anna Kull exposed the people of DOCCS, [and] the exposure of it was more compassionate and more like she felt my pain,\u201d said Santiago. \u201cI don\u2019t know what it is, but I feel her compassion, and that\u2019s very important to me. Because I can\u2019t deal with sexual abuse or any type of trauma in my life without feeling that someone can understand and, if not empathize, at least sympathize.\u201d
\nThere\u2019s a delicate balance between the benefits of coming forward and wealthy men Makati<\/a> the reality that some cases may not end in a legal victory. While the ASA has the potential to end the culture of silence, the legislation and its goals must be shaped around the outcomes of individual cases and the societal shifts they ideally will set in motion.
\n\u201cMany women are not willing to go forward and out an officer after they\u2019ve seen what\u2019s happened when either they\u2019ve tried to do it, or other inmates have tried to do it,\u201d said Kull, \u201cand you sort of resolve yourself to accepting that these are the circumstances under which I\u2019m going to have to finish out my time, and that\u2019s what really needs to change. We, as a society, have to be intolerant of that.\u201d
\nRelated
\nTagged:
\nAdult Survivors Act
\n,
\ncriminal legal system
\n,
\nFeature
\n,
\nformerly incarcerated people
\n,
\ngender justice
\n,
\nincarcerated people
\n,
\nincarceration
\n,
\nmass incarceration
\n,
\nnew york
\n,
\nprison
\n,
\nsexual abuse
\n,
\nsexual assault
\n,
\nsexual violence
\nTamar Sarai
\nContributing Writer, At-Large
\nTamar Sarai is a writer, journalist, and historian in training. Her work focuses on race, culture, and the criminal legal system. She is currently pursing her PhD in History at Temple University where…
\nMore by Tamar Sarai<\/p>\n

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NEW YORK, NY – FEBRUARY 28: A demonstrator holds a sign overhead at a rally in support of the Adult Survivors Act on Feb. 28, 2020, in New York City. (Photo by Scott Heins\/Getty Images) CW: Mentions and descriptions of sexual assault and abuse in prison The two women huddle next to each other, trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions\/7"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}