Sexual abuse investigations at Rikers languish under Adams

New York City's system for investigating rapes and sexual abuse of Rikers Island detainees is failing under Mayor Eric Adams, a Gothamist review of city data shows, and the Department of Correction now faces a growing backlog of cases as city and federal guidelines requiring timely probes have been flouted.

More than 45% of the department's investigations into sexual abuse and sexual harassment allegations last year dragged on beyond a local and federal mandate that cases be fully investigated and closed within 90 days after a complaint is filed. It's a stark change compared to 2020 and 2021, when the department was fully compliant with the 90-day rule and before Adams had taken office.

Correction department data on detainees' sexual abuse allegations from the first half of 2024 is not yet available because correction officials are more than a month late in filing a required report — which is a violation of city law — according to the Board of Correction, which regulates the city's jails.

The backslide in compliance under Adams comes as more than 700 women have filed lawsuits against the city claiming they were sexually abused by staff at Rikers over a span of nearly five decades. Of those cases, 40 are alleged to have happened in the past six years. At least five of the officers accused in the flood of litigation are still employed by the city's correction department. Three still work at the Rikers women's jail.

Criminal justice experts said the allegations made in lawsuits against the city should trigger the correction department's investigative process. The correction department declined to answer questions about whether it is investigating claims made in the litigation, and the lawsuits were not factored into Gothamist's analysis.

So far, Adams has declined to launch a wider, independent investigation into the claims filed by women in court, despite lawmakers' calls for him to do so. The plaintiffs are seeking $14.7 billion in damages.

Even before the recent investigative delays at Rikers, city investigators have rarely substantiated detainees' sexual abuse allegations against officers and other staff. Gothamist's data analysis shows that since 2015, nearly 1,500 sexual abuse allegations were reported by people in custody against correction staff, but just seven of those cases — a half of a percent — were substantiated.

Former jail officials and criminal justice experts say a low substantiation rate indicates that allegations aren't being thoroughly investigated.

The substantiation rate is also low when it comes to sexual assault and harrassment allegations made by detainees against other people in custody, which constitute the majority of complaints. The percentage of all complaints against both staff and detainees that city investigators substantiated has fallen from 4.5% in 2022 to just 3.4% last year. That's well below the most recently available national average for substantiated claims in correctional facilities, which was 6% in 2020, according to the Department of Justice .

"Sexual abuse must be taken as seriously as all other forms of violence in the city's jails," said Martha King, former executive director of the Board of Correction. During King's tenure, the board passed new requirements for the correction department that were designed to bring the city into compliance with federal rules.

"With focused attention from leadership and increased monitoring by the board of correction, this backsliding can be stopped."

Spokespeople for the Department of Correction and Adams did not respond to a list of questions about Gothamist's findings.

Although the department has a relatively sizable staff dedicated to investigating claims, its compliance record has worsened under Adams. As of last year, it had 40 investigators and eight supervisors handling PREA cases, according to a federal court filing. That's a higher headcount than in 2019, when the backlog was approaching zero, according to Board of Correction minutes from the time.

Sarena Townsend, a former deputy correction commissioner who oversaw investigations involving sexual misconduct from 2018 to 2022, said the system for protecting detainees from sexual abuse doesn't work because officials currently in place aren't committed enough to the task and victims don't trust the process.

"It has devolved into a series of checking boxes rather than actually fixing the issue," she said. "You can only show that you're reliable if people report to you and you take it seriously. But people aren't reporting to you because you haven't proven to be reliable and effective."

She added: "People don't want to come forward, and you can't blame them half the time."

NYC fell out of compliance under Adams

Townsend is a former sex crimes prosecutor hired by the city's correction department under Mayor Bill de Blasio to, in part, bring the city into compliance with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA. PREA was passed and signed into law in 2003, and requires jail facilities to "promptly, thoroughly and objectively" investigate all allegations of sexual abuse or harassment, discipline staff who violate sexual misconduct policies, and alert law enforcement in cases of potential criminal conduct.

The city has long struggled to meet those federal mandates. Under the law, states with correctional facilities, including local jails, that violate the guidelines could lose federal funding.

By early 2018, the year Townsend became acting deputy commissioner, the correction department faced a backlog of 1,216 allegations involving sexual abuse and harassment that were uninvestigated, according to a city report at the time. Townsend said she implemented a plan to tackle the outstanding cases by hiring more investigators and managers for the investigative division's team, initiating strict timelines to handle problems and providing more training for staffers.

The backlog was eliminated by the following year, data shows. And in 2020 and 2021, the department was fully compliant: 100% of cases were investigated within the 90-day time frame.

But when Adams was inaugurated in 2022, he appointed a new correction commissioner, Louis Molina, who abruptly and controversially fired Townsend. She said she was terminated after she refused to close use-of-force cases against correction officers. Molina also restructured the department's investigations division.

By the end of Molina's first year in the post, data shows that the city's compliance record had already begun to falter, with almost 1 in 4 cases involving sexual allegations not investigated in the 90-day time frame. The backlog has only grown since then. Last year, 80 cases weren't investigated on time — almost half of the total allegations, data shows.

Townsend's replacement as head of investigations resigned after the federal monitor who oversees Rikers identified problems with investigating use-of-force by officers. The Special Investigation Unit now handles PREA investigations.

As the substantiation rate has dropped, so too has the number of allegations that the correction department has sent to prosecutors — from 2.5% in 2019 to 1.7% in 2023, according to city reports.

Those cases that do result in criminal prosecution by Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark — who has jurisdiction over Rikers — have had mixed results. In some cases, Clark dropped charges midway through a prosecution, blaming criminal justice reform and a lack of cooperation from the women's civil attorneys. In another case, a correction officer pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a detainee in a storage closet in exchange for avoiding jail time .

Correction officials have yet to file overall compliance statistics for 2024 in the department's biannual report to the Board of Correction. They were due for public release on Aug. 15, according to city law .