Elaboration on a Theme.

TRIGGER WARNING: Rape, sexual assault.

In an article titled “The Brutal Horror of Prison Rape, as Told by Its Victims”, Kimberly Yates and Bryson Martel tell their story of being raped while incarcerated. What stood out the most to me in their accounts was the fact that overall the violence was thoroughly ignored. Yates says that what makes her case “especially alarming is the fact that the BOP [prison authority] was put on notice about this officer [who committed the act] but continued to allow him to work in that position, knowing what he had done and that he could do it to someone else.” In addition to that, Martel believes if prison officials had paid attention to other inmate’s claims of abuse, it could have stopped his from happening. “If earlier reports of his abuse had been acted on, my rape could have been prevented.” Through this and the fact that action refused to be taken, we see that, sexual violence in the prison system is systematically allowed and perpetuated. Also, the fact that the PIC makes money, essentially off the illegal acts against women through the imprisonment of the perpetuator makes this state sponsored violence.  Rape of women and trans folks and other forms of sexual violence in the prison system is a problem that is blatantly ignored. Starting with invasive internal and gynecological examinations, sexual violence is purposely overlooked at every turn. In Angela Y. Davis’ book on the Prison Industrial Complex, “Are Prisons Obsolete?”, she discusses the sexual violence that takes place within this system. According to Davis, “as activists and prisoners themselves have pointed out, the state itself is directly implicated in this routinization of sexual abuse, both in permitting such conditions that render women vulnerable to explicit sexual coercion carried out by guards and other prison staff and by incorporating into routine policy such practices as the strip search and body cavity search.”