By Elyssa Cherney
Orlando Sentinel
ORLANDO — Half a dozen inmates hiding in the showers at Sumter Correctional Institution surrounded a 17-year-old on the morning of July 24, 2013.
For the next 30 minutes, the band of prisoners choked, slapped and stabbed the juvenile more than 100 times with sharpened pieces of barbed-wire broken from a fence.
The attackers finished by pushing a broom handle into the juvenile’s rectum, sexually battering him after he had lost consciousness.
All the while, an officer with the Florida Department of Corrections sat in a glass-enclosed room directly in front of the dormitory’s bathroom, looking in that direction.
The assault is the basis of a federal lawsuit filed today by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of the juvenile, a Polk County resident whom the Orlando Sentinel is not identifying.
Corrections officer Bruce Kiser, who remains employed by the DOC, is listed as the defendant in his individual capacity. The lawsuit refers to the plaintiff in the suit as R.W.
The attack on R.W. is one of 176 documented inmate and staff assaults reported since Jan. 1, 2013 at the Sumter Correctional Institution, an adult prison that houses more than 100 inmates under the age of 17 from across the state. The facility has a total population of 1,176 inmates, according to DOC spokesman McKinley Lewis.
Lewis would not comment on the pending litigation but offered some information about steps the department has taken since the July 2013 attack.
The DOC has added 172 cameras and 15 security staff positions to the Sumter facility in Bushnell, which accepts adults and youthful offender male inmates. Youthful offenders are inmates age 17 and under who were prosecuted and sentenced in the courts as adults.
An Office of the Inspector General report found that criminal sexual battery charges should not be brought against the six attackers in R.W.'s case because of R.W.'s inability to identify them and inconsistencies in his statements to investigators, among other reasons.
The assailants were placed in solitary confinement during the investigation, the report states. It is unclear what other actions, if any, were taken against them.
In the report, Inspector Robert Weeks also documented possible administrative issues about Kiser’s “lack of action,” which was documented on a prison security camera.
“This is based on the video which shows Kiser standing at the door of the officer’s station looking at the bathroom/shower area during the time of the attack, then he exits the office and walks in the other direction,” the report states.
Kiser, who was first hired by the DOC in August 2007, was not disciplined as a result of the investigation, according to Lewis. He makes an annual salary of $32,208, state records show. Kiser remains at the Sumter institution while R.W. was transferred to a different prison in Gilchrist County.
Attempts to reach Kiser by phone and email on Wednesday were unsuccessful.
Allegations raised against Kiser in the lawsuit include that he allowed prisoners access to brooms and mops despite knowing that these items are used in prison assaults.
“Defendant Officer Kiser was aware that R.W. faced a substantial risk of serious harm, yet failed to do anything to stop it,” according to the lawsuit, filed at the federal courthouse in Ocala.
“As a result of Defendant Kiser’s failure to intervene, report or respond in any way to the attack and sexual assault endured by R.W., R.W. suffered physical injury, severe emotional and mental distress, humiliation and degradation.”
‘Test Of Heart’
What happened to R.W. is a prison rite of passage ritual called “Test of Heart,” said R.W.'s lawyer Miriam Haskell of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The attacks target youthful offenders, who generally enter the system as minors, Haskell said. They can either buy other inmates commissary items or must face off against them in a fight, the lawsuit states.
“The reality is that this culture of brutality in youthful offender prisons puts all kids at risk of this kind of violence,” Haskell said in a recent phone interview. “R.W. is not the first kid this has happened to and unfortunately, he probably won’t be the last unless the DOC and the state of Florida react dramatically…"
In R.W.'s case, he could not afford to pay off his future attackers, the lawsuit states. He was indigent and lived with his grandmother, who had died before R.W. was incarcerated in May 2013. He had violated his probation for a robbery conviction by carrying a concealed weapon, Haskell said.
In 2013 R.W. did not immediately report his attack to officers because of fear of retaliation. He only told investigators after a corrections officer noticed cuts and scratches on his body.
Lewis said the DOC takes inmate assaults seriously and investigations are done in their wake.
While the reports may note whether an attack appeared to be an initiation ritual or hazing, the DOC does not specifically track how often it occurs. The investigation into R.W.'s attack did note the connection.
R.W.'s lawsuit seeks damages and petitions for a trial by jury.
Kiser is listed as the defendant and not the DOC because officers are individually liable when someone gets hurt, Haskell said.
Adult Prisons
Minors like R.W. end up in the adult prison system because of a procedure called direct filing.
It enables the state to prosecute juveniles as adults in the criminal justice system. If convicted in adult court, a direct-filed youth may be sentenced to prison time with the Florida Department of Corrections.
If a minor is convicted in the juvenile courts, he or she can be sent to the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, which operates 21 juvenile detention centers through the state.
A bill pending in the Florida Legislature this session would limit a prosecutor’s ability to direct file cases, reducing the number of younger teens with non-violent records in adult prisons.
Placing minors in adult prisons makes them vulnerable to attacks by stronger inmates and encourages them to participate in the violence themselves, according to juvenile justice experts.
“Juveniles are mimicking some of the rituals and rites of passages established in adult prisons,” said Laura Abrams, a professor of social welfare at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“Age lines are completely blurred in the United States. There can be 14-year-olds sentenced as adults, there can be 25 year-olds in a juvenile facility… There is a big difference in development and strength between a 14-year-old and a 25-year-old.”
Juvenile justice advocates say cameras can help keep corrections officers more accountable and reduce inmate violence. Ultimately, they believe keeping minors out of adult prisons is the most effective way to reduce such attacks.
“The research shows youth who are in adult facilities have a 34 percent greater risk of recidivism,” said Michele Deitch, an attorney who teaches courses on the subject at theUniversity of Texas at Austin’s schools of law and public policy.
“It’s really a public safety concern as well as a safety concern for the youth. It’s a very counterproductive policy if we’re looking to change youth behavior.”
Copyright 2016 The Orlando Sentinel