Hundreds of women working for the public defender's office in Cook County, Illinois have filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that the public defender and the sheriff conspired in their refusal to stop detainees from sexually assaulting them on a daily basis.
The suit says that female public defenders and law clerks in the Cook County lockup have to deal with "daily abuses" from detainees including the following:
- Masturbation in their presence
- Verbal threats laden with explicit sexual violence
- Exposure of genitals
- Physical attacks
According to the suit, Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart knew about the attacks and did nothing to stop them.
A release reads:
"Dart and Campanelli regularly rescinded measures that were effective in decreasing the harassment, including cuffing detainees, requiring detainees to wear jumpsuits in lockup, and assigning a sheriff to monitor lockup areas."
Dart tried to fix the problem by forcing inmates to wear special jumpsuits that made it difficult for them to reach their penises. But he gave up on the idea, when a group of inmates threw their suits into a microwave and burned them.
He then started handcuffing detainees while they were in courthouse lock up which, according to the lawsuit "significantly decreased instances of masturbation and exposure."
Campanelli ended the practice and "ordered it stopped immediately, without ensuring that another measure was in place..."
So then Dart started rewarding "serial masturbators" with pizza if they went 30 days with out pleasuring themselves or having a sexual assault incident.
The lawsuit says that this led to an increase in "exposure incidents" because inmates who had never exposed themselves "were now incentivized to commit indecent exposure and masturbation in order to qualify for a pizza reward."
What an awful place to work. It sounds like there should be mandatory chemical castration!