M.M.
Two of them held me down while the other raped me . . . . I stayed in my cell all day, skipped lunch. I didn't say anything to my cellmate about it. I was so embarrassed I had let it happen to myself.(10)
Q. Do you know that if you would comply with the T.D.C. [prison] rules on shaving and cutting your hair, then you would be released from closed custody, right?
A. I feel after so much amount of time, and in that time period I would be assaulted. And the reason for my continuing to disobey the rules is to be placed in special cell restrictions where I stay in my cell basically 24 hours a day.(11)
M.M. was only eighteen when he entered Texas prison; he was twenty-one when he was first raped. But from the very beginning predatory inmates targeted him. M.M.'s strategy for avoiding victimization was to violate prison rules--to refuse to shave, to cut his hair, or go to work--so that, as punishment, he would be kept safe in a locked cell. For three years, he managed to protect himself in this way.
S.M. started out in March 1994 at High Tower Unit, a safe minimum security prison. He only stayed there for a few months and then was transferred to another unit to get psychiatric treatment for depression. Within a week, other prisoners were threatening him, trying to coerce him into giving up his allowance for the prison commissary. Although S.M. is six feet tall, he is not a fighter. He has a gentle, subdued personality and a young face.
M.M. was on the minimum custody level, but he was exposed to closed custody (maximum security) prisoners at his job working in the fields. Fearful because of threatening notes he had received, S.M. refused to go out to work one day and was punished by being placed on special cell restrictions, essentially, being forced to stay all day in his cell. But the disciplinary violation he received made his custody level drop down to closed custody, where he ended up with a much more violent set of prisoners. When M.M. entered the general population of closed custody after his thirty days under special cell restrictions, "the inmates swarmed me. They all wanted me to pay protection: the blacks, whites and Mexicans. I didn't know how to fight, couldn't stick up for myself."(12)
M.M. was forced to "ride"--to pay protection--but to escape to a locked cell he began violating prison rules by refusing to shave, to cut his hair, and to work. He spent nearly all of his three years at this facility locked in his cell under special cell restrictions. Sometimes other inmates were placed together with him but he spent much of the time alone.(13) Having complained to guards about his problems with other inmates, to no avail, he thought this was the best way to stay safe.
In January 1997 M.M. was transferred to another unit and placed on a medium custody wing. He wanted to manage with other prisoners and for a month or so this seemed possible. But soon some prisoners who knew him from the previous facility were moved to his wing. "They spread rumors about the fact that I rode," M.M. related. "Then the inmates started swarming. They knew I was easy."(14)
Under threat of assault, M.M. had his family deposit money into the bank accounts of people named by some Crips gang members who had targeted him. "And that apparently wasn't enough," M.M. later testified under oath. "And I had three of them run in my cell and sexually assault me."(15) Two of the gang members held him down while the other anally raped him. It was morning, and M.M. could hear the television on in the dayroom; although he yelled he knew the officers outside would not hear him. Before the prisoners left his cell they warned that if he told anyone they would eventually "get" him, no matter where he went.
M.M. was stunned, "in shock," he later said.(16) He skipped lunch, and then at dinner approached a sergeant to try to explain the situation, but he could not manage to describe it directly. He simply told the sergeant that he was having "serious problems"; he claims that the sergeant dismissed him.
The very next day he refused to go to work in order to be placed on special cell restrictions. He was locked in a cell with a Mexican gang member who, S.M. said, "had heard rumors" about him. One night a few days later, the other prisoner attacked M.M., pointing a shank at him and threatening to kill him. Out of fear, "I let him do what he wanted," S.M. said. "It was impossible to tell a CO because I was still locked in the cell with the guy. The CO could walk away and I'd get stabbed. It went on for three days in a row: we had anal sex two times--whenever the guy wanted."(17)
After the first rape, M.M. filled out a form requesting to see a psychiatrist, stating that he was contemplating suicide. Three days later, S.M. was brought in to see him. S.M. immediately broke down and started crying, telling him what had happened. After a medical examination, M.M. was brought to speak to investigators working for the prison's gang intelligence division. He told them exactly what happened. They asked if he wanted to prosecute the case and S.M. responded no. He was afraid of being labeled a snitch--of increasing the likelihood of being assaulted again.
The psychiatrist put him on single-cell restriction for his protection. At a hearing of the Unit Classification Committee (UCC) a few months later it was recommended that S.M. be placed on safekeeping in another prison. For four months, M.M. was in a single cell in "transit status," waiting for state officials to review the UCC's decision about safekeeping. In July 1997, the state authorities rejected S.M.'s placement on safekeeping, and he was placed back in medium custody with a single cell restriction.
The last time M.M. was raped was the worst, he later said: the most violent and the most painful. It was in October 1997, and the prison officials were insisting that M.M. return to the general population of closed custody. M.M. tried to refuse but they placed him in handcuffs and brought him to a cell. His new cellmate, an African American prisoner, told M.M. that he had "'heard about him'"--that he knew that M.M. was a "willing homosexual"--but that even if M.M. wasn't willing, they were still going to have sex.(18) M.M. was terrified but he tried to stall. He pretended to go along with his cellmate but put off having sex. At breakfast time, after his cellmate had left, he told the guards what was happening: that he was being threatened with rape. The guards locked him in a shower and called a sergeant. When the sergeant arrived, M.M. explained his situation, but the sergeant said, "that he didn't care, that he would force me back into the cell if he had to, that if I didn't come out of the shower that he would beat me himself."(19)
M.M. agreed to return to his cell but when the officers unlocked the shower he ran to the dayroom at the front of the wing. The sergeant then escorted M.M. to the front desk and handcuffed him, saying, "'you're going back to the cell whether you like it or not.'"(20) The officers placed M.M. in the recreation yard for a time, then informed him that he could either return to his cell voluntarily or be forced to return. M.M. replied that he was refusing housing.
I was begging them: "Take me to prehearing detention." They refused; they handcuffed me and carried me back to the cell, and threw me in it. By then it was around 3 a.m. My cellie started hitting me. He was a huge guy. I gave up.(21)
By then, because of his past assaults, M.M. was aware that proof of rape could be obtained by the use of a rape kit. He desperately wanted the prison authorities to collect evidence of the rape. Early in the morning, when his cellmate left the cell, he reported the rape to a guard, who told him that he would tell the sergeant what had happened. But for several hours, no one came to investigate. When M.M. was released from his cell for lunch, he found a sergeant and reported the rape. The sergeant handcuffed M.M. and left him on the recreation yard for an hour; finally around noon M.M. was brought to the infirmary and examined for rape. He was later informed that the examination showed no evidence of rape--unsurprising given the amount of time that had elapsed since the assault occurred.
Since the last rape, M.M. has been held in a single cell. When Human Rights Watch interviewed him, he was in a psychiatric unit, having tried to commit suicide in late January 1999. Because of the countless disciplinary cases he had accrued for violating prison hygiene rules, he still had several years of his ten year sentence left to serve, and was feeling depressed and scared about the future. His projected release date was August 2003.
