The state and former prison guard Irwin Ah-Hoy have each agreed to pay $50,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a former Women’s Community Correctional Center inmate whom Ah-Hoy sexually assaulted.
Stormy Rae Smith sued the state, then-Department of Public Safety Director Jodie Maesaka-Hirata, then-WCCC Warden Mark Patterson and Ah-Hoy in March 2014, one year after a state grand jury indicted Ah-Hoy on two counts each of second- and third-degree sexual assault.
The prosecutor said Ah-Hoy directed other staff at WCCC to send Smith to him in a control booth twice in 2012, and that Ah-Hoy then forced Smith into a staff-only bathroom where he sexually assaulted her. The state said Smith saved Ah-Hoy’s DNA from one of the encounters.
Smith was serving a five-year prison sentence for auto theft, drug and drug paraphernalia possession.
DPS fired Ah-Hoy in June 2014. He had 15 years of service with the department.
Ah-Hoy, 53, pleaded no contest to all of the charges against him in April 2015. At sentencing later that year he told then-Circuit Judge Karen Ahn that Smith had set him up.
He said he has a medical condition that causes him to have involuntary, painful erections that he needs to take care of immediately. He told Ahn that as he was addressing his condition in a bathroom, Smith took a tissue containing his DNA that he had just used.
Ahn sentenced Ah-Hoy to five years of probation, 18 months of which he would have to spend behind bars. Ah-Hoy later asked Ahn to reconsider her sentence and to reduce his jail term to one year, but she rejected the request.
Ah-Hoy renewed his request for a shorter jail term after Ahn retired. His original release date was Jan. 28 this year.
He asked Circuit Judge Jeffrey Crabtree to reduce his 18-month term so he could attend this year’s Polynesian Bowl high school all-star football game on Jan. 21, in which his son was scheduled to play. Crabtree granted Ah-Hoy’s request two days before the game.
During the proceedings for Smith’s civil lawsuit, her lawyer, Myles Breiner, says Ah-Hoy claimed the sexual assault charges against him were a big mistake. Breiner said Ah-Hoy repeated his claim of a medical sexual condition yet provided no documentation to back it up. Breiner said Ah-Hoy also never previously disclosed the condition to his employer or his family.
For Smith to have done what Ah-Hoy claims, she would have had to somehow exit her locked cell undetected, enter a locked control booth, then open a bathroom door that has a deadbolt lock, Breiner said.
Ah-Hoy agreed to settle the lawsuit after U.S. Magistrate Judge Kevin S.C. Chang ordered him and his wife to attend one of the settlement conferences with the court. Such conferences are usually attended just by the parties’ lawyers.
Breiner said Ah-Hoy “never apologized or expressed remorse. He never once accepted responsibility.”
He also said Ah-Hoy’s reduced jail term sends a message that there is a double standard, one for people who work for the state and one for everyone else.
Ah-Hoy’s lawyer, Walter Rodby, declined to comment on the settlement.
