A 26-year-old former female inmate at Kauai Community Correctional Center has filed a federal lawsuit charging that she was "repeatedly humiliated, harassed and sexually abused" by the prison warden in what she described as "sexual shamings" in front of male inmates.
The accusations were made in a class-action lawsuit filed Jan. 31 by Alexandria Gregg, also known as Alexandria Tangalin, against state Department of Public Safety Director Ted Sakai and Kauai Community Correctional Center Warden Neal Wagatsuma.
While an inmate at KCCC three years ago, Gregg said, Wagatsuma held "public sexual shamings" in which female inmates had to disclose their "rape, childhood sexual abuse … sexual preferences (and) sexual deviations."
Toni Schwartz, public safety spokeswoman, said in a written statement, "We have not been served with the lawsuit. We have to reserve comment until we are officially served and have had a chance to look over the documents with our attorneys."
Gregg is seeking punitive damages for cruel and unusual punishment, sexual abuse, constitutional violations, civil rights violations, and privacy invasion.
She was serving time at KCCC from March to November 2011 for car theft and contempt of court. Her criminal record includes convictions for car theft, criminal property damage and contempt beginning in 2009.
She is represented by attorney Margery Bronster.
Federal Magistrate Judge Kevin Chang has scheduled a May 5 hearing in the case.
Gregg was assigned to the prison’sLife Time Stand program, which was created by Wagatsuma and stresses work ethic, perseverance, discipline and personal responsibility. Conditions for program participants are not as restrictive as for other inmates.
In a 2008 Honolulu Star-Bulletin interview, Wagatsuma said inmates selected for the program were men and women who wanted to change their lives. The inmates live in unguarded cabins on the prison grounds, and their daily regimen resembles a military boot camp.
"Defendant Wagatsuma’s public sexual shamings of female detainees at KCCC involved a myriad of improper, intolerable and illegal acts," Gregg said in her 28-page suit. "For example, defendant Wagatsuma belittled and derided female detainees in front of other male detainees and required the female detainees to hold up provocative, sexual photographs of themselves as he called them ‘whores.’
"During these public sessions, defendant Wagatsuma would demand that female detainees disclose their private sexual histories, which included rape, childhood sexual abuse and drug-induced sex. Defendant Wagatsuma would go further and extensively question the female detainees about their sexual histories, sexual preferences, sexual deviations and sexual pleasures. For example, female detainees were asked about what they thought about when they masturbated."
Wagatsuma would often film these public sexual shamings, according to the suit.
"Typically, the detainees selected for filming were young attractive women," the suit said.
"If a detainee refused to follow defendant Wagatsuma’s order to degrade themselves sexually, he would deem the detainee uncooperative."
According to the suit, Wagatsuma retaliated against uncooperative inmates by returning them to more restrictive conditions, transferring them to another correctional facility or withholding privileges.
Gregg said that in the eight months she was at KCCC, she and other women endured numerous "public shamings" in front of male detainees for up to 45 minutes at a time.
Wagatsuma called her a "whore" and a "batuna," a slang word for a woman who trades sex for drugs, Gregg said.
The suit added, "Defendant Wagatsuma would also force female detainees to write and submit detailed descriptions of traumatic sexual and physical molestations endured in childhood or adolescence. These intimate sexual disclosures were then posted in an open book for other detainees and DPS employees to read."
After leaving the Lihue prison in November 2011, Gregg was transferred to the federal detention center in Honolulu. She was released in May 2012.
