‘Who could I tell?’: Council grills DOC after victims detail sexual abuse on Rikers

City Councilmember Sandy Nurse grilled top Department of Correction officials on Thursday, Oct. 31, over the department’s response to the over 700 claims of sexual abuse filed against the DOC last year. File photo by Emil Cohen/NYC Council Media Unit

By Jacob Kaye

Around a year after hundreds of lawsuits were filed against the Department of Correction by New Yorkers who said they were sexually abused while incarcerated on Rikers Island, top officials in the DOC attempted to convince fuming lawmakers on Thursday that they were taking the allegations seriously.

But the city councilmembers who had convened the Thursday hearing in response to the flood of sexual abuse lawsuits filed last year said that they had heard enough.

“It seems like it's an epidemic,” said City Councilmember Althea Stevens, who represents parts of the Bronx. “Then to hear [the DOC] coming in and not having the answers, it feels like you know it's a problem, but is it really a problem?”

“[Rikers Island] is a place where people are supposed to be getting rehabilitated, and we are retraumatizing them,” she added. “We are not doing our jobs. None of us.”

Thursday’s hearing, which was led by the council’s Committee on Criminal Justice, mostly centered around the over 700 lawsuits that were filed against the Department of Correction under the Adult Survivors Act, which gave New Yorkers a one-year window to file sexual abuse lawsuits over incidents that fell outside of the statute of limitations.

An analysis conducted by the news outlet Gothamist earlier this year found that nearly 60 percent of all Adult Survivors Act claims filed from 2022 to 2023 detailed alleged abuses on Rikers Island.

Combined, the plaintiffs behind the lawsuits are seeking over $14 billion in damages from the city, Gothamist found.

Thursday’s hearing began with testimony from four women who said they were sexually abused while incarcerated in the city’s troubled jail complex.

Each of them said the abuse they suffered at the hands of the officers sworn to protect them had stuck with them, even decades after it had occurred.

“The experience left me feeling powerless, knowing that someone who was supposed to protect and oversee my safety violated that trust,” one woman said.

Another woman who was incarcerated as a teenager nearly four decades ago said that after she was abused by a female officer, the officer’s wife, who also worked on Rikers Island, had the teen placed in solitary confinement.

“Who could I tell?” the woman said. “Who could I turn to in protective custody, in a jail that was run by officers, captains, sergeants, wardens that say that they are there to protect, to care, to maintain custody? I didn't see it.”

Throughout the survivors’ testimony, DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, who took over the top post at the DOC in December but who has been with the department for nearly a decade, watched on.

Later, after being asked by City Councilmember Sandy Nurse if Maginley-Liddie believed the claims made by the women, the commissioner said she believed “that we really need to look into it.”

“I do believe that people have raised some serious concerns, and I think that as a department, that we have to truly lean in and make sure that these concerns are addressed,” Maginley-Liddie said.

But councilmembers on Thursday appeared to be somewhat frustrated with the DOC’s response to the allegations.

At one point, Nurse asked DOC officials how many officers had been fired, suspended or placed on modified duty after being accused of sexual abuse. After being told that the officials didn’t know the number off hand, Nurse reprimanded them.

“This is some basic, foundational s– right now,” Nurse said. “This is a hearing on sexual abuse, preventing sexual abuse at DOC, what you're doing to prevent it. Knowing how many staff members are currently suspended or on modified duties is a pretty basic question here.”

While the DOC said that all five of the officers who were actively working for the DOC when sexual abuse claims were filed against them last year had been removed from their posts, councilmembers on Thursday questioned the timeline in which they were removed.

One officer, Anthony Martin, remained working on Rikers for months after multiple women accused him of sexually abusing them. Though he was eventually suspended, his abuse did not stay confined to Rikers.

In August, Martin was arrested after he allegedly lured a woman to his Queens home by telling her that he was a TV producer interested in casting her in a show. When they arrived to his apartment, he allegedly raped her.

Martin now faces up to 25 years in prison.

As the Adult Survivors Act lawsuits playout in Civil Court, Nurse said that she hopes investigations into each individual lawsuit are pursued by the DOC.

“We haven’t seen that kind of 5-alarm fire response from the city,” Nurse said.

She also urged the Department of Investigation to launch a broader probe into the issue of sexual abuse on Rikers Island.

DOI Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber said she’d consider ordering such an investigation.