Between 2015 and 2017, a group of Chicago inmates began aggressively masturbating at female public defenders and law clerks.
Cook County public defenders may receive $14 million for being subject a work environment so uncontrolled and unwelcoming that it included masturbating inmates.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, attorneys representing 534 public defenders and law clerks asked U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly to approve the proposed settlement. If approved, the plaintiffs would receive a minimum of $9.5 million, of which some 30% would go to their attorneys.
As the Sun-Times reports, the lawsuit was filed in November of 2017. Shortly after its inception, Kennelly issued an injunction to stop inmates from exposing themselves in front of female law clerks and public defenders.
To enforce the unusual order, Kennelly directed that inmates be given uniforms that limit access to their genitals. Alongside having limited access to their crotches, inmates would also have to be handcuffed—with their hands placed behind their backs—whenever they meet with attorneys or are being transported between jail and court.
The defendants—which include Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli and Sheriff Tom Dart—have continued to deny any wrongdoing. Both individuals claim they didn’t ignore sexual harassment within county facilities or intentionally permit a harsh work environment.
The Sun-Times suggests that the incidents of exposure and sexual assault picked up between July 2015 and January 2016. In that roughly half-year period, a group of inmates formed the so-called “Savage Life” gang. The gang was organized, apparently, for the purpose of attacking corrections officials and other people involved in legal proceedings. Along with masturbating in front of female employees in court and in jail, they also threw feces at guards.
Kennelly, in an August ruling, said it was “undisputed” that, between 2015 and 2017, “attacks involving indecent exposure and masturbation by detainees became frequent.”
“Although each attack was different, a common theme emerged,” Kennelly wrote. “Detainees targeted women assistant public defenders and law clerks for attacks that involved exposing their penises and masturbating while making eye contact with or otherwise directing their conduct toward their target.”
These “attacks,” said Kennelly, were usually “accompanied by verbal threats and, occasionally, physically contact.”
Interestingly, the sheriff’s department’s attempts to curtail disturbing behavior appeared to have backfired. Signs advising inmates of consequences for indecent exposure were ignored and may even have contributed to an uptick in exposure incidents.
At one Chicago-area jail, staff—frustrated by the pressure put upon them by public defenders—threw a pizza party for inmates to celebrate “going for a period of time without perpetrating additional attacks.”
All the while, public defenders say they were pressured by their superiors to not report harassment inside jails—largely because their bosses felt pressing charges or complaining against the same criminals they were supposed to be defending could appear contradictory.
“In other words,” Kennelly wrote in 2019, “the plaintiffs say that they felt that the public defender program had a culture in which victims of the sorts of exhibitionist attacks they endured were expected to simply turn the other cheek.”
Kennelly’s continued participation in the case seems to have brought real results. The Sun-Times says that, since Kennelly’s injunction in 2017, masturbation and exposure incidents have “dramatically declined.”
Sources
Lawsuit Alleging Jail Inmate Misconduct Gets Judge’s OK
Masturbating Cook County Jail inmates could cost taxpayers $2 million-plus in legal fees
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