San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday, August 20, 2005
Jim Herron Zamora, Chronicle Staff Writer

Kendall Spruce was raped by 27 men during the nine months he served for writing bad checks.

Hope Hernandez was raped by a corrections officer while she suffered through heroin withdrawal.

Those were just some of the horrific stories of rapes behind bars that a federal commission heard Friday during a hearing, the first of its kind, in San Francisco.

The bipartisan Prison Rape Elimination Commission is traveling the country gathering testimony before drafting federal guidelines to protect inmates. The guidelines, once finalized, would apply to any jail or prison that receives federal funds.

In a study released earlier this year, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that 8,000 incidents of forced sex occur annually among the 2.1 million inmates in the nation's local, state and federal prisons. The study noted that most inmates were reluctant to report such crimes for fear of being labeled a snitch and because of indifference or hostility among jailers.

"Sexual abuse and rape in our prisons are the epitome of the dehumanizing nature of our entire correctional system," said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who was among the sponsors of the bill creating the commission. "Prison rape is a human rights issue; it's a public health issue; and it's a public safety issue."

The public health aspect was made clear by some of the five victims who testified. Spruce was infected with HIV during his rape.

"Prison destroyed me," the 42-year-old said after testifying about his time in an Arkansas prison. "They took my health. They took my manhood. I keep going. I keep on fighting. But there are things I'll never get back."

After raping her, Cecilia Chung's assailant in the San Francisco jail offered her a candy bar.

"It made a cheap encounter even cheaper," she said. "That degrading experience caused damage to my self-esteem for many years to come. I definitely felt that I did not own my own body. It was enough to convince me that my life didn't belong to me."

Roderick Hickman, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, told the commission the recent reorganization of the Department of Corrections would increase the likelihood that inmates would report rapes and "forever change the culture of our prisons."

Under the reorganization, Hickman said, the investigation of crimes alleged to have occurred within prisons will be overseen by his office instead of by the warden of the prison under investigation. That will make it more likely that all investigations will be independent and unbiased, he said.

Hickman also told the commission he was working to change the culture in state prisons and ensure that guards knew that the "code of silence" that allows such crimes to be covered up was unacceptable.

State Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, who chairs two Senate committees with prison oversight, told the commission that California was striving to be a leader in reforming prisons and preventing the rape of inmates.

"These horrific stories never should have happened in prisons," Romero said, "This is not something we can accept."

For Martin, the stint he served in an Indiana jail in 1973 led to a long, self-destructive spiral of denial, drug abuse and homelessness. His own mother told him he got what he "deserved" for being arrested at a party where students smoked marijuana.

It took him years to confront his own demons through therapy. He finally got off the streets in 1993 when he became active in the homeless rights movement. He is now happy and the editor of the Street Sheet newspaper.

But he still cringes when he thinks about being raped by so-called "trusties" at the jail.

"I buried it for years," Martin said. "It's something that I'll never really recover from. No matter how hard I work at it."

E-mail Jim Zamora at jzamora@sfchronicle.com.
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