Idaho incarcerates women at a higher rate than any other state in the country.
And a new reporting series from non-profit newsroom InvestigateWest chronicles rape and abuse by Idaho’s prison guards and the system that’s shielded them from repercussions.
The reporting in “Guarded by Predators” ranges from the personal stories of incarcerated women who allege they’ve been abused to how Idaho State Police investigated—or didn’t investigate—prison sexual abuse complaints.
The series includes the stories:
- Staff sexual abuse in Idaho women’s prisons goes largely unchecked
- In Idaho women’s prisons, guards get away with sexual abuse and victims are blamed
- Case closed: Inside Idaho State Police’s handling of prison sexual abuse complaint
- Idaho law challenges prosecutors seeking to penalize prison guards for sexual abuse
- From one voice to many: Women speak out on Idaho prison abuse
News and investigations editor Wilson Criscione and vulnerable populations reporter Whitney Bryen investigated the allegations of abuse in Idaho's prisons over the course of a year.
"It was difficult to, in our mind, think about, we have all of these women who spoke to us, all of these experiences," Criscione told SPR News.
"How are we going to put it all together and really show readers what we're seeing and what we're hearing without overwhelming them? Because already, I think it's very difficult for people to read these stories because these are experiences of sexual abuse. So we focused it around the systems that are accountable for letting this happen."
He says InvestigateWest plans to follow this story, including examining the funding for the Prison Rape Elimination Act, as well as some other ways that misconduct records by police officers are hidden from the public.
Criscione sat down with SPR's Owen Henderson to break down some of what they found.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
OWEN HENDERSON: How exactly did this series start? What brought this to your attention?
WILSON CRISCIONE: The series started about one year ago from a source who was inside Ada County Jail, Andrea Weiskircher, who had been a victim of sexual abuse and had reported it at the jail and was frustrated that nothing was coming of it.
She contacted us and told us her story and then that kind of turned into her connecting us with other women also in the jail who shared their experience as well, which was similar, you know, saying that they had experienced sexual abuse in an Idaho woman's prison. And from there, we were really just trying to find out how common this was, how much of a pattern this was.
We didn't think necessarily it was going to be a year-long investigation, but we started talking to more and more women. My colleague, Whitney Bryen, and I interviewed women in the jail and then formerly incarcerated women, too.
That's kind of how it started. We were trying to find out how common it was. And then the question became, 'Why was this being led to happen? '
OH: In cases where Idaho State Police did actually get involved in investigating, what did your reporting show about how they chose to handle those investigations?
WC: Our reporting showed that they sometimes wouldn't follow up on evidence or leads that could result in evidence that a guard was committing sexual abuse against an inmate.
We opened one of the stories with an interview that Idaho State Police detectives had with an accused guard. And in that interview, they didn't ask the guard directly if he had sexually abused this inmate. And they ended after, I believe it was nine minutes, after first saying that they were more interested in actually going after women who might be falsely accusing guards of this kind of thing. They didn't follow up on the medical records that showed this woman had been pregnant at the time, and she would have gotten pregnant in prison. And so other questions that weren't answered.
Also in that story, we found that they asked Andrea Weiskircher if she had experienced sexual abuse at any time. And in the police report, they said that she told them 'no.' But when we heard the audio, she told them that she had.
So there were a lot of questions about how those investigations were handled. And the detectives didn't really answer those questions for us when we tried to get them to explain.
OH: And so what has the Idaho Department of Correction said about any of your reporting?
WC: They deny the notion that there is a culture problem within the prison system. They see it as they follow the policies they have these policies in line.
What we found is that a lot of those policies aren't being followed. And that's why a lot of this sexual abuse is allowed to happen. I wouldn't say that they were dismissing him as isolated cases, but they don't agree that there's a culture problem.
At the same time, they couldn't give us answers on a lot of our questions. You know, when we asked how many reports were made under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, and they're supposed to track all those reports and report them to auditors, we found that they couldn't give us an answer how many reports were made from women's prison in a certain time period. And we requested the records. And when we got some records, they didn't match up with what they had reported to auditors.
So it doesn't seem like as far as we can tell that they have a grasp on how common this is actually happening, which is one of the more concerning pieces of this investigation, as well, is that we don't know really how bad it is, even with all of our efforts, spending a year talking to women, there's still a lot of other stories that may not be being told.
OH: You've spent a year talking to women and victims. What have they said, especially about how they were treated for speaking up?
WC: The victims that we spoke to talked about facing retaliation, if they would speak up about this. You have to remember that, you know, when they're in prison, the guards are controlling every aspect of their lives. And so if they say something, they're just very vulnerable to retaliation.
One of the victims was saying that she was just treated differently and that the supervisors at one of the prisons were saying no one should be left alone with her because she'll just accuse them of rape. It was this widespread idea that we just came across over and over again, that when there's a staff sexual abuse claim, it's actually the victim's fault, like as if the women are manipulating these guards into doing something. And that's sort of how it's treated within the prison.
And one of the other ways that they felt retaliated against was that when there is an investigation into a claim, they would be sent to what they called 'The Hole' 23 hours of the day where they're in confinement and separated from the general population.
The Department of Correction said they didn't necessarily agree with calling it 'The Hole,' but they said it is standard to move potential victims into more restricted housing during investigations.
But the women told us that that felt like they were being punished if there was an investigation against the person that abused them. So that's just one of the ways that that played out inside the prisons from what we were told.
OH: Have you gotten any feedback from the prisoners you've spoken with since the story started to publish?
WC: We haven't got any feedback from the women that are currently in prison because I don't know if they have seen the story.
So that is what my colleague Whitney is working on, trying to get newspapers that have published our stories somehow into the prison so that people can read them. But all those, all the mail and the communication with inmates is monitored, so we're not sure what is getting to those inmates or not, but that's one of the goals right now.
Now that, you know, the public has seen this series, Guarded by Predators, and it's out in the world, how can we get that into the prison so that the women who are impacted by it can also read those stories?
You know, we think it's important for people to know what's going on. And I would just encourage people to share these stories because it took a lot of courage for the women who spoke to us to actually talk to us, and they knew that they might be facing retaliation. And so I would encourage people to see what they have to say.
