By Keri Blakinger
Houston Chronicle
HOUSTON — More than a decade after a sexual assault scandal rocked the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the agency is still a “boys’ club” plagued by sexual harassment and a culture that makes it difficult for women to get promoted despite efforts to bring them into the ranks, according to more than a dozen current and former employees.
Three of the 10 highest-paid employees in the prison system and about 25 percent of wardens are women, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of 2017 state data.
But female officers also have to contend with harassment from coworkers, masturbating inmates and fear of retaliation if they complain, according to lawsuits, state records and interviews.
“You think it’s the inmates you have to worry about,” said one former employee, who asked not to be identified, “but it’s actually the people you work with.”
Some women told the Chronicle of enduring lewd comments or inappropriate contact from co-workers. One female employee said she and other women guards picked jobs working around inmates to avoid having contact with the men who supervised them.
The latest allegations come after the department reached a $250,000 settlement last year in a lawsuit accusing a male lieutenant of raping an officer he supervised — a claim reminiscent of former assistant director Sammy Buentello, who retired in 2004 amid criminal charges and a high-dollar lawsuit by multiple women accusing him of sexual harassment and assault.
TDCJ officials, however, say that sort of workplace environment is a thing of the past.
“Any days of a male-dominated culture are long gone,” said Lorie Davis, director of TDCJ’s Institutional Division and the highest-ranking woman in the agency. “We have a lot of women that move up through the ranks.”
‘A culture of indifference’
The numbers reinforce that Texas prisons are still a hard place to be a woman.
More than 44 percent of TDCJ employees are female, but those numbers include administrative assistants, librarians, attorneys and the high-ranking officials overseeing it all.
Even fewer guards — just 38 percent of the more than 22,000 corrections officers —are women.
Higher ranks are even more male-dominated. About 27 percent of sergeants are women. Moving up, about 25 percent of captains, 26 percent of lieutenants, and just 21 percent of majors and assistant wardens are women.
“You just have a culture of indifference, the good-old-boy system as they call it,” said Lance Lowry, a Huntsville corrections officer and former union president. “And the numbers clearly reflect that. If 38 percent of the officers are female, 38 percent of the sergeants should be, too.”
The disparity in promotions corresponds to a disparity in the average pay, with women earning about $2,700 a year less than men throughout the department, according to 2017 data.
Prison spokesman Jeremy Desel said it’s not clear why more women aren’t in the upper ranks, but stressed that supervisors are selected through a competitive interview process.
“It would be difficult to pinpoint a specific (reason) why the numbers are what they are,” Desel said. “It is important to note that corrections officers are not the only employees in TDCJ.”
Other positions — such as parole officers, administrative assistants and accountants — are disproportionately female. Food service managers, guards who work in the kitchens, are more than 50 percent female even at the highest rank.
History of allegations
Working inside men’s prisons hasn’t always been an option for women in Texas. But a series of lawsuits ending with a 1988 consent decree opened up all prison jobs to women.
In short order, women started working their way up the ranks. Around 1990, Janie Cockrell became the first female warden in a men’s prison, and in the years that followed more women began taking on leadership roles, according to a Houston Press account in the mid-1990s.
But at the same time, some found themselves subject to sexual harassment and more.
The most serious accusations came to the fore in 2004, when Buentello left the department amid criminal charges stemming from claims he’d tried to rape one co-worker, groped another while she was in the hospital, pulled his penis out while hugging another, and touched, bullied or exposed himself to several others in a pattern of abuse that had gone unchecked for years.
Buentello retired early and received probation on the criminal charges. The prison system paid out at least $600,000 for the lawsuits.
Workers today say such behavior is not entirely a thing of the past. One officer at a unit north of Huntsville described sexual harassment as a routine occurrence.
“It’s like an everyday thing,” she said.
Some women recounted forcible kissing, unwanted touching and being relegated to cleaning offices even as ranking officers.
“There’s a supervisor every day that talks about going to the Holiday Inn,” said another officer. “But we’re in corrections so I just laugh it off.”
In November 2016, according to state documents obtained by the Chronicle, a female employee at the Telford Unit in East Texas filed a complaint alleging that an assistant warden had routinely harassed her, pretending to masturbate in his office, simulating intercourse with his desk, and sending her a picture of his penis.
There were no witnesses and the assistant warden denied many of the claims, records show. He said the lewd text was intended for his wife but an internal investigation found him guilty of misconduct and he is no longer employed with the agency.
In Spring 2017, a corrections officer at the Michael Unit in East Texas was fired following an incident in which he allegedly suggested a female coworker should have anal sex, then bent her forward on a desk and bit her neck.
That wasn’t the first complaint against the officer, though he brushed it off as joking and said he was baffled by the allegations, according to the documents.
An investigator concluded the behavior was not sexual harassment but said it did “rise to the level of discourteous conduct of a sexual nature,” according to state records.
A few months later, a female officer at the Telford Unit in East Texas won a $250,000 settlement in a lawsuit that accused a lieutenant of allegedly pulling down her pants and raping her against a staircase, according to her lawyer, Louise Tausch.
The lieutenant was fired 13 months later, according to court records. He was never indicted, Tausch said.
“We won the lawsuit,” said the former guard, who asked not to be named. “I still feel defeated because what happened to me is still going on — and the guy who did it to me is still free.”
Glass ceilings ‘are gone’
Not all the women who spoke to the Chronicle experienced a pattern of misconduct. Some suggested they’d been insulated by their age, placement at a women’s unit, or by being married to men in the agency.
Michelle Lyons, a former prison spokeswoman who recently published a book highly critical of the agency, recounted occasional lewd comments but described them as “isolated incidents.”
Davis said such behavior is a thing of the past.
“I haven’t experienced sexual harassment as a female in our agency in years,” she said. “Years and years, not since I was a corrections officer literally 30 years ago.”
It’s also easier to move up than it once was, she said.
“Whatever glass ceilings once existed are gone,” Davis said.
After starting as an officer, she moved up the career ladder to sergeant, lieutenant, warden and region director, with some other steps in between. Now, Davis said, she takes seriously the role of playing mentor to younger women in the department.
“I believe that I’m a testament to a woman’s ability to promote in our agency,” she said.
Officials stressed that the department is “committed” to making sure workers are treated fairly and respectfully.
“The Texas Department of Criminal Justice employs more than 37,000 individuals and is the largest state agency,” Desel said. “TDCJ has a strong employee grievance and EEO policy in place and has zero tolerance for retaliation and sexual harassment.”
‘Code of silence’
From 2007 to 2017, there were more than 3,500 sexual harassment and gender discrimination complaints filed within the department. But many incidents may go unreported, according to current and former employees.
“It is in many cases a male-dominated culture and you go into it knowing that, so you go in more reluctant to report things,” said Lyons, the former spokeswoman. “You don’t want to be seen as the weaker sex and you feel to a certain extent that you have to be tougher. You want to show that you can joke around with the boys.”
Lyons resigned from the department in 2012 amid charges that she’d fudged her time cards, but she later went on to win a $63,000 settlement from the department after filing a lawsuit saying she’d been unfairly targeted because of her gender.
Other women cited similar fears of retaliation.
“Everybody had to be careful,” said the former Telford officer who sued over rape. “They were aware of that and the very few women that did speak out, they didn’t have a job very long.”
Her concerns echoed what women said nearly 15 years earlier in the aftermath of the Buentello case.
“There is a code of silence, and women who come forward face retaliation for breaking that code,” Kathleen Day, a Corpus Christi lawyer who handled the lawsuits against the disgraced officer, told the Chronicle in 2004. “They get the message that if you file a complaint, you will be punished.”
Even today, a pending lawsuit alleges retaliation.
Last November, former prison gang expert Maryanne Denner filed a federal suit accusing prison officials of providing inaccurate information to prospective employers checking into her work history. The motivation, she said, stemmed from a sexual harassment suit filed against the agency a decade earlier.
Denner won $120,000 in the sexual harassment case. Her new case accusing the department of retaliation is scheduled to go to trial next year.
She hasn’t worked at TDCJ since 2003 but said she’s confident it’s not much different today.
“It’s a good old boy system and it always has been and it’s never, ever going to change,” she said. “I still get phone calls, emails, text messages from people saying, ‘I was wrongfully terminated because I’m a woman.’”
‘Zero tolerance policy’
Officials stressed that the department’s culture is not what it once was.
Aside from guidance from higher-ranking employees, the agency supports its staff through an Employee Assistance Program, a hotline for free counseling.
Tanisha Woods, a union chapter president and Gatesville sergeant, said there’s less harassment at women’s units, and that the department has made good efforts to thwart it.
“As far as sexual harassment,” she said, “I feel like we do a good job with the training.”
The department partners with local workforce development boards to recruit more women, and employees have mandatory discrimination training twice a year.
“As leaders we’ve developed a culture where that’s not tolerated,” Davis said. “We’ve developed a zero tolerance policy for that.”
Alejandra Matos and Matt Dempsey contributed to this report.
©2018 the Houston Chronicle