Fight, Flee, Submit, Sue: Alternatives for Sexually Assaulted Prisoners
![handle is hein.journals/collsp18 and id is 517 raw text is: Fight, Flee, Submit, Sue:
Alternatives for Sexually
Assaulted Prisoners
MICHAEL GRAUBART LEVIN*
Q. Did you have any conversation with any jailer as you were
coming back from making your telephone call?
A. (By [witness] Wayne Shows) Yes, sir.
Q. What was the nature of the conversation?
A. He [the jailer] said, have they fucked you yet? I said, no,
they ain't fooled with me. He said, well don't worry about it, they
will.'
The above colloquy comes from the trial transcript of Stokes
v. Delcambre, a 1983 decision from the Fifth Circuit. The case be-
gan on a summer evening in 1979 when Thomas Stokes was driving
in his pick-up truck with three other co-workers. Two men walking
along the highway told police that the youths had tossed a beer
bottle at them from the truck. The police arrested the four in the
truck and booked them into jail. Stokes had never been arrested
before.2
After a night in confinement, all four were attacked without
warning by a pair of inmates. According to the appellate report,
one of the assailants
struck [Stokes] in the face with his fist .... Stokes was by this
time bleeding profusely from the head wound and a broken nose.
Despite much screaming and yelling, no jailer came ... Boo Boo
[Dixon, a 245 pound inmate charged with aggravated rape] then
sexually assaulted Stokes, compelling him to engage in anal and
oral sex .... When Romero, the deputy on duty, was shown
[Stokes'] cut, Boo Boo, who was standing immediately beside
Stokes, asserted that Stokes had fallen from his bunk.'
* Staff member, COLUM. J.L. & Soc. PROS. The author gratefully acknowledges the
assistance of Professor Harold Edgar of the Columbia Law School, Professor Daniel Polsby
of the Northwestern University School of Law, and Valerie Aubry of the Oxford University
Press.
1. Stokes v. Delcambre, 710 F.2d 1120, 1127 (5th Cir. 1983).
2. Id. at 1122-23.
3. Id. at 1123.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/collsp18&div=23&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Fight, Flee, Submit, Sue: Alternatives for Sexually Assaulted Prisoners
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