Sheriff’s statement: http://tinyurl.com/sheriffresponse
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PORT ANGELES — A former Clallam County jail inmate says she overheard other inmates saying they lied on a survey that resulted in a Bureau of Justice Statistics report ranking the jail the third-highest among of 286 U.S. jails for per-capita instances of sexual misconduct by staff with inmates.
The inmate, Elizabeth Stallings, said a group of women were bored when the survey was taken in February 2009 and misled survey-takers from RTI International.
“It was a big joke,” Stallings said on Tuesday.
“And unfortunately, it was a joke that really turned out to be not that funny.”
Clallam County Sheriff Bill Benedict and others close to the jail vehemently deny the findings in the August federal report — “Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, 2008-09” — that found that 6.1 percent of the 75 inmates who volunteered to take the anonymous survey were sexually victimized by jail staff.
Benedict called in the FBI to investigate alleged misconduct in the jail. He said it is unlikely that the FBI would take the case. He expects to get an answer later this week.
“The Seattle FBI shipped it to their headquarters, and they were inclined to decline,” Benedict said.
Benedict said there has been once case of a staffer victimizing a inmate in the 30-year history of the jail.
That staffer was fired, prosecuted and sentenced to four months in the Jefferson County jail more than a decade ago, Benedict said.
Benedict described the $13 million study as “bogus.” He said the information gathered was “garbage in, garbage out.”
Allen Beck, a Bureau of Justice Statistics statistician and co-author of the 92-page report, has contacted the Peninsula Daily News, leaving his phone number, but had not been interviewed as of Tuesday.
Stallings, who served three months of a four-month sentence in the Clallam County jail, sent an e-mail to the sheriff’s office after news of the study — and the sheriff’s request for an FBI investigation — was published in local newspapers last week.
“It was just ridiculous,” Stallings said in an interview on Tuesday when she was asked why she sent the letter.
“They [other women inmates] were joking around about it and joking around with the answers they gave,” she added.
“I remember thinking at the time that this might cause a problem, but I had no clue that it was going to be something like this. I mean, this is just stupid.”
Stallings, who also took the survey — and said she answered honestly — said a small group of women in their early-20s were behind the “joke.”
“I don’t think these girls meant any harm,” Stallings added.
“I think they were just bored. A lot of them are younger, and they were bored. … It was just some goofy way to fill some time and they didn’t take it seriously.
“I’m sure had they thought that there could be repercussions like this, they wouldn’t have done it. It was just — they just weren’t thinking.”
Asked if Stallings received any favors for coming forward, Benedict said the only thing she received was a cup of coffee from Undersheriff Ron Peregrin.
“There is no quid pro quo, as she contacted us,” Benedict said.
Benedict said he did not feel vindicated by Stallings’ account. He has maintained that the survey was flawed.
“Vindication is going to be when I get the people who took the survey to admit they were wrong and adjust our figures or remove Clallam County from it,” he said.
According to the report’s statistics, a little more than 4 ½ jail inmates — or 6.1 percent of 75 respondents — reported one or more acts of sexual misconduct by staff.
“Just a few people, I guess, really made a big impact,” Stallings said.
Percentages were statistically weighted. Each inmate could report on more than one allegation or level of coercion.
“When I stopped to think about it I said, “This is just ridiculous,'” Stallings said.
“There’s no privacy in jail. There’s no time for anybody to harass anybody else. There’s always more than one officer there, and it’s just silly.”
Stallings said it was clear to her that other inmates were not being truthful with the survey takers.
“If you were ever in this jail and then you saw that survey, you would think, ‘What?'” Stallings said.
“You wouldn’t even think the questions were reasonable. It might be relevant in some other jail or prison, but it certainly wasn’t relevant here.
“I never, ever saw any kind of unprofessional behavior from any of the jail personnel — and I was there for three months — ever.
“And some of them didn’t like me very well at all.”
Coming up with outlandish answers became something of a contest to some respondents, Stallings added.
She said she spoke up because of the taxpayer cost of an FBI investigation, and for the “hurtful” nature of the allegations to the reputation of corrections officers.
“You don’t want to paint anybody with that kind of a brush, unless you absolutely, 100 percent know for a fact that that’s what happened,” she said.
“You just don’t want to do that. It’s really not cool.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
