Springer prison inmate receives $450K settlement in sexual assault case

Jul. 19—The state Department of Corrections has agreed to pay $450,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a former inmate at a state women's prison in Springer who claimed she was raped several times by a guard, according to a written agreement.

The woman's 2020 claim is one of multiple lawsuits former Springer Correctional Center inmates have filed in recent years. They contend there has been a widespread culture of inmate abuse at the facility since it became a women's prison in 2016.

The New Mexican is not naming the plaintiff — who was incarcerated at Springer for about six months between 2018 and 2019 while serving a four-year sentence for aggravated battery — because she is an alleged victim of sexual assault.

Justin Sanders, the guard the woman says raped her, has been accused of sexual assault by several other female inmates and is a defendant in another lawsuit pending in U.S. District Court, according to court records.

The woman's allegations were reported to police, according to a Corrections spokeswoman, but Sanders was never charged with a crime in connection with her claims.

The state agreed to the settlement in May, according to a written agreement published on the state Sunshine Portal. It settles the inmate's sexual assault claim in U.S. District Court as well as a Inspection of Public Records Act violation claim she filed in state District Court after the Corrections Department denied her request for internal affairs investigations of Sanders.

State District Judge Victor S. Lopez ordered the department to produce the records. But the department appealed his ruling to the state Court of Appeals, where the district court ruling was upheld, before eventually turning over the documents, court records show.

The state has spent about $114,000 litigating the civil case and $83,000 fighting against releasing the records thus far, General Services Division spokesman Thom Cole wrote in an email last week.

Attempts to reach Sanders were unsuccessful Monday. His attorney did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Sanders was hired by the Corrections Department in 2016, according to spokeswoman Carmelina Hart, and worked there until he resigned in February.

Hart wrote in an email Sanders' accuser made allegations against him in February 2019 and "that same day we reported it to State Police to investigate."

The Department of Public Safety did not immediately produce records of that investigation in response to a request from The New Mexican.

Sanders was being investigated both by law enforcement and the Office of Professional Standards in June 2018, according to the lawsuit settled by the agreement. He was placed on administrative leave only briefly, then returned to his position with continued unsupervised access to female inmates in the camera-less holding area where the woman said he raped her, according to the complaint.

Corrections Department Secretary Alisha Tafoya Lucero has said in the past prison officials are quick to hold employees accountable and push for criminal prosecution when warranted and would never allow inmates to suffer retaliation for reporting abuse.

But public records show most investigations of sexual assault or harassment were conducted in-house, and the few that were referred to police rarely resulted in prosecution.

There were 90 Prison Rape Elimination Act reports filed at Springer between 2017 and 2019, according to Corrections Department records, but state police have investigated only eight sexual misconduct complaints at the prison since 2016, according to records produced by state police.

Only one of those investigations resulted in criminal charges. The guard in that case is scheduled to stand trial in November on two counts of criminal sexual penetration after he was accused of raping two different inmates between 2017 and 2018.

The civil case against Sanders is one of at least eight filed since 2018 by current or former inmates who say they were sexually assaulted by guards at Springer, where reports of sexual assaults filed through the Prison Rape Elimination Act rose from one in 2016 — the last year the facility held male prisoners — to 38 in 2017, the first full year the facility held women.

Contract attorneys from nine law firms are defending the state against the claims, according to records provided by the state General Services Department, and the combined legal costs of defending the state against the allegations stood at $551,000 as of March.

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