This is the first of a three-part series on female employees of the Michigan Department of Corrections saying sexual harassment remains rampant in the prison system, despite a pledge by the state 30 years ago to stamp it out.
Corrections Officer Ashley Benedict had an exemplary work record at the Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer until a supervisor started sending her sexually explicit messages and propositions in 2009.
William Ruhlman, according to a federal lawsuit, repeatedly pestered her with salacious e-mails and text messages. He summoned her to his office, where he requested sexual favors. In 2011, he sent her a photo of his genitals.
The perimeter of Lapeer's Thumb Correctional Facility, where corrections officer Ashley Benedict worked. She alleges in a federal lawsuit she was first sexually harassed, then retaliated against.
(Photo: Kathleen Galligan, Detroit Free Press)
A year later, Benedict was given a work assignment she didn't want, which she attributed to her repeated rejections of Ruhlman's advances. She says she complained to a lieutenant, who told her to keep quiet.
By early 2013, she'd had enough. "These e-mails and my lack of responding to them are negatively affecting me at work," Benedict wrote in a complaint to the department's Equal Employment Opportunity Office.
The Corrections Department does not deny some of the alleged conduct and the state has refused to provide Ruhlman with a taxpayer-funded attorney for the federal lawsuit. He insists the conduct was consensual.
"I sent her a picture of my genitals and she was supposed to, you know, reciprocate," Ruhlman testified in a 2016 deposition. "She did not send one back."
But it was Benedict the department fired in 2014 for not immediately reporting she was ticketed for driving on a suspended license. Ruhlman, who court records show has two convictions for drunken driving and served jail time for the second one, continued to collect a state paycheck for two more years, until May 2016. That's when the department says he resigned as part of a settlement, though it won't say why.
Benedict alleges in her suit she was first sexually harassed, then retaliated against for complaining about it.
It's a pattern current and former female prison employees say is played out repeatedly in the Michigan Department of Corrections, despite a department pledge three decades ago to stamp out what it acknowledged then was a huge problem.
A Free Press investigation found:
- Corrections Department employees filed at least 64 sexual harassment complaints against supervisors and coworkers in 2017, but the department was unable to provide numbers for 2015 and 2016, despite a request pending since March 30. It initially said 255 such complaints were filed between 2015 and 2017, then backed off, raising questions about how well it tracks cases. The department could not immediately provide information on what percentage of the complaints it receives are upheld.
- Harassers sometimes act with impunity in a mostly male environment with a work culture similar to the "blue wall of silence" associated with police departments.
- Many women bold enough to complain say they were then retaliated against through investigations targeting them for supposed violations of selectively enforced rules. Even a woman whose supervisor was convicted of criminal sexual conduct for assaulting her inside a prison was fired by the department a year later, after she had difficulty returning to work.
- The department does not bar supervisors from dating subordinates, as many human resources experts recommend, or even require them to report such relationships.
- Harassers are often not reported by supervisors who become aware of their conduct, despite policies requiring them to do so. "Don't say anything more, or I will have to file a report," is a common response when women approach supervisors with complaints of harassment.
- When harassers are disciplined they often face short suspensions or transfers to other facilities. "It's like the Catholic Church," with abusive priests moved from parish to parish, said Jonathan Marko, a Detroit attorney who has frequently sued the department.
- The department — unlike other Michigan state agencies and many corrections departments in other states — refuses to release the names or discipline records of employees who have violated work rules against sexual harassment, making the scope of the problem and the department's response to it difficult to track. But some records become public through victims, court proceedings and civil service grievance hearings.
Sexual harassment has become a more prominent workplace issue in recent months, with large numbers of high-profile women in Hollywood and elsewhere going public with what they have endured. Inside the Corrections Department, where women represent about one-third of the 12,300 classified employees and one in six of the 6,000 corrections officers, it can be a matter of life and death.Assaults 'a condition of employment'
In 1987, the Michigan Department of Corrections was rocked by the rape and murder of a rookie officer that exposed widespread sexual harassment of women officers by coworkers.
An inmate was convicted of murdering 28-year-old Josephine McCallum, a young mom who was still in her probationary period as a corrections officer. McCallum had complained about sexual propositions from a male supervisor before she was sent to work alone, in violation of regulations, in the area of the sprawling Jackson prison where her attacker found her.
No link between the sexual advances McCallum rebuffed and her last work assignment was ever proven. But an internal prison investigation into supervision of probationary employees — ordered in the wake of the murder — uncovered a rat's nest of problems.
"There were instances where female officers were told by male staff that they had to tolerate sexual assaults by prisoners as a condition of employment," then-Corrections Department Director Robert Brown Jr. said in a July 1987 memorandum to all employees.
According to the report, female officers told investigators that male colleagues and supervisors both harassed them and would do nothing when prisoners grabbed them by the crotch or rear end, telling the women they had to be tough about such things.
"I'm not going to process a critical incident (report) every time a female officer gets her tits or ass grabbed," one unnamed high-ranking prison official was quoted as telling investigators.
Brown pledged to eradicate the problem through measures that included employee and supervisor training, streamlined reporting including an 800 number to report harassment,and the appointment of at least one sexual harassment counselor at each prison.
Those changes were implemented, at least on paper. But interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees and scrutiny of hundreds of pages of court and civil service records show the department's policy has been anything but zero tolerance. Sexual harassment remains a major problem three decades later, through groping and forced kissing, pestering for dates by supervisors with influence over scheduling and performance reviews, and texting of salacious messages and indecent photos.
The department now has 270 harassment counselors — regular employees who fill the added role on a voluntary basis — but said each receives only three hours of training.
Benedict, who believes she received transfers viewed as demotions in 2012 because of her refusal to "make out" with Ruhlman, went to a lieutenant to complain about the conduct and was told: "Don't tell me any more," because if you do, "I have to report it," according to the lawsuit.
She then received a three-day suspension for loudly complaining about another transfer, to the front gate. A series of discipline actions followed: a five-day suspension for failing to respond to a radio call and getting angry in 2013; an eight-day suspension for failing to immediately report a ticket for driving on a suspended license in 2013; a six-day suspension for yelling and using profanity in 2013, and her firing in 2014 for again failing to immediately report a suspended driver's license ticket.
In mostly rejecting the defendants' motions to dismiss Benedict's lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn ruled in September that "a reasonable juror could find that Ruhlman's conduct toward Benedict was so pervasive that it altered the conditions of her employment and created an abusive situation."
Cohn also ruled that "a reasonable juror could find a causal connection" between Benedict's complaints about sexual harassment and the department's disciplinary actions against her that followed, "up to and including termination."
Benedict declined comment. Her attorney, Amy DeRouin, did not respond to phone and e-mail messages.
The case continues, with a final pretrial conference set for May 1.
Harassment has a long history
Over the years, other prison sex harassment cases that have become public include:
- In 2002, civil service Hearing Officer William Hutchens upheld a 30-day suspension, demotion to sergeant and transfer of Capt. George Harris from the St. Louis Correctional Facility in mid-Michigan. The hearing was told Harris repeatedly said, "I love you," to a female corrections officer, rubbed the shoulders of two female corrections officers, and told probationary female officers whose shoulders he had rubbed that they could lose their jobs.
- In 1995, a civil service hearing officer upheld a 10-day suspension for Sgt. Steven Horn of Cotton Correctional Facility, saying the department was "lenient to the point of generosity" when it imposed the punishment. Evidence showed Horn told a female corrections officer, in reference to her, that he liked "nasty women" with big breasts to "grab a 12-pack of beer and crawl on top." His behavior over time included touching the officer's hair, poking her under her arm near her breast, untying her shoes, and asking whether her 16-year-old daughter could date older men. As the officer continued to resist his advances, Horn wrote her up for a bogus rules violation, Hutchens found.
- In 2000, civil service Hearing Officer Ann Andrews upheld the department's demotion of Sgt. Marvin Baird for harassment after Baird pulled up alongside the vehicle of a probationary officer he worked with, told her to follow him to a gravel pit, and once there, asked her to engage in a sex act.
- In 1997, civil service Hearing Officer Joyce Hensley upheld the dismissal of Capt. William Gannon for sexual harassment. A female corrections officer testified Gannon stuck her paycheck down the front of his pants and asked her to "come get it," had grabbed her head and pulled it toward his crotch, repeatedly called her a "hot, sexy tramp," and invited her to see the inside of his van and tour the country. The officer testified she felt trapped, afraid, intimidated and uncomfortable, but waited some time to complain because "she did not want to lose her job or ruin her chance for promotion." Other employees testified to witnessing some of the conduct, much of which Gannon admitted and described as joking. He said he felt singled out because of his union activities.
More recently, on April 3 of this year, the Michigan Court of Appeals gave the green light to a 2014 suit Marko brought on behalf of Shannon Woods, a parole/probation officer who complained she was repeatedly harassed by colleague Ryan Johnson, including rubbing her shoulders, kissing her on the top of her head, and texting her a photo of his genitals.
Parole officer Shannon Woods speaks in the Detroit offices of her attorney, Jonathan Marko. The Michigan Court of Appeals just gave a green light for her lawsuit to proceed.
(Photo: Kathleen Galligan, Detroit Free Press)
Johnson said he sent Woods the photo by mistake and told her not to open the file. He denies the other allegations.
But the Woods case may illustrate how much sexually harassing behavior the department will tolerate before it acts. Johnson's supervisor and other state employees, who, like Johnson, held positions with the state employees union, testified to Johnson's history of harassing and inappropriate behavior. Yet Marko said Johnson's personnel file shows he has never been disciplined for it, up to and including what happened with Woods.
In rejecting arguments from the department that Woods' suit should be dismissed, a three-judge panel noted evidence that supervisors knew for years of similar conduct by Johnson, who among other instances was earlier investigated for exposing himself to three other female employees.
"They moved this guy around and then he finally landed at Shannon Woods' job, and started sexually harassing her within the first week of being there," Marko said.
►Make it easy to keep up to date with more stories like this. Download the WZZM 13 app now.
Have a news tip? Email news@wzzm13.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter.
