From their station at the end of the hall, the officers would see men going in and out of his cell and they would not intervene.
He assumed the staff knew what was happening. John would later be asked why he did not tell correctional staff, since in theory they could have taken steps to protect him. John, not his real name and now 20, recounts the abuse to The Marshall Project in an intimate and devastating long-read on the origins, status and limitations of the 12-year-old Prison Rape Elimination Act. Attacks by older, much larger prisoners–the first, a cell mate–started soon after arrival.
He’d been convicted of participating in a couple of home invasions and was looking at a minimum of three years inside. John Doe 1 was 17-years-old when he, like thousands of other adolescents in the U.S., was placed in an adult prison in Michigan.
