Yet perhaps her most memorable observation was when a fellow inmate was so fed up with being forced to perform oral sex for a prison guard, she had an accomplice smuggle out the semen she had spat into a perfume bottle. DNA tests conducted on the sperm sample incriminated her abuser.

“By the time we get out of jail, what is left of our being?” asked Gonzalez in reference to the effects of the sustained dehumanizing treatment of women prisoners. “We leave it in that jail cell.”

Tragically Gonzalez’s account, while unique, is not isolated. A report issued by human rights groups Amnesty International on March 6th documented the extreme degree of mistreatment, sexually and otherwise, of the growing population of American women in jail by prison authorities.

In a 3 years study of American prisons, Amnesty International documented more than 1,000 cases of sexual abuse in every state but one. Researchers also speculated that hundreds more cases go unreported due to intimidation tactics against inmates.

While sexual abuse against women prisoners was often dismissed as involving “just a few bad apples”', William Schultz, Amnesty’s U.S. executive director, said it was a “major systemic problem.”

There was no immediate response from the Justice Department to the Amnesty International report.

The report ironically came just two days before the 92nd International Women’s Day – a worldwide holiday on March 8th acknowledging women’s achievements and continuing struggles. While several International Women’s Day events protested the human rights abuses against women in less developed nations, such as the high rate of women as victims of violence and war, the report’s conclusions pointed to the unacknowledged, but proliferating, maltreatment of America’s incarcerated female population.

This report, and previous studies documenting rampant abuse of female prisoners, spurred Amnesty International to launch its first human rights campaign targeted to the Western world.

“The results are profoundly distressing and should serve as a wake- up call to anyone who thinks that women are not tortured or mistreated in this country,'' said Schulz.

Schulz’s conclusion was not breaking news for the approximately 3,000 activists, former prisoners, and service providers that gathered for the Critical Resistance East prison conference at New York City’s Columbia University, also occurring during the same week in March.

“Its not accidental that the country that has the largest women prisoner population, wouldn’t do anything to address civil rights violations in its own country on International Women’s Day,” said Diana Block of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. Formed in 1995, the activist group works in the state boasting the largest women’s prisons in the world.

“The United States is creating concentration camps of women who overwhelmingly are non-violent offenders,” continued Block. The majority of women in prison are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes, predominantly involving drugs, according to the Congressional General Accounting Office.

Over 140,000 women are imprisoned in America jails and prisons. Although a mere fraction of the population of incarcerated men (around 8%), the number of women entering prison from 1980 to 1998 rose by 516%, a pace doubling the rate for men.

Racial ratios are also lopsided: fifty-two percent of these prisoners are African-American women, who only constitute 14 percent of the total U.S. population. Latinas and other women of color make up another rapidly rising group.

“One can see the racist, patriarchal, and hypocritical aspects of America in its treatment and the demographics of its female prisoner population,” said Block.

The stories of formerly incarcerated women at Critical Resistance – along with documentation by human rights groups and “whistle blowers” (prison workers who make public their observations) – depict a penile system of cruel and unusual punishment.

Gonzalez shared her own experiences of mistreatment while imprisoned. After waiting over a year to be seen by the prison hospital, “when I finally went to my examination, the doctor who examined me was an alcoholic who wasn’t trained in women’s medicine. Someone had to pick me up from the hospital it was so bad,” she said of the physical trauma.

Gonzalez, a Puerto Rican native now studying to get her Masters in Social Worker after being released, is lucky to be alive. Despite severe signs of poor health, Gonzalez was never been examined for a brain tumor that developed during her ten-year jail sentence.

Another member of the conference, Mary Barr, was raped three times while in prison. Despite confiding in other staff at the prison, no motions to charger her abusers were ever made. Barr like Gonzalez is now educating others about the horrors of prison life for women and men.

Along with individual cases, a United Nations delegate studying American prisons in 1997 witnessed rampant brutality towards female inmates. “Women in labor are also shackled during transport to hospital and soon after the baby is born. The Special Rapporteur [on violence against women] heard of one case where shackles were kept on even during delivery.” A total of 33 states allow the restraint of pregnant woman during transportation to hospitals, while 18 let shackles remaining during the delivery.

Whether its inaccessible health care, sexual misconduct, or demeaning speech and voyeurism, “the treatment of convicts is going beyond denying women their liberty,” said Mary Carter of the College Community Fellowship, which links female ex-offenders with mentors. “It is a moral crime against humanity.”

American prisons are one of a handful of countries the world over that allow unaccompanied male contact – and in many cases constant physical proximity -- with female prisoners. While Canada too permits men to guard women, this practice is exceptional: their female prisons are staffed by 90% women versus 45% in the United States, according to the National Corrections Information Center.

As noted in a Human Rights Watch report of 1996, the U.S. has ratified several international decrees (such as Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment) that prohibit male presence in women’s jails.

While these treaties also outlaw degrading treatment of women, such as strip searches by officers of the opposite sex, Gonzalez spoke of another reality for American female prisoners.

“To walk into prison system is to be humiliated…male guards make you take your clothes off, spread your butt cheeks, and lift your breasts,” she said. “While some officers really care, others treat us as meat and see us as savages.”

The report from Amnesty International criticized U.S. laws protecting women inmates against abuse as so weak, that a prisoner was often held responsible for her attackers' behavior.

Recent legal changes on a national level are making efforts to prosecute misdeed more difficult. The Prison Litigation Reform Act, signed into law by President Clinton in April 1996, “has seriously compromised the ability of any entity, private or public, to combat sexual misconduct in custody,” stated Amnesty International.

While 13 states have laws “grossly inadequate” for protecting women’s safety, as Amnesty reported, 6 more states have not even criminalized sexual contact between staff and inmates. “In these states, and in some others that do have such laws, consensual sex between staff and inmates is not considered a crime,” reported Human Rights Watch.

In a U.S. state prison report issued this year to document compliance with international standards of prison regulations, evidence of sexual misconduct was mentioned only once in its 213 pages. The report, sent to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, claimed to handle such rare situations “through staff training and through criminal statutes prohibiting such activity.”

Yet the Department Of Justice currently maintains no guidelines for when and how to launch investigations of misconduct; few such inquiries have been conducted.

Assessing the situation on the “inside” is difficult. The UN Delegate on Violence Against Women was turned away from 3 Michigan prisons during her research; as Amnesty’s report concluded, “there is a death of information of the specifics on conditions, policies and procedures.”

While media coverage rarely documents prison conditions, sexual abuse was the focus of a six-part Nightline series in 1999. Inmates at California’s Valley State Prison for Women were interviewed extensively about their experiences of mistreatment. From their testimonials, Ted Koppel confronted the prison’s medical director for subjecting inmates to unwanted pelvic examinations in exchange for care.

Henrietta Davis, a former prisoner who now works for the Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and was interviewed for the series, has witnessed a clamping down on such critique. “Once if a reporter wanted to come in and meet with me, there was almost an attorney-client setting. Now in California, there is a media ban,” said Davis at Critical Resistance.

Activists focused on issues specific to women prisoners are working to educate beyond such blackouts. “Organizations for women prisoners proliferated in the eighties, fueled by both the women's movement and the exploding incarceration rate of women,” said Bell Gale Chevigny in “Prison Activists Come of Age” that ran in “The Nation”.

Since 1998, Amnesty International has launched a campaign calling for the abolition of male guarding and a stricter adherence to international prison regulations for U.S. prisons.

Periodicals such the Sojourner: The Women’s Forum, who runs a column for women in prison, and The Fire Inside, Out of Time, Prison Focus, and Bridges geared specifically as platforms to run the writings of imprisoned women, are one means that activists are helping to build awareness.

Yet challenges abound. As Stephanie Poggi, manager of the Inside/Outside project at Sojourner, said “when we first sent paper’s with information about the harshness of prison conditions, they were sent back. I guess [the prison administration] doesn’t want women in prison to know about their own conditions.”

Along with advocates on the outside, those still incarcerated jeopardize their own personal safety to affect change. In 1996, thirty-one women filed a class action lawsuit against the Michigan Department of Corrections, charging that prison management failed to prevent sexual assault by guards and staff. The state of Michigan was later sued by the US Justice Department for failing to protect women from sexual misconduct, in part, due to their accounts.

“The greater recognition of the prison movement makes me hopeful,” said Block. “The number of en prisoners becoming activists is revolutionary.”

Many ex-convicts – such as Gonzalez, Davis, and Barr -- also become adamant advocates for prisoner rights. While Gonzalez is getting her degree to assist ex-offenders, Davis helps to organize educational conferences with the National Network for Women in Prison.

“I help train formerly incarcerated women to be leaders,” said Davis of a curriculum she uses in her programming. “I help them to realize that we are all leaders.”

“Prison reform work is not very glamorous, it’s hard and it can be demeaning,” said Carter of her own experiences. “But their gratitude is so overwhelming because inmates, especially women, have so little.”

“People say why do you care about those prison people?" noted Davis of people, not knowing her former incarceration, who look strangely at her advocacy work. “Jail can happen to anyone. I tell them that by the grace of god, you too could be on the other side.”

Heather Haddon is one of the founding members of the New York City Independent Media Center, a local chapter of an international alternative news source (www.indymedia.org, www.nyc.indymedia.org ), and a regular contributor to their monthly print publication “The Indypendent”. She can be reached at: hhaddon@hotmail.com

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