According to lawsuit, Fort Worth prison staff repeatedly sexually harassed a woman in custody

April Lacey still has nightmares.

According to a recently filed lawsuit, it’s been three years since an employee at a women’s prison in Fort Worth raped Lacey, twice on consecutive days. And now, about two years after her release from federal custody, Lacey still suffers from panic attacks.

“It wasn’t confined to prison,” Lacey said in a press conference Thursday afternoon. “The trauma went with me when I left.”

Lacey and her lawyers filed a lawsuit in federal court on Wednesday against the U.S. government and a former prison recreation specialist who, according to the lawsuit, raped her while she was in custody.

Lacey, who now lives in El Paso, was incarcerated at FMC Carswell, a state prison for women in northwest Fort Worth, from late 2014 to late 2021. She was placed at Carswell specifically because she had cancer, her lawyers said at the press conference.

Lacey was abused by two different employees during her time at Carswell, the lawsuit says. However, the lawsuit was only against one of those employees – the person she says raped her.

First, a prison employee sexually abused Lacey in 2015, the lawsuit says. And then, when Lacey became ill with COVID-19 in late 2020 or early 2021, a prison recreation specialist named Marerllis Nix used his position of power and raped Lacey twice, the lawsuit says. No criminal charges have been filed against Nix, according to online databases and Lacey’s attorneys. Nix did not respond to the Star-Telegram’s request for comment Thursday.

Nix, who no longer works at Carswell, “explicitly or implicitly threatened retaliation if she reported the conduct,” the lawsuit says. Lacey later reported the assaults, the lawsuit says, and received a disciplinary memo shortly afterward while in a state rehabilitation center, a facility also under the federal Bureau of Prisons. Lacey’s lawyers believe the disciplinary memo was retaliation for her reports.

A representative for Carswell did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday morning.

Lacey is not the first woman to report sexual abuse at FMC Carswell. A 2022 investigation by the Star-Telegram found that the prison has long been plagued by systematic sexual abuse and cover-ups. A federal report based on data from 2014 to 2018 found that there were more reports of sexual abuse by a staff member at Carswell than at any other federal prison for women, the Star-Telegram previously reported. A total of 35 women at Carswell reported sexual assault during that time, and experts have said that’s likely an undercount.

Carswell houses women who are more vulnerable than those in other prisons. The Fort Worth facility is the only federal prison for women, and many of the women are sent there specifically for medical care.

In both a prepared statement and the press conference Thursday afternoon, Lacey’s lawyers pointed to the systematic problems at Carswell.

“This unit is notorious for this behavior,” said Randall Kallinen, a civil rights attorney from Houston. “We are trying to put an end to this behavior that so many women have suffered.”

And while the accused employee is directly named in the indictment, another of Lacey’s attorneys sees the Federal Bureau of Prisons as primarily to blame.

“This is not an isolated incident,” said Regina Powers of the New York law firm Bedlock Levine & Huffman. “This is an institutional failure. … This system enables and protects abusers and ensures that the abuse continues.”

David Rankin, another attorney at Bedlock Levine & Hoffman, pointed out that sexual abuse in federal prisons is relatively well documented, including through federal reports.

“It’s impossible for the Bureau of Prisons to be unaware of these problems,” Rankin said. “But the continued failure of the U.S. government to actually address this and keep people safe is appalling.”

Lacey and her lawyers said they hope the lawsuit will bring awareness to problems at Carswell and other prisons and lead to change.

“Rape was not part of my punishment,” Lacey said in a prepared statement. “I found the courage to speak out and file this lawsuit because I don’t want this to continue to happen to the women of Carswell. I hope someone will protect them.”

Lacey and her attorneys filed the lawsuit in the El Paso Division of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. No hearing date has yet been scheduled for the lawsuit.