CHARLESTON – A Mingo County woman says she was raped by a male inmate while incarcerated at a regional jail facility.
Kurastin P. Brown filed her complaint in federal court April 3 against the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Superintendent Toby Allen, Corrections Officer Noe and nine unnamed corrections officers.
Kerry Nessel is one of the attorneys representing Brown.
Nessel
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“In all of my years of having lawsuits against the DCR, this is one of the most egregious displays of lack of safety for inmates,” Nessel told The West Virginia Record. “My jaw dropped when I heard about this incident, and I had a hard time wrapping my head around it. But it happened, and it happened in broad daylight.
“This male inmate was just allowed to walk around the jail unfettered. He went into a whole wing of this jail that is solely designated for female inmates. He walked upstairs, into a pod, kicked out this woman’s cellmate, raped her and told her he’d kill her if she talked about it.”
According to the complaint, Brown was incarcerated at Southwestern Regional Jail in Logan County in August 2023 when she says she was subjected to severe, permanent and life-threatening physical and emotional injuries at the hands of the defendants.
She says she was housed in a female housing pod at SWRJ known as A Pod, and Noe was the on-duty tower officer.
“While plaintiff was in her upstairs cell, male inmate S.D.N. entered the female pod, proceeded up the stairs to plaintiff’s cell, produced a handmake weapon, pressed it to plaintiff’s side, forcibly removed plaintiff’s trousers and brutally and inhumanely raped plaintiff,” the complaint states. “Due to the confluence of actions of all defendants, plaintiff suffers from serious physical and emotional m
The complaint says there has been “a continuing practice and pattern of various forms of physical and sexual abuse of male and female inmates at the hands of no less than 30 SWRJ correctional officers” over the last 15 years “possibly including some of the individual defendants in this matter.”
It lists varying degrees of alleged threats, physical abuses, negligence and misconduct. Those include:
* Officers speaking in a threatening manner to inmates;
* Officers ordering inmates to physically assault other inmates;
* Officers administering physical punishment in excess of what the situation required;
* Officers severely beating inmates to such an extreme that caused permanent physical damages; and
* Officers disregarding various safety orders implemented to protect inmates and causing inmates both physical and mental harm.
The complaint says such incidents couldn’t continue to occur without “tacit approval” of the WVDCR and supervisory staff in both Charleston and at SWRJ. It also says the lack of punishment of the alleged perpetrators and those who fail to report the alleged misconduct has allowed the actions to be ongoing.
“The known and unknown individual defendants in this civil action have a history of ignoring protocol which have led to inmates being physically and sexually assaulted by other inmates,” the complaint states. “These instances of misconduct were either ignored, disregarded or covered up by fellow SWRJ officers as well as high-ranking WVDCR officials.”
Brown says the defendants deprived her of her rights, privileges and immunities protected the West Virginia Constitution, the U.S. Constitution and particularly the Fourth, Eighth, Ninth and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. She also says the WVDCR and its supervisors failed to properly train staff, including supervisory staff.
She also says she was a victim of harassment, civil battery, civil assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress, outrageous and atrocious conduct, invasion of her right to privacy, civil conspiracy and common law negligence. She says she has suffered anxiety, humiliation, annoyance, inconvenience, pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of ability to enjoy life, possible permanent physical injury, medical expenses, pharmaceutical expenses and other damages.
“She has suffered physically, obviously,” Nessel said. “But she has really suffered emotionally and mentally. She’s suffering from depression, has trouble sleeping. She’s going through counseling.”
Brown seeks compensatory damages, punitive damages, court costs, attorney fees and other relief.
She is being represented by Nessel of The Nessel Law Firm in Huntington and by Tyler C. Haslam of Haslam Law Firm in Huntington.
Brown has sued members of law enforcement before. In 2017, she filed a lawsuit alleging she was forced to perform sexual acts by a Mingo County court bailiff. That case was dismissed the following years.
In 2015, Brown was arrested after she fled the Day Report Office in Williamson after she tested positive for cocaine on a drug test. She recently had been arrested two times, once for prostitution and once on a drug charge.
In 2023, she was arrested by the Mingo County Sheriff’s Office on a parole violation. Court records show at least a dozen other arrests from 2013 to 2023 on charges including drug, battery, conspiracy, destruction of property, domestic battery, obstructing an officer, fleeing from an officer and transportation of prohibited items to jail.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia case number 2:25-cv-00215