Civil rights attorney Alex Taubes alleged in a letter to Attorney General William Tong on Tuesday that his office had engaged in a pattern of “victim-blaming” toward a woman suing the state after she was sexually assaulted at York Correctional Institution. Lashanda Gregory, who was first incarcerated at York in 2014, filed a claim for $2. 5 million with the state claims commissioner in June 2023 alleging that she had been sexually assaulted by two correction officers in 2022. “There were warning signs, there was inadequate safety and security, and the Department of Correction shows carelessness in its efforts to comply with the Prison Rape Elimination Act and in preventing sexual misconduct,” Gregory wrote in her claim. On Nov. 6, Claims Commissioner Robert Shea gave Gregory permission to sue the state of Connecticut for negligence. A few days later, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Beizer sent an email to Taubes, who is representing Gregory, saying that the Supreme Court was likely to side with the state and offering a settlement of $25, 000. In the email, Beizer said that Gregory was “the instigator/willing participant in the incidents” of sexual assault, making her “contributorily negligent.” After Taubes shared the email with CT Insider last week, 12 female lawmakers sent a letter to Tong expressing concern about Beizer’s language. “Simply stated, sexual contact with DOC staff is statutory rape. Framing an incarcerated survivor as responsible in any way for her own abuse, and transferring her out of state, undermines trust in our institutions and suggests a broader culture of retaliation of incarcerated members, chilling future reports of sexual violence within Dept. of Correction custody,” the lawmakers wrote. The lawmakers also said that just because the two correction officers who were involved had been legally prosecuted didn’t mean the state wasn’t responsible. They asked that Gregory, who was transferred to a prison in Delaware in May, be brought back to Connecticut and that the Department of Correction provide assurances that people reporting sexual assault wouldn’t face retaliation. Tong responded in a letter to lawmakers on Monday that the language in the email had been “misinterpreted” and did not reflect the position of the state. “The State of Connecticut and the Office of the Attorney General does not believe, has not asserted, and will not assert that Ms. Gregory is responsible for her sexual assault. There is no question that Ms. Gregory is a victim of sexual assault; this has already been established in court in the criminal cases of the two former corrections officers responsible for this heinous crime,” Tong wrote in the letter. Tong said that his office was not arguing the guilt of the correction officers. Instead, he said, it was his job to defend the state against a claim that the state had been negligent “in allowing these crimes to occur through insufficient training, supervision, or failure to act once the incidents were known.” Tong added that he felt Taubes’ decision to share the settlement offer was “communicated improperly and unethically to the press in an effort to gain leverage over the state of Connecticut.” But Taubes, in a response to the Attorney General’s Office on Tuesday, doubled down on his allegation that the email was only part of the state’s overall strategy of “victim-blaming.” “This is not a misunderstanding or a ‘misinterpretation.’ It is a deliberate framing of a woman in state custody as a willing participant in sex with the guards who held power over her despite Connecticut law making clear that incarcerated people cannot legally consent to sex with correctional officers,” Taubes wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday. Taubes also shared the transcript of a deposition on Jan, 8, 2025, in which Beizer asked Gregory whether she had engaged “voluntarily” in the sexual acts she’d performed with Correction Officer Michael Mabry and whether she’d “derive[d] any sexual pleasure” from the acts. At one point, Gregory said Mabry hadn’t “forced me or pinned me down” but added that Beizer couldn’t understand the situation she was in. “You don’t understand what it’s like to be in that kind of situation. I know to you it seems like you should have said no, should have, could have, would have and then dealt with the consequences later. Yes, it was voluntary,” she said later in the deposition. Gregory said she had engaged in sexual acts with Mabry twice. Mabry resigned from the Department of Correction and in 2023 pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault. She also said she had “flirted” with Correction Officer Bobby Wilson and engaged in sexual acts with him six or seven times. Wilson resigned from the Department of Correction and was charged with fourth-degree sexual assault. He later applied for an accelerated rehabilitation program through the court system, according to documents attached to Gregory’s initial claim filing. “I cannot and will not accept the premise that exposing a victim-blaming litigation position is an ethical violation. It is precisely what an ethical lawyer representing an incarcerated survivor is supposed to do,” Taubes wrote in his letter.
https://ctmirror.org/2025/11/18/ct-prison-sexual-assault-lawsuit-victim-blaming/