Alejandrina Torres - Human Rights Violations

Human Rights Violations

Throughout her imprisonment, Torres was plagued by health problems which were aggravated by prison staff's attacks and an indifference to her medical needs. It took the federal prison system six years to place her in a regular women's prison. Two of those six years were spent in the underground Women's High Security Unit at Lexington. Kentucky. Amnesty International condemned the conditions in that unit as "deliberately and gratuitously oppressive" and as causing physical and psychological deterioration.

Torres was one of four subjects housed in an experimental prison unit in Kentucky. The High Security Unit (HSU) was a kind of prison within a prison, occupying the basement of the Federal Correctional Institute. Allegations were made that the unit was an experimental underground political prison that practiced isolation and sensory deprivation. It was finally closed by a federal judge after two years of protest by religious and human rights groups. She was then moved to the federal women's prison in Danbury, Connecticut, from which she was released in September, 1999.

Torres was also sexually assaulted multiple times in cases involving prison personnel with the assailants never being charged. The attacks occurred in three different prisons. The first assault took place when she was locked in a men's unit, permitting the men to exhibit themselves in front of her. In a second incident a male prison lieutenant forced her to put her head between his knees and observed while female guards tore off her clothes and left her naked. The authorities responded to Torres' complaint in this case by placing her in solitary confinement, prohibiting from calling her family and lawyer to denounce the abuses. She was further penalized for violating prison rules, and a secret letter was written to a judge assigned to her case giving a false version of the events. In the third case, female prison guards held her while a male guard inserted his fingers in her vagina and her anus during an alleged "search". The warden who ordered the search admitted later that he did not suspect Torres of having contraband, and that the search was in violation of prison rules.