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A lawsuit accuses a correctional officer at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, the Wilsonville woman’s prison, of sexual assaulting a female inmate in December 2021.
The legal complaint, filed last week, says Shawn Guerrero escorted the inmate, who’d sliced off a portion of her thumb in a meat slicer, to Meridian Park Hospital. In violation of the prison’s “rule of three,” the inmate was left alone with Guerrero. While the two were alone in the waiting room, “he dropped his pants and required plaintiff to perform oral sex on him,” the complaint says.
When reached by phone, Guerrero declined to comment on the allegations. So did the Oregon Department of Corrections.
WW is not identifying the inmate per its policy of not naming alleged victims of sexual assault. The inmate’s attorney, Lynn Walsh, declined to comment.
Coffee Creek Correctional Facility is the state’s only woman’s prison. It was the subject of a scathing state-mandated report earlier this year, which found the facility was underfinanced and short-staffed and, in 2021, had “among the highest number” of reports of sexual harassment and abuse in the state.
Earlier this year, a nurse at the facility was convicted of sexually abusing nine women in custody. And, this summer, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that a sergeant at the facility, Levi David Gray, had been investigated multiple times for sexually abusing inmates. He was eventually charged with multiple felonies for sexually abusing a 19-year-old woman, who is also represented by Walsh.
According to this latest legal complaint, the inmate did not report the incident because she did not trust the official who responds to such reports, known as the Prison Rape Elimination Act compliance manager.
That manager, Capt. Lindsay Noack, was put on administrative leave in early 2022 and was fired this summer. The inmate’s legal complaint alleges Noack was in a relationship with another inmate.
In an interview with WW, Noack strongly denied that allegation. Instead, she says, the investigation was retaliation for her efforts to institute reforms that prison administrators didn’t appreciate. (“We are unable to provide further details about Lindsay Noack’s separation,” an ODOC spokesperson said.)
She says she was recruited to help the facility pass a federal Prison Rape Elimination Act audit, which she did, as well as to address “rampant corruption” within the administration. Noack has since surrendered her state certification and switched careers.