Op-Ed: 17 Year old raped to death in adult prison

Each week "Just Detention International" (JDI) receives about 30 letters from inmates who say they've been sexually assaulted in prisons across the country. More than a quarter of those letters come from one state: Texas.

JDI has three core goals for its work: To ensure government accountability for prisoner rape; to transform ill-informed public attitudes about sexual violence in detention; and to promote access to resources for those who have survived this form of abuse. Five of the 10 prisons with the highest rates of sexual abuse in the country are in Texas. That includes the top two, Estelle Unit and Clements Unit where Rodney Hulin was raped to death. In 1978 T.J. Parsell 17, was sentenced to four years in adult prison in 1978. Less than 24 hours of being incarcerated a group of inmates forced him to drink Thorazine and raped him. Traumatized and terrified it took years before T.J. would come forward to testify of the brutal rapes that stole his manhood, identity, and part of his soul. T.J. a New York University graduate wrote "A Memoir of a Boy in a Man's Prison" and created a film based from his book. A survey conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics revealed that 4.5 percent of prisoners -- almost 1 in 20 had experienced some form of sexual abuse. Torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system was uncovered during a four-month investigation by Deborah Davies in a video that shows how U.S. prison inmates are receiving the same kind of treatment as victims of Abu Ghuraib in Iraq. More than 7.1 million Americans are either in prison, on probation or under correctional supervision. Private prisons are one of the fastest growing businesses in the United States, as seen in the phenomenal growth of public companies like the GEO Group, G4S, and CCA all of whom have settled sexual harassment, torture, and rape cases in privatized prisons. In fact privatized prisons are becoming one of the best investments of the 21st century. As more and more Americans are locked away, the blatantly criminal behavior of privatized prison companies has been evidenced by the multiple payoffs necessary to deal with rapes committed by employees of these corporations.