Erick Melgar, a burly 36-year-old, was working security at a bar in Paramus as recently as last year – even after more than a dozen women in a New Jersey prison accused him of sexual assault, an internal investigation found them credible, and he was fired from his job as a corrections officer in 2010.
What this tells us is that prison rape is not just a prison problem. Prisoners are among the least likely victims to be believed, but they’re not the only ones who suffer when we Milanobet fail to hold accused rapists fully accountable. We all do.
Having read the creepy, graphic allegations against this man, detailed last week by NJ Advance Media’s S.P. Sullivan, what woman in this state would want to be drinking around him?
Lawmakers ask AG to investigate sex abuse at N.J. women’s prison
Failing to bring charges or create a paper trail of sexual abuse only emboldens serial predators to break more rules and pursue new victims. Thankfully, lawmakers are now calling for an investigation by the state Attorney General into how we handle rape at our women’s prison, after a rash of substantiated accusations.
Last year, a total of six corrections staffers statewide were fired over allegations of sexual abuse – five at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, where Melgar was previously employed. But from 2012 to 2015, the state only reported two substantiated sex assault cases, under a federal disclosure law.
So either there was a sudden uptick in sexual assaults during 2016, or the state had been missing sexual assaults that were going on before then and were not being reported or investigated.
And why was Melgar never criminally charged? The Hunterdon County Prosecutor’s Office says it is now reviewing sexual abuse cases in the women’s prison going back to 2010. Let’s hope that includes him. He should be held criminally accountable, and if found guilty, have to register as a sex offender and report his history to employers.
Granted, it is a challenge to get a jury to convict on the say-so of prisoners. But the Department of Corrections examined the evidence against him and found it credible.
The state was right to fire him. Yet we have questions about that process, too. Melgar was fired for “undue familiarity” – an outdated term that sounds more like an inappropriate love letter than a history of brutality and sex assault allegations. Why isn’t the documentation more specific?
His subsequent employers at a private security firm likely had no idea he was an accused sexual predator. And what’s to stop him from getting another job as a prison guard in New York State?
It’s also troubling that Melgar was transferred to a youth facility during the internal investigation, even though it was male-only. Did he have any face-to-face contact with teenagers?
The most glaring question of all, though, is why men are still allowed to serve as guards in women’s prisons. This is an obvious reform that has already been adopted by other states. No longer allowing men to oversee women’s housing units won’t eliminate same-sex abuse, but it will stop the most common form of rape.
Washington D.C. instituted that policy decades ago, after a similar rash of allegations. Sexual abuse doesn’t just victimize prisoners; it’s a huge liability, and efforts to keep it under wraps lead to all kinds of other problems – bribery, smuggling of contraband; even violence between guards.
Corrections officers should care just as much about the chaos it causes in their ranks. We need to make sure prisoners have a safe place to report their allegations, and that they are fully documented and investigated. Just as no one should be one should be above the law in New Jersey, no one should be below it.
Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
