Santa Ana to Pay $95,000 to Raped Inmate

The city of Santa Ana will pay nearly $100,000 to a white-collar criminal who was beaten and raped by a Nazi-tattooed cellmate just hours after a U.S. District Court judge ordered the men separated, officials said Monday.

The out-of-court settlement stems from a Feb. 12 attack on a 32-year-old accountant awaiting trial on charges of counterfeiting.

The accountant said he had endured weeks of harassment and threats from a 270-pound inmate with numerous tattoos of swastikas and the name “Hitler,” according a civil claim filed against the city.

The accountant persuaded then-U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter to order the jail to move him to another cell. However, jail officials failed to act promptly and he was attacked that evening when the other inmate learned of his attempt to move, the man alleged in his civil lawsuit.

After the attack, the supervisor of the Santa Ana Jail sent a memo to staffers saying they needed to act more quickly when inmates complain of mistreatment, warning officers that “doing nothing about the situation is unacceptable,” according to the claim.

The accountant, convicted and sentenced to a year imprisonment, has been placed in another federal facility. Though the Santa Ana city jail is operated by the city, it houses federal inmates under contract. “Basically, this was a case of jail officials doing too little too late to help this guy,” said his lawyer, Kenneth Miller.

Santa Ana City Atty. Joseph Fletcher confirmed the city settled the case for about $95,000 but declined to comment further. A spokesman for the Santa Ana Police Department also declined comment.

The accountant’s experience began in early January, when he was placed in a cell with a man arrested on federal robbery charges. According to the civil claim filed against the city:

Within a few days, the robbery suspect allegedly began to bully the accountant, ordering him around the cell, stealing his food, forcing him to pay off the cellmate’s gambling debts.

By mid-February, the accountant began to fear that his cellmate would harm him physically and passed a note to a guard asking for help. The man wrote the note on a medical request form, hoping that his cellmate wouldn’t notice. But the guard confronted both inmates at once, asking what their “problem” was, according to the claim. The accountant denied any trouble, fearing that the cellmate would take revenge, he said.

The next day, the cellmate allegedly pressured the accountant to get a “skinhead-type” haircut. When he refused, according to the claim, the cellmate replied: “You’re getting beat up tonight.”

The accountant told his attorney, who persuaded Carter to order the man moved to another cell.

That evening, the men were placed in the same cell. The tattooed inmate said he knew the accountant had “ratted” him out, according to the claim, and the attack occurred that night.

The accountant was moved to another cell the next morning. Miller said the cellmate hasn’t been charged with any crime related to his confrontation.

Miller said that within a few days of the incident, jail personnel got an e-mail from management stating:

“This is to advise you that any time you receive any type of information in regards to any type of safety issues involving inmates and their housing locations, you need to take immediate action. It is irrelevant who we get the information from, the information needs to be looked into immediately and action taken to correct the situation and prevent any type of hazard to the individual’s safety.”