Michigan prisons track sexual assault complaints; 1 officer was 'off the chart'

LANSING — When the Michigan Department of Corrections was required to produce an employee database that logged complaints related to sexual assault allegations made against them by prisoners, one officer was "off the chart."

Robert Lincoln, a corrections officer at the Richard A. Handlon Correctional Facility men's prison in Ionia from 2000 until his retirement in November, had more than 60 entries through 2019 — more than twice as many as anybody else on the list, court records show.

Yet Lincoln testified in a 2022 deposition, in which he denied ever sexually assaulting prisoners, that he has never spent more than a few minutes responding to any one sexual assault allegation against him. Corrections Department policy says that any allegation of sexual assault or harassment that appears criminal "shall be referred" to the Michigan State Police or other law enforcement, but Lincoln testified he has never been disciplined by the MDOC and has never been interviewed by police.

Now, the department and state Attorney General’s Office, who paid a cash settlement to one of Lincoln's accusers in 2023, are accused of falsely representing to a federal judge that prison officials were not aware of — and did not track — the mountain of complaints against Lincoln.

The case "screams out" for an independent, third-party investigation conducted by someone like a special prosecutor, said Sarah Prescott, a Northville civil rights attorney who is suing Lincoln and the MDOC on behalf of six current or former Handlon prisoners who allege Lincoln sexually assaulted them.

"It's hugely about Lincoln, of course it is, but the systemic willingness to flout policy and not search for the truth, is — so heartless," Prescott said.

The known allegations against Lincoln span a decade — from 2010 through 2019 — but are remarkably similar in their details. Prisoners accuse Lincoln, during pat-down searches, and in some cases strip searches, of grabbing, fondling and/or tightly squeezing or smashing their penises and scrotums in a way that causes pain and humiliation. Prisoners also accuse Lincoln of making demeaning comments, court records show, such as: "Why are they so small?"

In 2012, during a pat-down search, Lincoln "stuck his hand between plaintiff's legs, then thrust upward with an unreasonable degree of force and aggression — deliberately slamming the corner of his hand ... into plaintiff's genitals, causing plaintiff to instantly experience severe physical pain," prisoner Jermaine Hunter, who was interviewed by the Free Press and consented to the use of his name, alleged in a 2015 federal lawsuit that detailed three alleged sexual assaults by the officer.

Lincoln, who declined comment through his union president, is also accused of retaliating against many of those who complained, including Hunter, through further searches and assaults, trumped-up disciplinary charges, cell shakedowns, and seizure of property, among other measures.

“I can do what I want; everyone here has my back,” Lincoln, who had served as a union steward, told one prisoner following a 2015 sexual assault, according to allegations in a federal lawsuit filed by a different prisoner, in 2019.

Evidence appears to support at least the latter part of that boast. In 2016, Lincoln's colleagues selected him for an award for his performance that was presented by then-Deputy Warden (now Warden) Melinda Braman, the Ionia Sentinel-Standard reported. DeWayne Burton, a former warden at Handlon, testified in a 2021 deposition that the large number of complaints against Lincoln piqued his interest, but he "could only conclude that (Lincoln) was a very thorough officer." Lloyd Blackman, a former inspector at Handlon with responsibility for complaints made under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, testified in a 2021 deposition that prisoners complain because Lincoln performs "an academy-style shakedown or pat-down" that less diligent officers do not.

Byron Osborn, president of the Michigan Corrections Organization officers' union, said Lincoln was a yard officer who conducted especially diligent searches, where many other officers get lax. "He found a lot of contraband; nothing got past him," Osborn said. "This was a concerted effort by the prisoners to get him removed from his position."

But Osborn, who said he has no direct evidence of such a conspiracy, could not explain why only Lincoln would be targeted in such a way, if he was in fact performing searches the way officers are instructed to perform them at the training academy.

Lincoln's more than 60 entries in the Corrections Department's AIPAS (Allegations, Investigations, Personnel Action System) database, released during a 2013 class-action lawsuit related to sexual assaults against youthful offenders who were imprisoned with adults, while "off the chart" relative to other MDOC employees, do not correspond one-to-one with specific sexual assault allegations, said Prescott, who was also a lawyer for the plaintiffs in that case. For example, if an officer is accused of sexually assaulting a prisoner and also accused of being away from his assigned area at the time of the alleged assault, that could result in two sexual assault related entries in the database, she said.

Also, the database would not capture all of the relevant allegations. A 2012 Michigan Department of Corrections AIPAS operating manual said that while all sexual assault allegations were to be entered in the database, along with the employee's name, there was an exception for allegations made in connection with pat-down searches. Those, the manual said, should be discussed between an inspector and an internal affairs manager, who would decide "whether it should be entered in AIPAS or handled locally."

But it's clear that there have been dozens of allegations against Lincoln by prisoners willing to come forward. Prescott's Ingham County lawsuit details multiple allegations of sexual assaults by Lincoln, between 2016 and 2019, against the six named plaintiffs in the case. It also alleges similar complaints against Lincoln, made between 2012 and 2017, by 23 different "John Doe" prisoners who are not named in the lawsuit. Prescott's lawsuit is currently before the Michigan Court of Appeals on a technical issue that could impact how it proceeds.

The earliest such complaint against Lincoln the Free Press found was in a 2010 federal lawsuit in which a prisoner alleged Lincoln squeezed his genitals so tightly it caused him "to raise up on his toes in agony" and brought tears to his eyes.

Yet when Hunter, now 48, who was not represented by an attorney, filed his 2015 lawsuit alleging Lincoln repeatedly sexually assaulted him and retaliated when Hunter complained about it, he got stonewalled about Lincoln’s history, right up to the eve of trial in 2022, court records show.

When Hunter asked prison officials how many sexual assault grievances had been filed against Lincoln, an MDOC witness, through then-Assistant Attorney General Kristen Simmons, said in 2018 that they could not provide that information because grievances are not tracked by employee name — despite the fact the AIPAS database is intended to do exactly that.

Lincoln, in another response to questions from Hunter that Simmons filed with the court, said in 2018 he “has no recollection of receiving any grievances” related to sexual assaults on prisoners between Jan. 1, 2012 and Jan. 1, 2017.

Hunter’s case was about to go to trial in federal court in Grand Rapids in 2022 when Prescott learned how the department had minimized Lincoln’s history in the answers it gave to Hunter’s questions, and had never corrected those answers.

Though she was not a lawyer in Hunter's case, Prescott filed a declaration for the judge “out of profound concern with the integrity of this court as an officer of the court,” she said in the sworn court filing.

“I was very concerned at what I saw in the discovery answers the MDOC served in this case, especially considering that discovery was completed here by the state opposing a vulnerable, imprisoned … litigant” who at the time had no legal representation, Prescott wrote.

She said it was clear to her that the answers provided to the court “were false and materially so, and that any reasonable review of the discovery answers would reveal that” to state lawyers on the case.

“Indeed, I do not see any possibility that the counsel who are involved here do not know the information to be false, after years and years of dialogue, calls, disputes over production,” and the nature of ongoing discovery in the youthful offender case, some of which, she said, was going on at the same time that the false answers were given.

U.S. District Judge Jane Beckering then took the extraordinary step of reopening discovery, which had closed years earlier, so Hunter and his newly appointed attorney, Jacob Carlton of Grand Rapids, could obtain deposition transcripts and other records from the case against Lincoln in Ingham County. The department then opted to settle the lawsuit for just over $20,000, rather than go to trial, records show. The court deducted from the amount Hunter received close to $5,000 to settle his remaining court-ordered restitution from 1995.

Simmons, who represented Lincoln and other defendants in the Hunter case from Aug. 8, 2017 through Jan. 3, 2019, is now a judge. She left the AG’s Office in 2019 when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer appointed her to the district court in Lansing. A call to her chambers was not returned. In all, eight assistant attorneys general made appearances in the Hunter case, including Michael Dean, a former head of the AG's corrections division.

Prescott told the Free Press her comments in her sworn statement about state lawyers having to have known about the AIPAS database and that false answers were given to Hunter were primarily referencing Dean, who was also significantly involved in the young offender case in which the database was released.

Dean no longer heads the corrections division, according to an organizational chart on the website of the Attorney General's Office. The AG did not respond by Tuesday afternoon to questions asked Monday morning about why it did not open a criminal investigation into Lincoln upon learning about the degree to which he is an outlier in the database and whether it had investigated the way its own attorneys presented evidence in the Hunter case.

Kyle Kaminski, a spokesman for the Corrections Department, said Tuesday that all of the allegations against Lincoln were investigated, but in every case there was "insufficient evidence to corroborate the allegations that were made."

But in his 2022 deposition, Lincoln testified that he never answered more than a single question about any of the allegations.

"You wrote an email saying, 'No, I didn't,' and that was the end of it every single time. Isn't that true?" Lincoln was asked by Prescott.

"As far as I can tell," Lincoln replied.

Hunter told the Free Press on Tuesday he would have liked to have taken his case to trial because he does not feel it brought accountability to Lincoln or the department. But he said he was desperate for the settlement money he received because he needs it to support his work trying to show he is innocent of a 1994 Wayne County homicide that sent him to prison for life.

Prisoners who file grievances against officers or take their complaints to court are routinely subjected to a range of retaliation measures, including trumped-up rules violations and the spreading of prison rumors that they are "snitches," which can lead to violent assaults, Hunter said.

"It's very stressful," he said.

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on X, @paulegan4.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan prisons track sexual assault complaints; 1 officer stood out