This report contains potentially triggering details of an alleged sexual assault and may not be suitable for young readers.
What happens when eight incarcerated women bring forth sexual assault allegations, but three of them appear to be embellishing their stories?
In January 2018, Oregon State Police visited Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville to take statements from eight women who said they’d been sexually assaulted and harassed while working in the kitchen.
All eight women said a food service coordinator named Douglas Cloutier had targeted them. Cloutier had been an employee of the Department of Corrections since 2015 and supervised groups of six to 11 inmates working in the kitchen’s vegetable and meat rooms.
The allegations against Cloutier ranged from making sexually suggestive statements to coercing oral sex and assaulting them.
At the time of the interviews, Cloutier had been on “home duty” for the prior four months after violations of inmate boundaries and Prison Rape Elimination Act concerns, according to records Street Roots obtained from Oregon State Police.
Two of his female co-workers, who were not inmates, described him to detectives as a misogynist with a short temper, although none of the four corrections department workers interviewed said they had witnessed any of the behavior detailed by the accusing inmates.
During the course of the state police investigation, Cloutier resigned.
Multiple cases of sexual assault and misconduct have embroiled Coffee Creek over the years. Most recently, in January, five current and former inmates filed lawsuits claiming a nurse working at the correctional institution, Tony Klein, sexually assaulted 15 female inmates between 2009 and 2018, as reported in the Statesman Journal. The five plaintiffs in this case allege that sexual abuse at the prison is “widespread” and that those who report it are punished.
Meanwhile in the Oregon Legislature, Sen. Alan Olson (R-Canby) introduced a bill that would require the Department of Corrections to study sexual assault at the women’s facility and to adopt a policy for the reduction and prevention of sexual abuse and harassment. Olsen did not respond to Street Roots’ request for an interview.
During the bill’s first hearing March 27, Department of Corrections Director Collette Peters testified in support of an amendment to replace Olsen’s bill with a requirement that her department share with legislators instead an audit of its Prison Rape Elimination Act compliance that’s already conducted every three years. The amendment was adopted, and the bill will now move to the House floor for a vote.
Peters told the Senate Judiciary Committee that her department continues to have challenges with sexual assault allegations, including false allegations that arise in the midst of legitimate claims.
This might be the case with the allegations against Cloutier, which are anything but straightforward.
State police interviewed an uninvolved inmate who said she overheard two of Cloutier’s accusers talking about embellishing their stories for monetary gain. A third accuser was found with a letter that explained “how and why to take down a staff member and to get them to engage in major misconduct including sexual relationships.”
The inmate who initially reached out to Street Roots complaining of sexual assault at the hands of Cloutier was one of the three women thought to be, at minimum, exaggerating her claims. Street Roots found inconsistencies between allegations she shared with us and what she told investigators. We’re stopping short of saying she fabricated her assault, but we will not include its details in this report.
Washington County Deputy District Attorney David Pitcher, who reviewed the state police investigation for prosecution, declined to press charges against Cloutier.
In his court filing at the conclusion of his review, he noted that the detectives’ findings cast doubt on the motives of the women, and therefore he didn’t believe any jury would convict Cloutier.
“In addition to the jurors hearing that all of the accusing inmates have felony convictions, the jurors would also hear evidence that shows at least three of the accusing inmates are fabricating these claims with the hope of financial gain,” he wrote. “I do not believe the allegations are sufficiently credible, and they cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt at trial.”
When he spoke to Street Roots, Pitcher said this did not mean he disbelieved claims the women made; it only meant he did not think he could get a conviction. In deciding whether to pursue charges, he said, he looked at the sum of the eight claims as a whole. While some women were not discredited, taken together, the case was weak, he said.
This was the same conclusion prosecutors came to in the case against the Coffee Creek nurse. As the Statesman Journal reported, state police found 11 inmates reported sexual misconduct with Klein, but because some of the claims were unreliable, no charges were filed.
But what if some of the women are telling the truth?
The eight statements made to investigators regarding Cloutier’s conduct contained several consistent allegations.
Four of the women said Cloutier often intentionally brushed against their breasts while reaching for their nametags, which hung from lanyards around their necks.
He did this so frequently, two of the women said, that kitchen workers resorted to carrying their nametags in their back pockets.
Three women also said he would say things they perceived as being sexually suggestive, specifically, “How should I punish you?”
Seven of the women reported that he often brushed against their breasts or backsides, groped them or otherwise inappropriately rubbed against them, and two women said he shoved a food cart into their bodies in an attempt to hurt them. One submitted photographs of her scratches from the cart that hit her and copies of her initial complaint to the Department of Corrections as evidence to state police. Another woman’s letters and calendars detailing incidents of inappropriate touching were also submitted.
But one inmate’s allegations stood out. Aracely Hernandez, 50, told investigators that in March 2017, Cloutier forced her to give him oral sex.
Hernandez is serving a 10-year sentence for first- and second-degree assault and unlawful use of a weapon.
Hernandez claims she called the prison’s Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA, hotline and reported the assault, but when the inspector general questioned her about the call with a Spanish-speaking translator months later, she shut down during the interview because, she said, the translator began rolling her eyes at the accusations.
Frustrated when prosecutors declined to press charges against Cloutier, Hernandez filed a lawsuit naming him, Coffee Creek and several other staffers she said were complacent in or actively retaliating against her for coming forward.
That case is pending, and the defense has filed a motion for summary judgment and dismissal based in part on Hernandez’s failure to state a claim, the defendants’ impunity under the 11th Amendment, and Hernandez’s failure to exhaust the grievance process before filing the lawsuit.
The Prison Litigation Reform Act, passed in 1996, requires that inmates pursue and exhaust internal administrative methods of grieving their complaints before a lawsuit can be filed. In Oregon, that process means filing a grievance followed by a sequence of appeals, but Hernandez said speaking out led to retaliation from prison staff, and she was put in “the hole” four times over the next few months, spending a total of 75 days in isolation.
Fearing more retaliation, she didn’t file grievances related to the assault. She is without an attorney, and because she hasn’t exhausted the grievance process, it’s unlikely she’ll secure representation.
“But just because I file grievances doesn’t make it right,” she said. “I didn’t file grievances because I was threatened. If I talk about it, I went to the hole.”
Shortly after Hernandez’s first phone conversation with Street Roots, she was moved from a single cell to a shared cell with an undesirable cellmate who is typically housed alone. Hernandez said she’s had to share her commissary items to keep the peace.
Former inmate Michalle Wright was moved to Coffee Creek from Two Rivers Correctional Facility in 2018 after she forced the Oregon Department of Corrections, with a lawsuit of her own, to change its policy on how it houses transgender inmates.
She arrived at the women’s prison around the same time state police were conducting their investigation into Cloutier.
Wright said she immediately noticed the retaliation against Hernandez and believed it was because Hernandez openly reported the sexual assault.
“Me and her had many conversations,” said Wright, who helped Hernandez craft her lawsuit. “We were developing a mutual friendship of solidarity against an oppressive system.”
Wright said she believed Hernandez, who had told her about her sexual assault shortly after the two began speaking.
Hernandez told Street Roots, and detailed in her lawsuit, that she and Cloutier had met years earlier at a McMenamins bar in Salem. They had a brief fling that lasted four days and was filled with drug and alcohol use.
When she arrived in the kitchen at Coffee Creek to work as his subordinate, he made it clear she should keep their prior relationship a secret and reminded her frequently to stay quiet about it, she said. But he favored her, giving her treats and preferential treatment in front of other inmates. This led to rumors about her and Cloutier and bullying from other inmates, she said.
Wright said Hernandez was often on the receiving end of harassment and bullying – from staff and inmates.
Among the documents provided to the Washington County District Attorney’s Office was an investigation into other inmates’ claims that Hernandez bragged she had a previous long-term relationship with Cloutier. Hernandez complained that prison staff had more interest in investigating these rumors than her allegations of sexual misconduct.
Pitcher, the D.A., indicated the internal investigation found Hernandez had lied about this relationship. But Hernandez told Street Roots the only lie was when she claimed she never knew Cloutier until coming to Coffee Creek.
On or about March 16, her lawsuit states, Cloutier ordered another inmate to train Hernandez on how to stock the walk-in cooler adjacent to the veggie room. After she was trained, the other inmate left, and she was alone, working in the walk-in. This was a break from the “rule of threes,” which inmates told state police Cloutier often disregarded. This rule is intended to prevent sexual misconduct.
Minutes later, Cloutier entered the cooler, the suit alleges, kissed Hernandez on the lips, “pushed her down by the shoulders and stuffed his penis inside Hernandez’s mouth seeking oral sex.” The allegations in her lawsuit, filed in March 2018, are consistent with the state police report taken three months earlier.
The lawsuit goes on to say the encounter left Hernandez “shocked, nauseated and scared.” She indicated that she almost vomited because Cloutier did not use a condom and left “a strong taste of urine inside her mouth. The gagging was overwhelming.”
Cloutier became paranoid following the incident, placing Hernandez in solitary confinement and asking that officers monitor her while she was in the kitchen, according the suit.
The Department of Corrections declined to comment on any internal investigations into Cloutier’s behavior, citing pending litigation.
Hernandez isn’t seeking a payout, she said. She just wants better security in the kitchen so that what happened to her doesn’t happen to anyone else.
Since Cloutier left Coffee Creek, cameras were installed in the veggie room and some other areas that were previously out of sight, Hernandez said. A spokesperson for Coffee Creek declined to answer an inquiry into when cameras were installed.
Hernandez said she also wants cameras installed in the walk-in cooler and other areas that remain hidden from view. She also wants a corrections officer to remain present in the kitchen at all times, rather than leave the supervision of inmates up to food service staff.
“Failure to have cameras, failure to have proper security, and supervision, that is what caused me to not be able to prove that this man did that. All we have is our allegations,” she said.
She said a lot of inmates don’t like the idea of guards in the kitchen. “But they are not looking at the big picture,” she said. “They’re thinking, how can I sneak a cookie out of the kitchen? They’re not looking into safety.”
Hernandez also wants some acknowledgement of what’s happened to her. Upon asking for psychological help following her alleged attack, instead of counseling, the prison’s Behavioral Health Services unit gave her what amounted to a first-grade-level coloring book, which she provided to Street Roots.
The packet, titled “Mindfulness Skills Series,” contains Christmas-themed picture outlines, including snowmen and reindeer, along with three crossword puzzles. Hernandez said she was given the activity book but no group therapy, no meetings, no classes or psychological help of any kind, other than a visit from a counselor every four months, which is standard for all inmates.
Hernandez said she already feels in some ways she has won – Cloutier no longer works at the institution. But there are already rumors, she said, of another food service coordinator behaving in a similar fashion.
“The (food service) coordinators know who they are hitting up on. We are street women; we are drug users; we are drunks; we are prostitutes on the outs,” she said. “On the other side, we are felons, and they are not going to believe us.”
She said she hopes to recoup the $365 it’s costing her to file her lawsuit and purchase copies and envelopes, but if she gets any further monetary damages, she said, she would donate it to charity.
“I don’t want money that tastes like urine,” she said.
Street Roots was unable to reach Cloutier for comment, however, he denied all allegations to state police when they interviewed him last year.
He told the detectives that conflicts between him and inmates were frequent and that while bodily contact did happen, he never intentionally touched an inmate. When asked, he said he did not recognize the name of one of his accusers despite having written a memo in rebuttal to her assault allegation against him four months earlier.
Peters said during the Senate hearing that the corrections department is in the process of installing additional cameras and has hundreds more lined up among facilities. But footage is saved for only 90 days, and sexual assault and misconduct charges often take longer to surface, she said. The department is looking into saving footage longer and into the possibility of body cameras, she said.
In the meantime, Hernandez and her co-accusers just want to be heard.
“Right now, talking to you, it makes me feel good,” she said to Street Roots during a phone conversation, “knowing somebody is out there listening.”
Email Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green at emily@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @greenwrites.
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