A New York City correction officer was arrested and charged on Thursday with forcing a transgender inmate to engage in a sex act with him at a Manhattan jail.

The victim, a 23-year-old transgender woman, was an inmate in a male housing unit at the Manhattan Detention Complex near City Hall, where she was being held on a parole violation, when the attack took place in September 2009.

According to a suit filed against the city last month, the woman said the correction officer, Roberto Morales, 40, groped and sexually harassed her several times over the course of about a month.

Her lawyer, Ilann M. Maazel, said in an interview that the woman had undergone hormone therapy but had not had gender reassignment surgery. In one instance, the lawyer said, Officer Morales was escorting the woman from a clinic when he pushed her into a stairwell and forced himself on her. A rape kit found DNA implicating the officer in the attack, he said.