VIDEO BY ANDRE MALOK

Editor's note: This special report contains detailed description of alleged sexual abuse.

ROCIO LEON said she was inside her cell at New Jersey's only women's prison when the officer came to the door during a routine head count, ordering the inmate to touch herself.

Leon said the officer had done this before, asking whether she was "a freak." Whether she ever had oral or anal sex. Whether he could perform sex acts on her.

"No," she said she told him. "Get out of my room."

Instead, Leon claims, the officer stuck his hand inside her sports bra and, amid a struggle, jammed his arm down her pants, breaking the drawstring.

"I didn't know what to do," she said in a recent interview, "whether to say something or scream."

It was December 2008, and Leon was just starting a 15-year sentence for manslaughter. The senior corrections officer had power over every facet of her life, and Leon said she feared what he would do with it. So she kept quiet.

It would be her word against his.

Over the next 18 months, more than a dozen women at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Hunterdon County said they, too, had been abused by the officer, Erick Melgar.

When prison officials documented enough of their claims to determine they were true, the officer was fired but never criminally charged. He maintains his innocence and today walks a free man.

But newly uncovered records obtained by NJ Advance Media show internal investigators had gathered a trove of evidence against Melgar, concluding in a confidential report that he had for years struck, groped and sexually assaulted women under his supervision.

A six-month NJ Advance Media review of the case found:

* At least 16 women claimed they were beaten or sexually abused by Melgar between 2008 and 2010. Seven of them have formally accused the officer of physical and sexual abuse in two lawsuits filed in state and federal court. * The Department of Corrections began proceedings to fire Melgar in August 2010 for conduct unbecoming of an officer and "undue familiarity," a vague, outdated term that experts say whitewashes serious allegations of sex abuse and keeps the public -- and the officers' potential future employers -- in the dark. * Two other officers were fired as a result of the investigation, including Melgar's partner. That partner would swap posts with Melgar, giving him unfettered access to inmates in their cells and, according to prison records, warning him when someone else on the staff was headed into their unit. All three officers have denied wrongdoing. * The head of the prison at the time of the internal investigation has since said Melgar should have been criminally charged. The Hunterdon County Prosecutor's Office, which investigated, repeatedly declined to say why it decided not to pursue a criminal case.

Experts across the country said the case exemplifies the common and vexing problem of prison sex abuse investigations, in which authorities are hesitant to present to a jury a case built on circumstantial evidence, however convincing, and the testimony of felons.

Sex assault underreported behind bars

"If any one of us females was being abused by our spouses at home, the police would lock them up immediately," Tasha Canada, who's serving 15 years for robbery and claims she was struck and physically harassed by Melgar, said in an interview. "So why is it different that he's a so-called corrections officer?"

Throughout the investigations and to this day, Melgar has maintained his innocence. He did not respond to phone calls, text messages and a letter sent to his home and, through his attorney, declined an interview request. In a 2015 deposition, he said he was "a fair officer."

"I was an asshole, but I was fair," he said. "I followed the rules."

His attorney, Ronald Ricci, also denied the women's claims.

"The people making these accusations have very significant criminal records," Ricci told NJ Advance Media. "They've given inconsistent statements throughout the process. There's no physical evidence, no DNA evidence, nothing besides claims made later by people who are incarcerated for very serious crimes."

Attorneys representing the state in the lawsuits brought by the inmates have defended the handling of the case, acknowledging in court records the corrections department's internal findings of abuse but arguing the department conducted a sweeping investigation and took swift action.

And a corrections spokesman, Matthew Schuman, said his department has a "zero tolerance policy" for sexual abuse and that the department complies with all federal standards. He said all substantiated cases of abuse are referred to law enforcement and that it's up to prosecutors to decide whether to bring criminal charges.



While the prosecutor's office has remained silent on the case, days before this story was published, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Anthony Kearns announced his office is working with the corrections department on an investigation into sex abuse at the women's prison, reviewing cases going back to 2010.

Melgar's firing, and prosecutors' decision to drop their investigation, drew little scrutiny for years until last summer, when an open records advocate, John Paff, came across two lawsuits and posted copies on his blog.

The disclosure prompted NJ Advance Media to conduct interviews -- in person, by phone and via email -- with inmates and staff, file several public records requests, and obtain and examine thousands of pages of court documents, depositions, internal investigatory reports and memos from the case.

What emerged was a rare look inside the women's prison, where inmates say one man turned their unit, North Hall, into a perverted personal playground, hazing, mocking and sexually abusing them for several years without repercussion. The women say even when the allegations became too numerous for officials to ignore, Melgar eluded the same justice system that had sent him his victims.

INMATES: REOPEN CASE

The inmates are some of New Jersey's most powerless women and, because of their criminal histories, the least likely to be believed. They are serving time for murder, manslaughter, robbery and theft. Some previously had been arrested on drug and prostitution charges.

NJ Advance Media does not typically identify alleged victims of sexual abuse. The six women who filed the state lawsuit, as well as Leon, who is not a plaintiff, said they wanted to be named and go public. The plaintiff in the federal lawsuit declined interview requests through her attorney, and, as a result, is identified only by her initials.

Many of the women confided in interviews and depositions they had been abused in the past by family members, friends and romantic partners. Most said they were reluctant to report prison abuse, either because they didn't think they'd be believed or feared they would face retaliation for speaking out.

With a civil trial now approaching, the women say corrections officials should have known, months earlier, that inmates were being targeted by a man sworn to keep them safe.

And they want law enforcement to reopen the criminal case.

"Right is right and wrong is wrong," Canada, one of the plaintiffs in the state suit, said. "He should be punished for what he did to us."

Melgar, 36, grew up in Hasbrouck Heights and began working for the Department of Corrections in 2004, eventually earning an annual salary of about $63,000, according to public records and his deposition from the state lawsuit.

As recently as last year, he was employed at Bayonne-based Griffin Security, working the door at Miller's Ale House in Paramus, according to his deposition and social media profiles.

An official at the Florida-based restaurant chain said Melgar was a contractor and no longer worked there. A message left at the security firm was not returned.

Described by inmates and staff as a large, burly man who could be by turns strict and friendly with prisoners, Melgar was assigned to the "cage," an enclosed box roughly the size of a toll booth, from where officers watched the comings and goings through the heavy metal doors of North Hall, part of the maximum security wing at Edna Mahan.

The facility, which opened as the State Reformatory for Women at Clinton in 1913 and was later renamed after a pioneering female superintendent, is located in parts of Clinton and Union Township in Hunterdon County and has a population of about 650 inmates.

It received high marks in a 2016 audit conducted in compliance with the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act, which found it met federal standards. In a statement, corrections officials said the facility has installed more cameras in recent years with the help of federal grants aimed at reducing abuse behind bars.

But last year, five of the six prison employees fired in the entire state over sex abuse claims came from the women's facility, according to data provided by the department in response to NJ Advance Media's inquiry.

Four of them were indicted on charges of sexual abuse and official misconduct earlier this month. A fifth was recently sentenced to three years in prison for official misconduct.

RECORDS DETAIL ALLEGED ABUSE

Rocio Leon, now 29, said she came to regret keeping quiet about what happened to her.

"I was mad at myself," she said in an interview in a recreation room in North Hall, wearing a gray sweatshirt atop a khaki prison uniform that matched the drab concrete walls. "I should have just bit the shit out of him and started screaming for help. But I didn't. I didn't. Because I was scared."

Prosecutors and rape survivor advocates say such behavior is common in sexual assault cases, in which the abused grapple with whether to report what happened.

Even discussing the trauma can open old wounds.

"I went through something similar when I was a little girl," Leon said.

She paused, her eyes glassy, searching the sparse room.

"I can't talk (about it)."

In April 2009, Leon approached her cosmetology teacher at Edna Mahan, telling her she wanted to speak in private. There, according to an incident report later written by the teacher, Leon confided she had been "molested by the same officer on several occasions."

Leon was moved out of North Hall and the Special Investigations Division, the prison system's internal affairs unit, opened an inquiry. Melgar wrote his own statement. He denied the allegations and claimed he was the innocent victim of a group of inmates out to set him up.

A report written by an internal investigator and obtained by NJ Advance Media concluded Leon's claims were unsubstantiated.

It was her word against his.

But a year later, a prison psychologist spoke up.

In June 2010, the psychologist reported that another inmate under her care, Robin Streater, claimed an officer had tried to "hug up on her" inside her cell, records show.

In an internal memo, the psychologist later wrote that when she approached a captain and a shift sergeant with the information, the two "accurately guessed the officer in question."

The next day, the prison's administrator, William Hauck, requested another internal inquiry.

That investigation had barely started when letters, written on the forms inmates typically use to file grievances and ask for help, came in singing the praises of "C/O Melgar."

Nineteen inmates wrote in June 2010 that Melgar was "professional, respectful and that he runs a good unit," according to a report describing the letters' contents.

One letter claimed, just as Melgar had, that a conspiracy was afoot.

"Inmates that haven't gotten their way have made threats" against Melgar, according to that letter, which claimed a few problem prisoners were out to "take his job."

But under questioning by internal investigators, several inmates who defended Melgar recanted. At least six who wrote letters on his behalf said they, too, had been targets of his abuse.

Sixteen inmates were identified in the investigatory report as having allegedly suffered some form of sexual or physical abuse.

A dozen more said they were not victims themselves, but had witnessed Melgar wrestle with and grope inmates, throw buckets of ice on them as they showered, slap and spank them with a ruler, and even fart on their beds. Other alleged victims came forward or were identified afterward in court records, according to NJ Advance Media's review.

But why would women who had been abused by this man rally to protect him? Kathleen Zdonowski, the lead investigator, pressed for answers.

'THERE IS NO CONSENT'

Some inmates pointed to Jannette Bennett, the assigned "floor officer" in North Hall, who worked alongside Melgar. Both Bennett and Melgar said in interviews with investigators and later in depositions that they would swap posts, claiming Melgar was doing Bennett a favor while she was pregnant.

Under their arrangement, Bennett would sit in the cage and Melgar would patrol the floor, an unauthorized trade that violated prison policy, officials later testified.

After Melgar was suspended that year, some inmates claimed Bennett told them she, too, could lose her job over the internal inquiry. Bennett repeatedly denied having anything to do with the letters.

Other prisoners said they were coerced by C.B., an inmate with whom Melgar had a sexual relationship, according to investigatory records. Canada said she was new to North Hall when C.B. and another inmate approached her about writing a letter.

"They were trying to intimidate us, saying, 'You gotta write this or this is going to happen or that is gonna happen,'" Canada said. "Some of these women are here for some serious things. So I don't know what's going to happen. And I did (write a letter). But I was forced into it."

Records show C.B., who had been convicted of robbery and weapons possession and was serving time for a parole violation, initially mounted a defense of Melgar. She was the one who claimed in her letter a few inmates were trying to oust him for being a "go-by-the-book officer."

"It's very sad that inmates can make up lies and slander an officer's name due to not liking them or getting their way," she wrote. "From what I hear, the same inmates are going to target Bennett next."

After Melgar's suspension, C.B. told investigators a different story.

In a follow-up interview in September 2010, C.B. said she and Melgar had had sex many times. She said Melgar would swap posts with Bennett and patrol the floor, loudly accuse her of smoking in her cell and use it as a pretense to enter for a search. Once inside, she said, he would grope her, the two would kiss and he would request oral sex or intercourse.

C.B. is now the sole plaintiff in the federal lawsuit against Melgar, prison officials and the state.

She said she also had a sexual relationship, though not intercourse, with another corrections officer assigned to North Hall after Melgar was suspended. The officer, Alfred Smalls, repeatedly denied the allegation, claiming inmates who didn't like him had conspired to get him fired.

Reached by phone, Smalls said he "upheld the law the whole time I was there" at Edna Mahan.

He claimed he had been "cleared" of wrongdoing. But prison records show the Department of Corrections fired him after investigators substantiated the claims against him, and court records show his dismissal was upheld by an administrative law judge and an appeals court. However, Smalls was never criminally charged.

Other inmates said in depositions that C.B. got special treatment for accepting his advances.

At one point, Melgar told her, "You can't tell anyone about this or I'll go to jail," she claimed in a written statement. "I said I wouldn't." Melgar denied the sex ever happened.

In her deposition, C.B. agreed when asked by an attorney if the relationship was consensual. But in prison, as the facility's administrator put it in a deposition, "There is no consent. An inmate cannot consent."

Sex with inmates is a violation of policy for prison staff and is considered sexual assault under New Jersey law, which recognizes that the power imbalance between a corrections officer and an inmate can make it difficult, if not impossible, for the inmate to refuse sexual advances.

"I wouldn't do today what I did then, period," C.B. said in her deposition. Records show she had been an escort. She had been addicted to drugs. She said she "had been used to being used by men all my life."

"I was in a bad situation and I was taken advantage of," she said. "I wouldn't have slept with that man or did anything with that man today or outside of the jail. And he knew that."

PLAYING 'GAMES'

Melgar, the inmates claimed, liked to play games with the women of North Hall.

"He had nothing against age -- didn't matter," said Michelle Ellis, an inmate serving 20 years for robbery who is a plaintiff in the state suit. "Race didn't matter. If you were female, that's all that mattered."

In internal documents and court records, inmates described the "games" in detail.

There was the "ruler game," they said, in which Melgar would smack inmates on their hands, heads or rear ends with a metal ruler. There was the "hot and cold game," in which they claimed he would take commissary items and food from inmates and make them guess where he had hidden them. Often, inmates told investigators, he would make them do pushups to get their food back.

Then there was the "ice game," they said, in which Melgar would grab a bucket of ice cubes from a freezer, sneak outside the shower stall and dump it onto an unsuspecting inmate inside.

"Some women liked it," Ellis, 34, said of the "playing," a term that, in the court record, became a euphemism for everything from practical jokes to sexual abuse.

Ellis didn't like it. When the medication she was on caused her to gain weight, Melgar made inappropriate comments about her breasts, she claims in the state lawsuit. She also accuses him of forcibly touching her on several occasions.

"I lost a significant amount of weight to try to become invisible to him," Ellis said in an interview. "I tried to become unnoticed by him. By men, period. I just wanted to fade off."

Inmate Therese Afdahl, who is serving a life sentence for murder, said she first complained about Melgar in February 2008.

In a four-page letter later introduced as evidence in one of the lawsuits, the inmate protested a particularly rough search of her cell. She speculated the treatment was retaliation for verbal complaints she had made about Melgar's behavior, "specifically him hitting the various female inmates with a rolled-up newspaper, 'playing,' or, as some would call it, aggravated assault."

Afdahl, another plaintiff in the state suit, claims prison officials should have investigated Melgar immediately. In a sworn statement, Hauck, the prison's administrator, said he never received the letter, and lawyers for the state said it couldn't be authenticated. They also argued the behavior alleged in the letter wasn't nearly as serious as later claims of sexual abuse.

Though Leon's claim that she was molested by Melgar was deemed unsubstantiated in 2009, she was re-interviewed in the 2010 investigatory report that led to his firing, along with another inmate who told investigators a very similar story.

That woman told investigators that, in August 2009, she was digitally penetrated by Melgar during count time -- when corrections officers perform checks, cell by cell -- and ordered by the officer to masturbate in front of him. The inmate said she complied "because she feared (Melgar's) retaliatory action" if she refused, according to the report.

Streater, the inmate who sparked the investigation leading to Melgar's ouster, said in a deposition that when she showered, Melgar would "stand there on the edge and see if he could peep."

Once, she said, he came into her cell not long after she showered, while she was still wearing a robe, and pushed her up against a closet, lifting the robe and rubbing his penis against her backside.

When he was done, she said, "he ran out the door laughing."

OFFICER CLAIMS CONSPIRACY

All along, Melgar maintained he did nothing wrong.

In a 2015 deposition, he said he couldn't explain why inmates felt compelled to write letters defending him, only to have several of them come forward with claims of abuse.

"I really don't know why at one point it's, 'Hey, he's a good officer,' and then now suddenly I'm scum," he said. He denied having anything to do with the letters.

Melgar speculated his accusers had been "influenced" by Afdahl, who had been incarcerated since 1991 and whom many of the inmates called "Mom."

"The only thing I can come up with is if Afdahl and they all got together and did something," he said. Afdahl denied organizing any conspiracy against the officer.

Melgar said the claims against him "tarnished" his name and rumors spread quickly in the prison system, so when he was relocated in June 2010 to nearby Mountainview Youth Correctional Facility in Annandale while the investigation was pending, colleagues and superiors mocked him as a "woman beater" and an "inmate lover."

"I already looked guilty before anything even happened or before I was even charged departmentally or whatever it was," he said. "Everybody's already looking at you like you're guilty."

The internal investigator, Zdonowski, who declined to comment for this story, wrote in her investigatory report that Melgar claimed he had never done anything worse than yell profanity at inmates. But, Zdonowski concluded, "based on the consistency of the (inmates') statements one would have to assume (that) these allegations are true."

The investigator also found Bennett was "complicit in covering up (senior corrections officer) Melgar's unprofessional behavior towards the inmates in North Hall."

According to the report, several inmates claimed Bennett would often laugh at or cheer on Melgar's hazing and physical abuse. They claimed when the officers swapped posts, Bennett would watch the monitors and warn Melgar when another staffer was headed into North Hall.

Bennett did not respond to phone and email messages seeking comment. In a deposition, she claimed she "had nothing to do with whatever was going on with Mr. Melgar."

She also denied seeing him forcibly touch or hit inmates.

"I didn't think he was like that," she said.

At a disciplinary hearing, another senior corrections officer testified he once witnessed Melgar "pushing and shoving" an inmate and told him to stop. The officer said there were rumors in the prison that Melgar was having sex with inmates, but he had no direct knowledge, records show.

Melgar appealed his firing, arguing the inmates' stories were inconsistent. The corrections department's Office of Employee Relations upheld his termination in 2011.

"At a certain point, the totality of the circumstantial evidence and allegations against (Melgar) tend to erode his credibility," a hearing officer, Peter Gerke, wrote in his decision.

NO CHARGES FILED

Hauck, who retired in February 2013 from his post as the prison's administrator, said in a deposition his office "did the right thing" by firing the officers after the internal investigation.

He could not be reached for comment. But in his deposition, Hauck said although he wasn't a lawyer or a prosecutor, after reading the report detailing the allegations against the officers, it seemed clear what should have happened.

"They should be in jail," he said.

Ultimately, prosecutors never brought charges.

In response to a public records request, Jeffrey Weinstein, an assistant prosecutor in Hunterdon County, confirmed his office investigated the case. But, he wrote, "a determination was made not to pursue the matter as an indictable criminal offense."

When asked recently whether he would consider reopening the case, Kearns, the county prosecutor, declined to comment.

But at a Jan. 23 news conference announcing the indictments of four officers accused of sexually abusing inmates, the prosecutor said his office is conducting an "ongoing investigation" into sex abuse cases at Edna Mahan, including "one case dating back to 2010."

Corrections records show there were just three officers fired from Edna Mahan over allegations of abuse that year: Smalls, Bennett and Melgar.

TOUGH CASES TO TRY

Brenda Smith, a law professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and director of the Project on Addressing Prison Rape, said in a 2008 research paper that prosecutors were often reluctant to bring charges in such cases, particularly those lacking DNA or other physical evidence.

In those situations, Smith wrote, it would come down to inmate testimony.

"Juries have problems accepting the credibility of inmates," she wrote, summarizing responses to a survey of prosecutors. "Juries perceived inmates as liars with a bias against corrections staff, as well as having a financial motive for making the allegations."

As a result, Smith said in an interview, authorities settle for firing staff members or forcing them to resign, often using broad charges such as "undue familiarity" or "conduct unbecoming an officer" and leaving no public paper trail of substantiated claims of abuse.

"The reality is that you fire somebody, they're gone," she said. "This gentleman who got fired, he can turn up in another institution because there is nothing that presents a flag to anyone that says why he got fired. You go someplace, you rehabilitate yourself, you cross state lines and nobody checks."

Joshua Marquis, a prosecutor in Oregon and board member of the National District Attorneys Association, declined to comment on the facts of the New Jersey case, but said prosecutors must weigh many factors when deciding whether to bring charges.

Marquis said false rape claims are exceedingly rare, but prosecuting any sexual assault, let alone one behind bars, can also be complicated by the amount of time elapsed between the incident and when a victim comes forward. Prosecutors must also take into consideration the fact a defense attorney can pick apart a victim's background on the stand, he said.

"Obviously, people who are inmates in correctional facilities have a lot of baggage," he said, adding: "That doesn't mean they don't have a right to be protected.

"Ethically, a prosecutor has to not only believe that a person did the crime, but that they have a reasonable likelihood that they're going to win the case," he said.

Smith said jurors might discount the testimony of one or two inmates.

"But it seems to me, notwithstanding whatever their backgrounds are, the sheer number of women would suggest a pattern of abuse, which would get you somewhere with the jury," she said.

LAWSUIT GOES TO TRIAL

In addition to Afdahl, Streater, Ellis and Canada, two other women -- Barbara Clark, 50, who is on parole after serving 17 years for aggravated manslaughter, and Joann Satorius, 48, who was released after serving nearly 10 years for robbery -- are also plaintiffs in the state suit.

They are being represented pro bono by attorney Marc Haefner and his colleagues at the Newark law firm Walsh Pizzi O'Reilly Falanga.

Court records also show the Department of Corrections faces another lawsuit, from an inmate at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, Steven Kadonsky, who acted as a jailhouse lawyer for the six women before Haefner picked up the case.

Kadonsky, who is serving a life sentence for drug trafficking, claims he was written up on bogus institutional charges after being warned there would be "a price to pay" for helping the women with their suit. He claims he spent nearly three years in solitary confinement over the charges, which were later partially reversed by an appeals court.

That case is still pending in court. A spokesman for the state Attorney General's Office, which is also a defendant in the suit, declined to comment on Kadonsky's claims.

In both Edna Mahan cases, lawyers for the Attorney General's Office, which represents the corrections department and Melgar's supervisors but not the officer himself, didn't dispute the sexual abuse claims, but said prison officials took "immediate and spectacularly successful corrective action" as soon as Melgar's behavior was disclosed.

Robert Preuss, a deputy attorney general, argued in federal court that administrators conducted a sweeping investigation and ousted three officers accused of wrongdoing. He said prison officials took swift action despite the fact inmates had never used the formal complaint system to raise the alarm, and said the inmates had actually hindered the internal investigation by writing letters defending Melgar.

In the Edna Mahan state suit, a judge last year threw out claims against some individual prison officials, but the case against Melgar, Bennett and the Department of Corrections is scheduled for trial March 13. All six women are expected to testify.

In C.B.'s federal case, a judge in April similarly dismissed the woman's claims against state officials. That case is now before a federal court of appeals.

Meanwhile, attorneys for Melgar have questioned the motives of the women who brought suit.

Ricci, the lead attorney, said in an interview the women had made false claims of sexual abuse "for financial reasons."

And during depositions in the state lawsuit, another attorney from Ricci's firm asked several of the women if the claims made in their lawsuit might also make a parole board view them more favorably.

None said that was true. Rather, several of the inmates testified that they wanted to draw attention to the hidden abuse they claim happens too often behind bars.

Clark -- who was convicted of killing her husband, whom she said regularly abused her -- said in her deposition she wanted the case to be "the biggest lawsuit in Clinton history, where they'll learn that they don't have the right to hurt us like that."

She said in an email to NJ Advance Media she came forward to help women like herself who "had to live with monsters just to come to a different place and have to live with a new set of monsters."

S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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Below are some resources for survivors of sexual abuse:

• Just Detention International's prison rape resources

• The Project on Addressing Prison Rape located at American University in Washington, D.C.

• New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault and New Jersey's 24-hour state hotline for sexual violence as a resource: 800 - 601 - 7200.