He woke up after the crash to sheriff's deputies knocking on his car window.

It was late on Jan. 14, 2016, after he had hit three vehicles in three separate collisions that he only vaguely remembered. Seizures caused him to black out at the wheel, he told the deputies.

His ensuing arrest and lack of medical treatment for epilepsy is now at the center of a federal lawsuit accusing Harris County and seven jailers and deputies of mistakenly putting him into a maximum security cell where he was physically and sexually assaulted.

The man, identified in the lawsuit only as John Doe, said the three-day trip to jail weighs on him every day.

"It still affects me," he told the Houston Chronicle recently, speaking on the condition that he not be named. "The way I was dehumanized and treated in jail and all the things that happened, I don't understand. I can't go to sleep. I stay up until seven in the morning."

The Harris County Sheriff's Office declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.

The suit accuses county officials of violating protections under the U.S. Constitution and the Americans with Disabilities Act by wrongly arresting him and then failing to provide adequate care and protection in the jail. Details about his beating and assaults were documented in official reports, copies of which were provided to the Chronicle by his attorney, Drew Willey.

Natalia Cornelio, director of criminal justice reform at the Texas Civil Rights Project, said efforts by advocates to bring abuse and neglect to the attention of officials have often been met with defensiveness rather than a willingness to change, creating a jailhouse culture that is difficult to correct.

And although she welcomed now-Sheriff Ed Gonzalez's calls for change in his 2016 campaign for office, she said reform does not happen quickly.

"Experience teaches us that when there's that much of a negative history of lack of care, of lack of accommodation, it's going to be a long and intense process to remedy," she said. "Even the best of intentions and best of systems in place to replace what used to be is not going to be a quick or easy solution.

Ongoing assaults

The Houston man was arrested on felony hit-and-run charges by deputies working for then-Sheriff Ron Hickman. Although the suit says he told deputies he had seizures and asked for medical care, he was taken instead to the Harris County jail.

At the jail, he indicated on a jail questionnaire that he had "physical, developmental or mental health history." A jailer noted in a needs assessment that Doe had a mild disability or illness requiring outpatient treatment, because of seizures, and that he had limited work skills. Nevertheless, the same jailer still approved maximum security housing for Doe, declining to "override the housing recommendation."

The error, his attorney said, appears to have stemmed from the jailer incorrectly failing to subtract a point from his risk score for his age, which, at 26, would have been enough to keep him out of the maximum security cell.

He should have been housed in medium security, Willey said, where perhaps he might have avoided being assaulted.

Hours after being booked into jail, however, as he was still recovering from the seizures that landed him there, an inmate came over and tapped him on the shoulder, according to the lawsuit. The attack that came next is corroborated by reports from detention officers who partly witnessed it.

The man said that a group of eight or more jail inmates began punching him and kicking him in the face and ribs, slamming his head to the concrete floor, in a blind spot in the cell that was out of full view of the guards and security cameras.

During the attack, one of the inmates sexually assaulted him, causing him to defecate and urinate on himself, the lawsuit says.

Detention Officer Cody Hickman, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, filed an inmate offense report stating he noticed an inmate running toward the area in the jail and found that inmate and several others swinging at the man closed fists, kicking him in the abdomen and face. He called for backup.

Other detention officers pulled the man aside and asked him to identify the inmates who had attacked him.

The lawsuit says he was also assaulted by a guard in a jail elevator after falling forward onto the man after he began having another seizure. The guard filed a disciplinary complaint against him for "unauthorized contact," but the complaint was later dismissed.

He says he was not provided medical care until just before his wife arrived at the jail to post his bail. His wife took him to hospital after his release, about 36 hours after he first arrived.

'My story needs to be told'

The Houston man said he did not submit a complaint under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act because he was ashamed of the assault and afraid of retaliation.

Harris County, as other jails, are required under PREA to disclose sexual contact in jails. Reports filed between 2013 and 2016 by Harris County show 293 inmates complained that they were sexually abused by other inmates, and six complaints were substantiated. Another 70 inmates complained of being sexually abused by guards, with four of those complaints being upheld.

"The question those stats beg is, what are they doing to take care of all these people who are claiming severe injury by other inmates or guards?" Cornelio asked. "They're treating those complaints as unsubstantiated or just leaving them open instead of providing needs to people who consider themselves victims of something egregious."

Years later, the Houston man said he is still attempting to come to terms with the nightmarish episode.

"I was disrespected worse than any man should have to endure," he told the Chronicle. "The trauma from sexual assault does not go away ... My story needs to be told so that the culture of disrespect and abuse at all levels of HCSO can be cleansed."

He said he does not want an apology from the sheriff's office. The lawsuit asks for damages for his repeated distress and lost wages.

But the remedy he wants most of all is not possible.

"The only thing that could fix anything is if they somehow came up with a time machine that could go back in the past so we could relive that moment and that date," he said, "and instead of taking the time to take me to jail, take the time to understand what was happening to me."