Editor's note: This story includes a description of alleged sexual assault. It was Smith's 12th day in the van. She wore the same dirty clothes she'd put on almost two weeks earlier at a rehab facility in California, where she was arrested on a probation warrant out of Massachusetts. She sat hunched in a compartment near the front of the van, called the birdcage, inches away from a handful of other detainees, all men, who she says made lewd comments and tried to stick their fingers through the grate to touch her. Men urinated in bottles between the infrequent bathroom stops. It didn’t seem like things could get worse. Then, at a stop in southern New Jersey, 350 miles from her home in Massachusetts, one of the guards pulled Smith aside, out of view of the rest of the detainees and the other guard. She was handcuffed at the waist, shackled at the feet, when she says he slipped his hand under her waistband. "It was just probably the most demeaning, degrading thing that's ever [been] done to me like that, in a situation where I really can't do anything about it," Smith says. "And so at that point I was just mentally beaten."

"[A]t that point I was just mentally beaten."

Smith is her last name; WBUR doesn’t fully identify victims of sexual assault without their consent. The guard is now facing criminal sexual assault charges in New Jersey. Smith has also filed a federal lawsuit against the guard and his employer, Nashville-based Prisoner Transport Services of America, or PTS, seeking unspecified damages. Smith was arrested and brought back to Massachusetts after violating her probation and traveling to southern California, where she says she went for drug treatment. State employees don't typically move probation violators across the country. Instead, Massachusetts, like many other states, contracts that job to private prison transport companies like PTS. The Massachusetts Probation Service has tapped PTS to move more than 460 adults since 2015. PTS and its subsidiaries collected more than $1.3 million in the last 10 years from Massachusetts, mostly from the probation and parole departments. PTS says it will move 26,000 detainees more than 6 million miles this year. "We go the extra mile to ensure staff and detainee safety every step of the way," the company says on its website. Concerns Raised About PTS Before The harrowing journey Smith described is not unique. A report from the New York Times and the Marshall Project in July 2016 — several months after PTS had custody of Smith — detailed deaths on the vans, and sexual assault, abuse and neglect committed by PTS guards. At least five people have died on PTS extradition vans since 2012, the Marshall Project reports. Reports like those led Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and two of her congressional colleagues to demand answers from PTS. In a February 2019 letter to PTS’ president, the members of Congress requested information about how the company keeps detainees safe, as federally required. They also asked how many detainees in PTS custody have died, or been injured or sexually abused. In February, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and two of her congressional colleagues wrote a letter to PTS’ president, requesting information about how the company keeps detainees safe, as federally required. (John Locher/AP) In response, PTS’ president, Joel Brasfield, didn’t say how many people have been hurt or abused in the company’s care. Instead he wrote that "[t]ransporting prisoners is an inherently difficult business" and detailed how PTS has “taken a leadership role in attempting to improve the industry standards of prisoner transportation.” He listed several “best practices” PTS encourages governments to include in contracts. Some of those best practices could have benefited Smith — like at least three working video cameras, heating and air conditioning, and more segregated detainee seating. It's not clear that Massachusetts has required any of those best practices in its transportation bids. In its request for bids last year, probation only specified that detainee transport companies must comply with federal laws, be available 24/7, and “accommodate special needs offenders” who have medical, physical or psychological needs. Brasfield and PTS didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment from WBUR. Massachusetts officials with both the probation department and the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security — which oversees the parole department — declined to comment on the use of PTS, citing Smith’s civil lawsuit, even though no state agencies or officials are named in it. And the civil attorney representing both PTS and the guard refused to answer questions when approached by a WBUR reporter at a hearing for the guard’s criminal case in New Jersey last month. (Because PTS did not reply to WBUR, it's unclear if the guard is still with the company.) The Alleged Assault Smith shouldn’t have been in Los Angeles in the first place. She was on probation, after serving time in Massachusetts on charges that she took a police officer’s gun from his closet at home. She ultimately pleaded guilty to theft of and illegal possession of a firearm, and was sentenced to 18 months in jail and three years probation. Since leaving jail in 2014, Smith says she's struggled with an opioid addiction. And flipping through the channels one night in 2015, she came across an ad. "I was actually watching TV one night and a commercial came on and it was one of those, 'Do you or a loved one need help with substance use?' or something like that, and so I called the phone number and literally I was on a plane the next day," Smith says. She spent six weeks there, sober for the first time in a while. She says she talked regularly with her probation officer back in Massachusetts, telling her where she was and asking about transferring her probation out to California. She says the probation officer seemed happy she was doing well. (The department declined to comment.) Everything seemed fine — until U.S. Marshals showed up in December. They arrested her on a warrant for failing to appear for a probation violation hearing.

"He put me into this van. And there were just these people in the backseat — men — and they're like ... 'Get ready for the trip from hell.' " Smith