opinion

AG's Office: Raped teacher should have known better

The Arizona Attorney General's Office is asking for dismissal of a lawsuit filed by a teacher who was brutally assaulted and raped after being left in an unguarded prison classroom with a convicted sex offender.

The AG's reasoning is essentially this: the woman knew she was in a prison, so what did she expect?

No, seriously. That's the reasoning.

"Plaintiff is an ADOC (Arizona Department of Corrections) employee who routinely worked at the prison complex," Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Weisbard wrote in his motion to dismiss. "By being placed in a classroom at the complex, the officers were not placing Plaintiff in any type of situation that she would not normally face. The risk of harm, including assault, always existed at a prison like Eyman."

Weisbard made his pitch on Monday to U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton, who is pondering the matter.

Hopefully, she's pondering a nice strongly-worded response to AAG Weisbard.

The woman, who works for DOC as a teacher, was scheduled to give a GED exam to seven sex offenders housed at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Eyman on Jan. 20, 2014.

Normally, such tests are given in the visitation room, which is monitored by security cameras and corrections officers. But on that day, because of a special event, she was sent to an unmonitored classroom, handed a radio and told to use it if there was any trouble, her lawsuit says.

The test lasted 90 minutes during which not a single corrections officer checked on her or radioed to ask if everything was OK. As they finished, six inmates left, returning unescorted to their dorm. One, Jacob Harvey, lingered.

According to the lawsuit, the 20-year-old inmate grabbed her from behind and took her to the ground as she struggled. He then stabbed her repeatedly in the head with a pen, choked her, slammed her head into the floor, tore away her clothes and raped her, the lawsuit says.

The teacher told investigators she screamed for help, but no one came. After the attack, Harvey tried to use her radio to call for help but it was tuned to a channel the guards didn't even use. Eventually, Harvey allowed her to phone for help.

"As a result of the brutal rape and assault, (the woman) suffered physical injuries, great fear for her life and well-being and severe and traumatic emotional distress with which she continues to struggle to this day," her attorney, Scott Zwillinger, wrote.

She sued, questioning why a civilian employee with no means of defense would be left to fend for herself in a room full of sex offenders.

And why she would be left alone with an inmate who less than a year before had been sentenced to nearly 30 years after a daytime home invasion in which he beat and raped a Glendale woman in front of her toddler.

And why such an inmate would be classified as medium security and thus in her classroom.

Weisbard, in his motion to dismiss, wrote that the teacher can't prove that corrections officials knew she was being put into a dangerous situation.

"Plaintiff wants to create an artificial impression that the ADOC officers knew she was in danger but she did not know," he wrote. "It makes no sense. Of course, if Plaintiff did appreciate the danger of her situation, as an employee, she could have done something about it."

Translation: it's her own darn fault.

Certainly, not the fault of trained corrections officials who downgraded this guy's status then left him in an unguarded room with a civilian teacher armed only with a radio tuned to the wrong channel.

Sure, it was all her fault.