Jail inmate files rape charges

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- A man accused of chopping up a friend and putting the body parts in his grandmother's freezer last year is now charged with two-dozen counts of sexual assault against a fellow jail prisoner.In response to the charges, the Department of Corrections says rapes in its institutions are rare, but inmates say the threat of sexual attack is always present and Corrections' claim is a fantasy."It's kind of like a host and a parasite," said Johnny Johnson, an inmate not involved in the case. The weak, those most likely to be attacked, pair up with the more aggressive, exchanging sex for protection. Others who aren't lucky enough to have protection are preyed upon, he said.Elmer Seetot, 22, was arraigned this week on 28 charges, including 23 counts of rape.According to the charging document, the assaults occurred over five consecutive days in November and December. Seetot and Berry Jack, who says he was the victim, shared a cell in the Anchorage jail.Jack, a 47-year-old Valdez man in jail on theft and forgery charges, said he feared for his life over the days the attacks occurred. He did not tell prison guards what was happening to him every night because Seetot promised to kill him."I was terrified," he said Thursday in an interview at the jail.He described his attacker as roughly his same height but "buffed out."Jack, a soft-spoken man whose hands shake from his bipolar medicine, said he felt safe enough to report what happened only when he moved to another section of the prison where he knew a correctional officer and trusted him.Jack was checked for sexually transmitted diseases and Standing Together Against Rape offered counseling, he said.Department of Corrections Commissioner Joe Schmidt said everything was done properly the nights the attacks reportedly occurred, including regular half-hour checks of all the inmates in their cells.But Jack questions why he, a nonviolent thief, was put in a cell with a man charged with hacking up a body.Prisoners at the Anchorage jail complex are generally awaiting trial, and an in-depth evaluation of their potential for misbehavior is not done until after conviction, according to Schmidt. About 38,000 people are processed through Alaska penal institutions every year and the department just doesn't have the money or staff to thoroughly examine the past behavior of every person who shows up charged with a crime.Instead, prisoners are classified according to how they actually behave in custody. Murderers can be docile in jail and traffic violators can be aggressive.Cindy Struckman-Johnson, a psychology professor at the University of South Dakota, has extensively researched prison rape. Classifying prisoners as soon as they enter the system, with a focus on identifying those who may be vulnerable, is one way of combating the problem, she said.Nationally, sexual coercion runs as high as 20 percent in some prisons, she said. Prison culture and violent inmates using sex to act out or retaliate are among the contributing factors. And there are men who do it just for the sexual pleasure, she said.Only about 30 percent of male prison victims report the assaults, she said.Corrections officials say only 72 Alaska inmates were disciplined or arrested for a sex charge involving another prisoner or staff member between 2004 and 2007.These statistics apply to about 3,300 inmates locked up in Alaska but don't include the 1,000 housed in an Arizona private prison on state contract. And it includes those caught engaging in consensual sex, said Alaska corrections spokesman Richard Schmitz. Only two were convicted of a sex crime, Schmitz said.Johnson, convicted of three counts of attempted murder and awaiting sentencing at the jail, said in a phone interview that it's the smaller male inmates who get preyed upon.(mholland(at)adn.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)