NYC NOW - Special investigation: He went by ‘Champagne’ on Rikers Island. Here’s what 24 women allege he did.

Episode Date: August 10, 2024

Related links:He was Officer 'Champagne' at Rikers. 24 women accused him of sexual assault in jailRikers guard charged with rape while off duty has a string of accusations from detaineesIllustration by Rhe Civitello

You're listening to a special episode of NYC Now. I'm Jinné Pierre. The jail at Rikers Island has a long, troubling history of violence and abuse. One New York City mayor after another, going all the way back to the 1970s, has declared the issue a top priority and promised change. And yet, to date, the jail's dangerous, desperate conditions persist. A new investigation from WNYC reveals how some female detainees, in particular, say they've been targeted by guards who are sworn to protect them.

Here's the story. Nine years ago, a woman named Jenny was convicted on a drunk driving charge and sentenced to 60 days at Rikers Island. When she got to the women's jail there, she says she was placed in a big dormitory-style housing unit with lots of other beds. And right away, the other women started to warn her. They were like, oh, you're one of the pretty ones. They're going to pick you and stuff like that.

At night, she says they told her. the guards would call out some of the women's names, take them to secluded parts of the jail, and force them to have sex. How many people would typically come in the night? Usually be two people, and they would pick you up like if they're going to take you to go to work. Reporter Jesse Edwards spoke with Jenny at length,

and we're only using Jenny's first name because she fears retaliation for speaking out. It definitely looked organized. It was something. that you can tell was already happening for a while. And then one night, she says, the guards called her name. I just cooperated with what I needed to do because I feel like when you don't cooperate, when you sort of don't have any control of the situation,

the more you fight back, the worse it can become for you. Jenny sued the city of New York last year. But she's just one of over seven years. 100 women who filed lawsuits claiming they were sexually assaulted by guards and other staff while they were held at Rikers. The lawsuits were all brought under this New York State law called the Adult Survivors Act. It opened this one-year window in the statute of limitations for sexual abuse survivors, who may have never reported what happened to them. The claims go back almost 50 years, right back to the 1970s, and the most recent claim was from last year in 2023. So we read through all of these 700 lawsuits.

A warning before we go any further. This episode contains profane language and detailed descriptions of sexual assault allegations. They are very difficult to hear. But because of the magnitude of the abuse that's being alleged in these cases, we've decided it's important to include them. So if you're not up for that or if you're listening with children, now would be a really good time to do something else. Jesse spent several months trying to get to the bottom of what exactly has been happening at Rikers.

And what she was most interested in was this pattern that she began to notice in a lot of these lawsuits against the city. Like Jenny, many of the women who've come forward didn't know the name of the staff member who they say attacked them. Most of those who did have a name only knew a last name. But some of those names were coming up over and over again. There are names like Brown that you might expect to come up many times, but then I noticed names like Cuffy. That name came up five times. Then there was a Reyes, seven times.

But there was one that I was noticing more than some of the others, and I noticed it because it was a curious name, C.O. Champagne or Correction Officer Champagne. And what struck me is that when I reached out to the city's Office of Payroll Administration, they had no record of any person called CEO Champagne having ever worked at the Department of Correction. Wow. So I started calling these women who had named CEO Champagne in their lawsuits.

How did you know him as CEO Champagne? You're kidding me? That name was so popular. Everybody knew him. Lizette Gonzalez met CEO Champagne back in the night. as she cycled in and out of Rikers Island. She was addicted to heroin at the time and was repeatedly picked up on drug charges. Was that the name on his badge?

Yeah, that was the name on his tag. Yeah, champagne. They won't call it C.O. Champagne. It will be champagne, just like that. She says that she first met Champagne in a hallway as she was walking to get food in the mess hall. He approached me and he was like, listen, you know, if you need anything, let me know. I said, well, I do need cigarettes.

And the fact that he spoke to me kindly, because I was so accustomed to being spoken to in such a degrading manner by the officers, that kind of made me feel a little, oh, okay, not everybody's the same. And I remember he didn't bring me a pack. He brought me one cigarette. And then one night, about half an hour

after lights out, she said she saw a flashlight. I saw the flashlight, you know, the brightness. Heard the heavy door of her cell open. And he walks in. It was champagne. He didn't say nothing to me. He just said, turn around. And he had sex green.

He was very aggressive. Turned me around forcibly. His whole character, everything changed. And the second time, the second time was he told me to give him a bulljop. That moment for me was like the moment that I hate. I just completely shut down because who's going to believe me? I'm a drug addict in jail, right because I'm going to believe me. And when I got out, I never told anybody.

I didn't even tell my husband. I never told anybody. Like, I was ashamed. I was embarrassed. How many women have complained about her? Lizette, there's been 23 lawsuits filed. Get out. Of him?

Mm-hmm. Of CEO champagne. No, no, no way. I'm Christopher Worth. I'm the investigative editor at WNYC. And in this weekend episode of NYC Now, how is it possible that nearly two dozen women say they were sexually assaulted by the same guard at Rikers Island.

And who is Officer Champaign, a jail guard that not even the Department of Correction has a record for? City officials either could not or would not provide the answers to these questions. So we found the answers ourselves. That's after the break. One thing to keep in mind as we're looking at this story is the 23 lawsuits that I looked at, The allegations span from between 1988 to 2004, and many of the allegations are from the 1990s. It was a peak period for drug arrests in New York City.

People were arrested, put in jail. The mayor is Rudy Giuliani. So that we reduce, in our society, the use of drugs as dramatically as we can. The war on drugs was unfolding in a very big way in the 1990s. That's right. But what you might not know is it was also a peak period of mass incarceration for women in New York City. Rikers Island at the time when I was there, it was almost like a beautiful beauty pageant. You would wonder where the hell did all of these pretty women come from.

Tasha Carter Beasley grew up in Harlem and first entered Rikers Island around this time on a drug charge. And at that time, it was a regular source. story that the officers were fucking inmates. When she landed on Rikers Island in 1996, New York State had actually just passed a law that made it legally impossible for people in jails or in prisons to consent to sexual contact with jail staff. That year, more than 13 and 1⁄2,000 women,

were admitted to city jails in pre-trial detention, and that was the highest number on record in New York City ever. That's a lot of people crammed into one place. Yeah, and many of those women were held at the Rose M Singer Center. It's more commonly known as Rosie's. It's the Women's Jail on Rikers Island. What were your first impressions of Rosie's, Tasha? My first impression, really, was I started to pray to God,

And I said, God, whatever you could do to stop my little sisters from coming in here, you could do it right now. Tasha was in her mid-20s at the time. She was in a pretty vulnerable situation. She was addicted to drugs. She was a young mother. She remembers that she was very shy. And she remembers encountering this man, Champagne. That was the name on his son.

tag. That's the name that I knew him by and everybody else knew him by. Tasha says that she started working with champagne in this little work group. He oversaw maintenance which she says

meant that he could select certain women to come and help him with like mopping or sweeping other cleaning tasks around the jail. So that's how he would come and pick me up. because I worked maintenance and also a suicide prevention aid.

This is how he went and apprehended a lot of his girls. Tasha says that champagne would compliment her, and she wasn't used to that. You look good, you smell good or whatever. And here he is. He smells like the best kind of cologne. His nails are clean. He was handsome.

Tasha remembers. He had this way of gliding around the jail. He was personable. You know, asking how you doing? Do you need anything? And then her and the other woman, she says, would be brought these little items of contraband, chewing gum, a little bit of fast food from the outside. It's almost like the kindness seduces you into feeling loved and comfortable. And look at me, I'm, I'm nobody. But then she says the sexual assault began.

The first encounter, I remember he came by to come and pick me and someone else up. But she went with another officer and I went with champagne. I remember it was hot as hell too because had brought me some iced tea. Where were you? In the slop sink, in the annex. It was the part of the jail that was off from General. population. Today, much of Rikers Island is under camera surveillance apart from a few areas. Suffice to say there were many fewer cameras in the 1990s. And Tasha says that Champagne,

as the maintenance officer, he had access to some of these isolated areas of the jail that were camera-free. In fact, she says he has. had keys to areas like the slop sink where detainees dumped mop water and the annex where she says there were much fewer detainees around. That part was very secluded and that's where happened at. He started to, you know, first put his body like up close to mines and he sat in a chair and I got down on my knees and started to suck his dick. I'm going to say just like like that. At the time, you're not thinking this shouldn't be happening, that I should not have his penis in my mouth and he should not have it in my mouth. But at the time, your mind cannot reason

that this is rape. This is sexual assault, Tasha. Tasha is one of the women who named C.O. Champagne in her lawsuit. She says she was sexually assaulted two or three times. by champagne. She can't remember exactly because it was a very long time ago. But she says that included forced oral sex and rape. You know, we sold ourselves

away for the littlest things. You know, chewing gum, candy. But one thing I could remember, though, I wanted it to be over. What similarities did you start to notice? as you spoke to more of these women who named Champagne? The similarities in the descriptions were stark,

even though the women didn't know each other while they were incarcerated. I tried to contact everyone who filed these lawsuits. Most of them declined to be interviewed, but those I spoke to, they described Officer Champagne as being charming or as being handsome. All of the women I spoke to said,

that he wore a name tag that said champagne. Others told me that they were assaulted by a slop sink, as Tasha described. And several women told me that he worked in maintenance. And that was echoed across many of the lawsuits that were filed by the women who did not want to be interviewed. So you start to get this portrait of who this guy is, but you don't know who he is. Yes, I still had no idea who this champagne could be. Until one night I was going through these claims yet again, and I came across several lawsuits filed by women who said they believed that champagne was a nickname.

And one of these women was Karen Klein's, who arrived at Rosie's in 1999. My charge at that time was possession of a controlled substance and power for near you, which lent me six-month sentence, and out of the six months I had to do four months. Karen says she also met Champagne when she started working in the jail to earn money. I was working for KK, which is the officer's kitchen. She would serve officers their meals. And that's where most of my abuse inside the prison came from. She said officer's champagne would come in to collect his meal.

He would come and offer her cigarettes in exchange for her meeting him in a specific area of the jail, which was secluded. It always was in a slop sink area. And is this the same slop sink where Tasha said that she was a somersen? It's hard to say. There are a number of rooms with slop sinks around the jail, as I understand. Karen described this particular slop sink room as being small, dark, dirty. It started with oral sex, the first incident, that progressed to intercourse, leaning on the sink and your rear intruded in the air. he has his back up against the door and he's doing what he do. And if your head is hitting the sink, oh well, just don't make no noise.

I felt like an animal in a corner. And I recall a couple of times looking at the sink and, you know, how the water drips so much until it got rusty. You were looking at this during the assault? I had to look at something. To keep my mind off of what was taking place. But when he finished, he would always go out first. And when he tapped the door, then it was your cue to come out. He always made sure the hallways was clear.

Karen cycled through Rosie's on and off over the next seven years. And she told me that Officer Champagne abused her again when she returned. What kind of things would he say when he saw you come back? Would he talk to you? Would he confront you? He said, I know you back, you miss me.

And he would say it in like a joking way. How would you describe the dynamic with champagne? How did you feel? Were you afraid? Were you? I was afraid. I felt guilty. I felt embarrassed.

I felt not worthy. to continue to live, it was like the feeling of him leaving something nasty on my skin. And it was like I could never scrub my skin enough to feel better. Did Karen or anyone else who you spoke with say that they ever reported what was going on there? Yes, Karen told me that she actually tried to report the abuse two to three times to people. in the mental health clinic. This is how my housing unit ended up getting changed because after speaking to the doctors

about what I was experiencing on Rikers-Allen, it ended me up in what they call the M-O building for the mentally NC. She says that she was put into this isolated mental observation unit. And then they started me on medication. She was given Prozac, she says, which is an antidepressant. And she was given Syracille, which is an antipsychotic drug.

So they labeled me as crazy. Did they investigate it? What happened? They said no more to me about it. And then I was under the influence of so much medication, like I just. suppressed it because I felt that was my reason for ending up out of general population now because I didn't open my mouth. No one cared. No one cared. What did the city's Department of Correction have to say about all this? It runs Rikers. I sent the Department of Correction

a long list of questions, including Karen's claims that she tried to report the alleged abuse several times and instead she was sent to a mental observation unit. They didn't address a single one of my questions. And I've heard that from some of the other women, that they reported the alleged abuse and nothing happened. But the difference with Karen's case is she says she overheard other officers referring to champagne by another name. And that name was fanned.

So I reached back out to the Office of Payroll Administration and they came back and told me they had two hits for offices with the name Fant who worked at the Department of Correction. One of them never worked at Rosie's, but the other one did work at Rosie's. His name is Keith Fant. And the dates that he worked there largely aligned with the dates of the allegations.

In fact, there was one addition. lawsuit that names Fant as opposed to Champagne. So that's 24 lawsuits in total that name either Fant or this officer champagne? Yes, 24 lawsuits. I filed a Freedom of Information request with the Department of Correction for his entire personnel records and all of his disciplinary records. And what I got back was almost 20 years of personnel. files. Okay, so this is a document from February 13th, 1991. My colleague, Samantha Max, and I

poured through more than 800 pages of documents. It is to the Ben Warden of Rosenzinger Center. And we could see certain things coming up, which appeared to corroborate at least some of the women's claims. For example, we could see that at least on one occasion, Keith Fant was disciplined for not wearing his proper nameplate. It says, correction officer Fant was ordered to write a written report by this writer, C attached to the fact of why he did not have a name plate. This is really interesting because women have told us that he wore a name badge with the name C.O. She'll champagne on it and it looks like the department was aware that sometimes he did not have a nameplate that said CEO Fent as he was required to. We could also see confirmation that Fant did work

maintenance as several women have said. This document is a written reprimand. It says that it was the responsibility of the above officer Keith Fant to keep this area sanitised by an inmate worker during his tour of duty. So we know that he was sometimes responsible for overseeing detainees cleaning the jail. We could also see that he worked in the recreation area. He took detainees to collect their medication. We don't know when he started doing these jobs, but we could see that he did them.

And those were roles that came up in the lawsuits. But perhaps what's even more interesting is we could see that he was investigated by the city's Department of Investigation, which handles more serious allegations of misconduct against officers. What were they investigating? We don't know. The Department of Investigation won't tell me what the nature of the investigation was. They say because it didn't substantiate the claims against Fandt.

What's he doing now? Well, I found him on social media, on Facebook. According to his personnel file, he retired in 2005. And as I started looking through his different Facebook photos, I could see that other former correction officers at Rikers Island were commenting and calling him champagne. So I shared the photos with some of the women who I've interviewed, including Karen Klein's. When we first got the image, I looked at the picture. I had to give Tasha the phone. Now, Karen and Tasha Carter Beasley were actually together when the photos of Keith Fant came through.

And this is because they actually met years later after they were both incarcerated. This was just 20, no, 18. 1890. Oh, so you met relatively recently. Yes. And they actually became a couple not knowing that both had what they say are these experiences with this guard that they each knew as Officer Champagne. When I seen the pictures, it looked like he didn't have a damn thing wrong with him. And meanwhile, I couldn't even be in a relationship with a man because I didn't know how to get me.

past that? How do you get past that? One of the images is a selfie. Fant is sitting in his car wearing this dark grey wool fedora and he's kind of staring into the camera and biting on his bottom lip.

He still holds his lip the same exact way biting on that bottom lip. How many of the women who filed lawsuits identified Fant through the photos that you shared?

The four women who I've spoken to directly identified Keith Fant and an additional eight women who didn't want to be interviewed identified Keith Fant as their alleged abuser. So half of the 24 women in total who filed these lawsuits.

Yes. And two women said they weren't sure when they saw the photos. And what happened when you tried to contact Fant yourself? Well, I had listed out a bunch of numbers that could have been Keith Fann. Some of them were disconnected, some of them I got a voicemail, and I left a message. And then a couple of hours later, my phone rang. And it was him. As an officer, when I worked there, I was very nice to

me. I never intimidated him. I never was meaning him. I talked. to them. They talked about their lives, their story. To be honest, but they all liked me. Coming up, Keith Fant admits he was the correction officer at Rikers, who everyone knew as champagne, but he denies the allegations against him. I have no clue why where who, after all this time, wants to say that I sexually assaulted him? No, that did not happen at all. And we hear from a woman who says she was sexually assaulted at Rikers in 2020 by a Different guard, one who's still employed by the city.

I was scared to go to sleep. I was scared to even be in that jail, knowing the power of authority that he had. We'll be right back. I wasn't sure if Keith Fant would talk to me. 24 women either name him or his nickname, Champagne, and allegations that they were sexually assaulted by a guard at Rikers Island. But Fant and I ended up spending almost an hour and a half. on the phone together.

He said he was shocked by what I told him. 24? This is crazy. And he said it was the first time he'd heard of these allegations, even though the city has been aware of these lawsuits for months. I mean, I'm like lost of words right now, but that's just not true. And it's 24 people to say that I sexually assaulted them.

I mean, when and where did I do all this? You didn't have any consensual relationships? No, no, no. No. Now, of course, you know, as a male officer, they hit on you. They say stuff. You know, but I never crossed that line, ever. There was no secluded area to even do.

Well, I wasn't in the secluded area like that to do anything. Now, my parents was not coming down at all. Some people say that you brought them like food or chewing gum or cigarettes. Is that something that you did sometimes? I never did. No, I never did that. Never, ever. I never bought cigarettes, no food, nothing.

Now, maybe if I was eating something that I brought for myself and an M.A. was working or whatever, and I didn't start doing, I said, hey, you want to finish this? Maybe that might have happened. But for me to just bring stuff for them, no, I've never done that. I want to ask you about this, the nickname, CEO Champagne. How did that come about? Like I said, I kind of, I had a report with most of the inmates that I worked with. They said that my personality was, it's really kind of funny.

They said my personality was so bubbly. And they just started calling me Officer Champagne. You know, okay, I'm a bubbly kind of guy. It's called me champagne. Is that something that your colleagues? would call you as well. Yeah, actually, it caught on. Even offices were calling me that.

Captains was calling me that. So it's just like a name that just stuck. Some of the women say that that was the name that you wore on your badge. Is that right? Yeah, wow. They really, yeah. Somebody gave me, an officer gave me a pen

that had champagne on it. I wore it one time. I didn't wear it all the time. I just wore it. just for fun. I mean, I might have wore it once, maybe twice. I didn't wear it, you know, all the time, because I really wasn't even allowed to wear it like that.

Why do you think that your name and your nickname would come up so many times? Ma'am, I really don't understand. Like I said, I'm perplexed about this, why my name came up so many times. I mean, and I get it. It doesn't look good. you know, unless they were mad that I didn't do what they wanted me to do. And now they found an opportunity to put this on me.

And I know that's a lot of people, and I know it raises eyebrows, but I have not touched anybody inside Rosie. Either they was offered something that they said, well, let me just use his name. Maybe they're trying to get some money. That's the only thing I can think of, to be honest with you. I put all of this to Tasha and Karen. We don't even care about money.

This is not about a payday. This is about our healing. This is about our being able to speak our truth effectively. He couldn't pay me enough. He could not pay me enough from what I know today to stay shut about what was being done wrong. There's not enough money. And you cannot get back the integrity that was. stooking from, that was vamp from you. You can't give me enough money. Officer Funt says that he wore

the nameplate with the name Fant on it, the majority of the time, and that a fellow officer made him a nameplate that said C.O. Champagne, but he rarely used it. How would we know champagne unless you were going on? And what officer goes around calling themselves a name that they're not? You wanted to be known by that name. You wanted to be known by that. You wanted to be known by that. name and it was a fettitious name. The whole time I thought it was your name, bro, because you had a tag. A tag that you wore often. Just to be clear, these aren't lawsuits against Fant or any specific correction officers. This is the city of New York. This is the Department of Correction that's being sued here. Yes, and Karen says the department has a lot of responsibility to bear for what she says

happened to her. They knew what he was doing because it was told to them. It was told to them. And those officers that covered for him because they were all cool and because they had each other's backs like

jackets, we were the prisoners. So we didn't have no say. All of the lawsuits say that the Department of Correction failed to protect the woman in its custody. They say the Department allowed a culture of sexual misconduct

that made it possible for the same staff members to assault multiple women over a period of years. But, you know, Fant retired almost 20 years ago. I wanted to know what women say about the culture there now. And women who've been held at Rikers Island, much more recently, told me that it's still like that. It was a fucking nightmare

being in, on Vicaries. Immediately I knew that that place was dangerous. And I was very in fear of if I was going to make it out alive to get back to my son. Karina Collado

was detained at Rosie's in 2020 on a felony drug charge and assault charges. And like many of the other women I spoke to, she says that she picked up a job within the jail. I was doing a little bit of cleaning and maintenance.

As long as I've been on the island, I was always doing my best to utilize my time productively. Karina says she met this one officer. She says his name is Anthony Martin Jr., who had the power to handpick different women for certain work assignments. Very similar to what I've heard from other women who were detained 10, 20 years prior to Karina.

and who named Champagne. He used to pick out whatever females he wanted for the morning and a different group of females for the afternoon. The assignment she says that she was chosen to work on was going to a storage room in the jail but away from their typical housing unit. What he had us doing was cleaning the entire room, like reorganizing, and there's no cameras in there.

and he gave us a lot of brand new things that was considered contraband, like a certain kind of comb or a certain kind of hairbrush or hair products or hair accessories, candy or whatever. I was even smoking a cigarette there. And then one day, she said she was in a part of the storage area by herself. And not all of the lights worked. So the room that I was in, I was getting the light from. outside, you know?

So I had the door wide open, and as I was stacking up the boxes and stuff, he came in the room, and when I turned around, he scared the shit out of me. And he said something, like, you ready to play?

The way he was saying it, my heart jumped. And I was like, I'm not playing with you, what are you talking about? And then he put his hand over my mouth. And then he forced his hand down into my hands. And he started fingering me.

I'm so sorry. I was not giving a second. Yeah, no, take your time. Jessica, I was so scared. I was so scared. I was trying to get out. That's when he started applying, like, more force and pressure on me. I was crying and he was laughing.

He was laughing and smiling and threatening me at the same time. Telling me, you shut the fuck off, don't fucking scream. You fucking scream is going to be worse for you. If you scream, it's going to be worse for you. She says Martin Jr. then took his penis out of his pants and began to perform oral sex on her. And that's when I finally kicked him off of me. And he said, oh, I'm not done.

I said, no, this shit is done. And then that was that. He threatened me saying that if I were to open my mouth, he was going to put me into solitary confinement. He was going to change the events of what actually took place. And he was going to say that I came on to him. And he even said that he would have inmates coming for me. I was scared to go to sleep.

I was scared to even shower. I was scared to even be in that jail, knowing the power of authority that he had. How many women have made allegations against this one officer, Martin Jr.? So Carina is suing, but there's also another claim filed against the city from a woman who names an officer Martin from 2019,

and her claims are very similar to Carinas. So this woman says she was sexually assaulted in an area containing boxes with records and paperwork, similar to Carina, with the officer forcing his fingers into her vagina. I sent this woman a photo of Anthony Martin Jr. And she positively ID'd him as the guard she says sexually assaulted her. The correction department confirmed to her. to me that he was the only guard with the last name Martin, who was working at Rosie's during

the time of both of these allegations. And then, what's almost unbelievable is that in April of this year, Anthony Martin Jr. was arrested on a charge that he had raped a woman in Queens while off duty. And of course, this news comes after the woman. detained on Rikers and after they filed their lawsuits. And were you able to see the details in those criminal charges? Yes, we went to court, we pulled the complaint, and it says he was in a room with this woman when he allegedly pulled down her pants, forcibly inserted a finger into her vagina,

and then raped her while she alleges that she told him to stop. strikingly similar to the claims that Karina makes and the other woman with the claims from 2019. I spoke to Martin Jr. on the phone very, very briefly. He said the claims against him sound like, quote, a bunch of BS. What about Karina? Did she report what she says happened to her? Karina says she was too scared to report it

while she was on Rikers Island. but when she got moved to an upstate prison, she did report her allegations in 2021. And we know that because I've seen a copy of the report that she filed. And what happens in a case like that where you have someone reporting something in a different facility from the one that they said that they were assaulted in? Yeah, well, under a state and federal policy,

the upstate prison would be required to notify the Department of Correction. And did that happen? The upstate prison confirmed that it did send Carina's report to Rikers Island. It told me the date that it sent it. It told me the warden that it was addressed to. It even told me the time of day 1019 in the morning. But the Department of Correction told me it had no record of it. So it's like Karina files this report and it just disappears into thin air.

Yeah, she never heard anything else about it. And she said she ended up feeling like no one wanted to do anything. And is Martin Jr. still at Rikers? He was suspended after his arrest, but he is still a correction department employee. But I've also identified at least five other officers who are named in these sexual assault lawsuits, who are still working for the Department of Correction. That's according to city payroll records. Jesse, I'm just thinking about the magnitude of what you've been describing.

And it's pretty astonishing. 700 women who've sued saying they were sexually assaulted by staff at Rikers over decades. Some of them named the same guards. Some of those guards are still working at Rikers. What are officials doing to investigate all of this? What surprised me is when I... I spoke with Fant and Martin Jr. Both of them told me that I was the first person telling them about these really serious allegations against them.

Neither had heard about them before, they said. What's clear to me from my reporting is that city officials have been very reluctant to look into them. I reached out to the Department of Correction. The agency wouldn't make anyone available for an interview. and didn't answer my list of questions. Abuse in jails period is not something that's new. Now, a couple of months ago, the mayor, Eric Adams, he did promise an investigation.

But when you see it, you must address it and face it. This is when we first reported on the more than 700 women who had filed claims of sexual assault on Rikers Island. I believe that we need to have. a complete investigation to determine the outcome of it. But when I reached out to City Hall, the mayor's office said that the city's law department is looking into the cases. But the law department would be looking into lawsuits against the city anyway.

That's right. And the law department is the agency that will be helping to defend the city against the claims. Right. It is very difficult to see how that amounts to the kind of. complete investigation that the mayor said what happened. What about the Bronx District Attorney's Office? It has jurisdiction over Rikers. What is it had to say? The office did set up an email address for women who alleged they were sexually assaulted on Rikers Island to email them with their claims.

This was after we started our reporting on all of these lawsuits against the city. But over the past three months, the Bronx District Attorney's Office told me it hasn't received a single email to that address. Wow. So I went back to them and I repeatedly asked over several weeks if the office would be willing to proactively investigate these claims. It finally got back to me in July and said it would start reviewing the lawsuits for leads and for evidence to see if a criminal investigation should be opened.

Now, a number of women that I've spoken to say they don't have faith that there is going to be an investigation. And that's because they say they reported these claims years and years ago and nothing happened then. But several of them have told me that it is what they want. Something has to be done. And that's that something has to be done. Lisa didn't want to use her real name, so we're just using her nickname.

She says she was also raped by Officer Champagne while she was on Rikers Island. She also identified him as Keith Fant through photos. Although when I spoke to Fant, he denied he ever raped anyone. But in Lisa's case, she says he got her pregnant. I didn't go in pregnant. And you have a pregnancy test when you go into jail, don't you? Oh, yeah. And I had a miscarriage.

I went to the bathroom and a gush of blood came out in the toilet and you could feel that was a baby or beginning of a baby. Lisa says the staff rushed her to a hospital in Queens, and they performed a procedure to remove the excess tissue that was still inside her uterus. And they just sent me back to the jail. I never told anyone, though. I never even told him. I didn't dare tell him. Why didn't you tell him? I was afraid you had to do. whatever the officer said. And along with that comes a lot of emotional, physical, like pain that I'm still not over. And that's been so many, so many years ago.

And I'm just speaking about it. I look back and I think about it makes me angry now. I'm very angry now. What would you like to see happen? He needs to be held accountable. He needs to know that he was wrong. He wouldn't want someone to do that to his daughter. I know I'm not the only one.

I thank God he's not in the system anymore to do it to any other women. But how many are there behind him? That's the question. Jesse, thank you so much for walking us through all of your reporting on this. I'm honored to do this work. This episode of NYC Now was reported by Jesse Edwards and edited by me, Christopher Worth. For more on this story, you can read our in-depth investigation into the allegations against Officer Champagne and so many other women's claims at Gothamist.com. Our executive producer is Ave Cario.

Our producer is Jared Marcell. He and Samantha Max contributed reporting. Our team also includes Sean Bauditsch, Stephanie Clary, and Audrey Cooper. Our legal counsel is Lauren Cooperman. Our technical director is Wayne Schulmeister. He and Leora Nome Kravitz mixed this piece. Our music was written by Jared Paul with additional music by Owen Kaplan. Special thanks to Ann Givens.

This is NYC Now. We'll be back on Monday with your news headlines.