The attacks occurred years earlier when Bennie Thorpe worked at a state women’s prison, his accusers said. Now he runs a prison where an inmate was fatally beaten by guards.
After guards at the Marcy Correctional Facility in central New York beat a handcuffed prisoner to death late last year, Gov. Kathy Hochul promised immediate reforms to turn the troubled prison around.
One of her first directives was to install a new leader, Bennie Thorpe, who had recently run another correctional facility and had experience with security operations and rehabilitation programs. Mr. Thorpe, she said, had “expertise and a fresh perspective on what must be done.”
He also had a record of being accused of rape and sexual assault by inmates at one of his former workplaces, records and interviews show.
In lawsuits filed in 2023, two women who had been incarcerated at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County accused Mr. Thorpe of sexual abuse when he was a captain there.
One said he summoned her to an office, groped her breasts and raped her in December 2018.
Another said he raped her three times in the spring of 2019 in a room near the prison’s medical unit.
Neither of the allegations has been previously reported. Both lawsuits are still pending in the New York State Court of Claims.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
