WASHINGTON -- Women convicts in American prisons and jails routinely endure rape and other sexual abuse by male guards and are denied proper medical care, according to an Amnesty International USA report released Thursday.
William Schulz, executive director of the human rights organization, said the report "found that sexual abuse is virtually a fact of life for incarcerated women in the United States."
Besides raping female convicts, male guards often touch prisoner's breasts and genitals during daily patdowns and strip searches, watch women as they shower and dress and, in rare cases, sell women to male prisoners for sex, the report said.
"Sexual abuse of women inmates is torture, plain and simple," Schulz said.
Todd Craig, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Prisons, said the agency would take the Amnesty report into consideration, but that because it was based on anecdotal evidence, it was difficult to evaluate its validity.
The report said maltreatment has become critical because of the explosive growth in the number of women prisoners, which more than tripled between 1985 and 1997, from 39,000 to 138,000.
The Amnesty report said the steep rise was the result of the nation's war on drugs, which ushered in stiff penalties for drug possession.
But as the number of women convicts increased, the nation's prisons and jails did not keep up in building proper facilities or in hiring women guards.
The report also described serious problems in the medical care provided to women prisoners, citing examples of women's legs being shackled to bedposts during birth.
