Lambda Legal Responds After DOJ Rejects Texas Governor’s Assurance of PREA Compliance

(New York, NY – May 22, 2015) According to news reports, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has rejected Texas’s assurance that it will work to comply with the Prison Rape Elimination Act standards. The rejection is based on the absence of a form that Texas was supposed to submit promising that the state would dedicate at least five percent of federal grant money toward implementation of the PREA standards.  Instead Governor Abbott wrote that Texas will work to fully implement PREA “wherever feasible” – a guarantee DOJ deemed insufficient.

Following this report, Lambda Legal Staff Attorney and Criminal Justice and Police Misconduct Strategist, Jael Humphrey, issued the following statement:

“We are profoundly disappointed that Governor Abbott has neglected to make a meaningful commitment to meet the PREA standards set by the DOJ, and we applaud the Justice Department for demanding real commitment from Texas to use grant funds to actually enforce these standards. Governor Abbott cannot coast by paying lip service to PREA, while Passion Star and other incarcerated people remain at risk of continued sexual violence. Lambda Legal will continue to press Governor Abbott to take the necessary steps to end prison rape in his written statements and to turn his words into action.”

Lambda Legal client Passion Star, who has suffered rape and sexual abuse while in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, continues to demand that Governor Abbott implement and enforce PREA. “The rules of human decency should demand that Governor Abbott act as if this was happening to someone close to him, someone that he cared about,” Ms. Star stated. “How would you feel if there was someone in your family going through what I’m going through? No one should be raped, no one should be cut, no one should have to live with the constant threat of harm. I don’t want to have sex to be safe. I shouldn’t have to.”