City Pays $4M To Rikers Detainee After His Five Rape Claims Were Ignored

By Reuven Blau, The City

Nov. 18, 2025, 5:00 a.m.

Terrence told jail officials again and again that he’d been raped — five times, he said, over the course of multiple stints in city custody.

He filed reports, flagged officers and in two instances, pointed to video that seemed to back him up, including one in which a fellow male detainee is seen leaving the victim’s cell with what appears to be a wet spot on the front of his pants.

But each time, jail investigators brushed his claims aside, labeling them “unsubstantiated” or “unfounded.”

Now, New York City is paying the 32-year-old $4 million to settle three separate August 2020 lawsuits in Bronx Supreme Court.

The agreement, recorded in recently filed court papers, ends a case that accused the Department of Correction of not meeting the most basic duty of any jail system: to protect the people it detains.

“The Department of Correction failed Terrence,” his attorney, Josh Kelner, told THE CITY. “He relied on corrections officers to protect him from harm. He instead was repeatedly victimized, and no officer or assailant was ever held accountable. His tragic case is yet more evidence of the systemic breakdown at Rikers.”

The Correction Department referred questions to the city’s Law Department, which declined to comment.

The settlement comes as Laura Swain, chief district judge for the Manhattan federal court, is in the process of selecting a so-called remediation manager to take over large parts of the troubled jail system.

The payout also comes as the jails continue to be besieged by claims alleging violence between detainees, excessive use of force by officers, dangerous conditions of confinement and other forms of misery behind bars.

Those claims have risen in recent years, the most recent data available shows. In fiscal year 2023 alone, 4,559 claims were filed against the agency, marking a 38% jump from the previous fiscal year, and just shy of a pre-pandemic peak.

The legal payout in Terrence’s case was made public six years after the department touted how it had finally “achieved compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA).”

To comply with the 2003 federal law, the DOC implemented reforms to train staff on how to handle sexual abuse allegations, boosted ways for detainees to report such assaults and expanded teams to review reported abuses.

None of that mattered for Terrence, who asked that his last name be withheld due to the nature of the case.

Across three years and two jail complexes, DOC staff ignored clear warning signs, failed to preserve crucial surveillance footage and allowed unsafe conditions to persist, discovery obtained during the legal proceedings showed.

The first attack came in January 2019 at the Manhattan Detention Complex in Lower Manhattan, according to the lawsuit.

Terrence reported that another male inmate forced his way into his cell and raped him. Security footage showed another detainee entering the cell and closing the door. A correction officer walked by during the incident but did nothing, the video shows.

DOC investigators ruled the complaint was unsubstantiated.

The detainee walks out of the cell after a few minutes with what appears to be a visible wet stain on the front of his pants, the security video shows. He denied assaulting Terrence and said the two were talking about a book, according to an internal Correction Department record obtained via discovery.

Security cameras kept watch at Rikers Island, Dec. 8, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

In November 2019 at the Anna M. Kross Center (AMKC) on Rikers, Terrence said he was in the law library when another male detainee threatened to stab him if he didn’t comply with a sexual assault. Cameras captured the men walking to the recreation yard, where the sexual attack occurred, the lawsuit said. Investigators again found the allegation unsubstantiated, noting that “it is uncertain as to whether or not the engagement between the two (people in custody) was consensual.”

The remaining incidents all took place in 2022 at AMKC, the lawsuit alleged.

In March, Terrence reported that a detainee accessed his cell through a broken lock during the overnight shift and raped him. While the city saved portions of the unit’s surveillance footage, it failed to preserve the angles covering Terrence’s cell, according to documents obtained via the lawsuit. The officer assigned to the area resigned two weeks later. The case was deemed unsubstantiated.

A month later, Terrence told jail officials that he was sexually assaulted in a shower. Although he reported it the same day, DOC’s investigations division later claimed the relevant footage “expired” before it could be reviewed. And in June, investigators determined that yet another rape allegation was “unfounded” because video did not show a detainee entering his cell even though that detainee admitted he had. The accused attacker denied sexually assaulting Terrence, saying they had only smoked marijuana together, according to internal department records.

Kelner, who represented Terrence, believes he was particularly susceptible to assaults behind bars because he is gay and has some developmental disabilities.

He was in jail for multiple charges like harassment and assault, according to court records.

Records reveal that DOC is increasingly facing legal liabilities.

Of the 15 largest individual tort claims paid out by the city in Fiscal Year 2024, 13 involved civil-rights claims tied to the Department of Correction and the NYPD, according to a dashboard created by the city comptroller’s office.

The single biggest payout was $171.52 million for a DOC settlement stemming from the city’s failure to promptly release people who had posted bail.

In total, the NYPD led the city in tort-related settlements and judgments last fiscal year, with $309.56 million, followed by DOC at $252.87 million. The Department of Education, Department of Transportation and NYC Health + Hospitals rounded out the top five, with $128.07 million, $115.27 million and $45.77 million in payouts, respectively.

Claims payouts for DOC totaled $38 million last fiscal year, with a growing share resolved before formal litigation. Between 2019 and 2023, the comptroller’s office preemptively settled 69% of DOC-related claims through pre-litigation efforts. The agency is also facing a wave of class actions tied to wrongful prolonged detention, inadequate pandemic conditions and deaths in custody.

This press release was produced by The City. The views expressed here are the author’s own.