Alabama Inmate Raped, Tortured to Death Days Before Release Was Set Up to Be ‘Prey’: Advocate .

 Alabama Inmate Raped, Tortured to Death Days Before Release Was Set Up to Be ‘Prey’: Advocate

Daniel Williams, a 22-year-old father of two young children, was supposed to come home to his family from an Alabama prison after completing a one-year sentence for theft on Nov. 7.

Instead, his loved ones made a painful decision that day to take him off life support. Two weeks prior, Williams' family says, he was beaten and violently raped in an attack led by another inmate at Staton Prison in Elmore County.

What allegedly happened to Williams is emblematic of a broken system that often leaves young male inmates in Alabama set up to be "prey" for rampant sexual violence, a prison reform advocate familiar with the case tells The Messenger.

Carla Crowder, the executive director of the justice-focused nonprofit Alabama Appleseed, believes Williams' brutal death was the result of long-standing "incompetence, understaffing, and the extreme lack of control in the dorms and in some of the cell blocks in Alabama prisons."

In late October, Williams was found unresponsive on the bed of an inmate who'd been involved in nine instances of sex assault, including gang rape, and stabbing since 2017, Crowder recently told the Alabama Prison Oversight Committee.

She believes that inmate is behind Williams being kidnapped inside the prison, sexually assaulted for days and left to die.

Prison officials initially told Williams' family his death was the result of a drug overdose.

But his stepmother, Taylor Bostic, told the Alabama Political Reporter that when she and his father, Terry, went to see him, Williams was "beaten and bruised up."

"You can tell where his hands were bound," she also said. "I mean, you can tell it’s obviously not a drug overdose."

Williams’ fiancé said nurses at the hospital told her he'd been "beaten really badly" and "had bruises all down his arm" as well as "cuts up and down and bruises on his legs," according to WVTM.

When Terry Bostic asked why he was told his son overdosed when it seemed obvious that Williams had been attacked, Staton Prison's warden Joseph Headley told the family that the incident was under investigation, according to the Alabama Political Reporter.

Daniel Williams was found unconscious in the bed of an inmate with a long history of sexual assault accusations.GoFundMe

Andrew Menefee, an attorney for Williams' family, said it's unclear whether investigation is ongoing or if it's moved forward at all.

The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) has not given Menefee an update, he said.

The agency did not respond to The Messenger's request for comment.

An autopsy for Williams is still pending.

“We can't bring back Daniel but we hope that Daniel's parents will have their day in court and be able to ensure that a jury finds the correctional officers, the wardens and the state correctional facility responsible for failing to protect Daniel and failing to provide him the protection that he is owed under the Constitution," Menefee told The Messenger.

In testimony before the Alabama Prison Oversight Committee last month, Crowder cited Williams' case as an example of the lack of action taken to prevent violence against inmates.

There is no record of Williams' suspected rapist and torturer ever being placed in segregation following any of the nine previous incidents of violence, Crowder said.

"There was no disciplinary action by ADOC," she told legislators.

There's very little investigation, transparency or data collection when it comes to these cases, she told The Messenger.

“The staffing is so low and the people who still work in the prisons are so just worn out, overworked, overwhelmed that if it takes the extra step of reporting something and doing paperwork, it's easier just to sit in your cubicle,” Crowder explained.

By neglecting the problem, "you're setting these young men up to be prey,” she said of the ADOC.

Decay within the Alabama prison system sparked a 2019 investigation and eventual lawsuit, which will proceed this fall, by the Department of Justice.

“Sexual abuse in Alabama’s prisons is severe and widespread, and is too often undetected or prevented by ADOC staff," the DOJ stated in a summary of its investigation.

"In reviewing hundreds of reports, we did not identify a single incident in which a correctional officer or other staff member observed or intervened to stop a sexual assault."

These types of attacks occur in “dormitories, cells, recreation areas, the infirmary, bathrooms and showers at all hours of the day and night,” the report continued.

The result is a “flagrant disregard” for prisoners' right to be free from excessive and cruel punishment, according to the damning report.

Following Williams' death, the inmate accused in the fatal assault was moved to a higher security facility that also houses Alabama's death row inmates, according to the Department of Corrections website.

But instead of being put in the most restrictive custody, away from other inmates at Holman Correctional Facility, the inmate continues to be held in “medium" custody, which is for prisoners who have demonstrated “less severe behavioral problems" and can work and live in group settings, according to the prison site.

Since Williams' case went public, Menefee says he's heard from other families who described similar ongoing sexual violence against their incarcerated loved ones.

"The reporting that we have seen from official legislatively mandated reports suggest that there's very little investigation," he said of how Alabama prison officials handle the rampant attacks.

"They're not taking it seriously."