As a result of reporting the alleged rapes, Fowler was transferred from the county jail to a state prison. Her sentence was increased, as she was no longer eligible for the jail credits she had accumulated, the lawsuit says.
Fowler’s sentence would have expired in July 2017 if she hadn’t been transferred to the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville, the complaint states. Instead, Fowler remained incarcerated and “was compelled to remain pregnant in prison,” where she delivered the baby prematurely in December.
It’s unclear what, if any, family planning services the county offered to Fowler. Moore County Sheriff Mark Logan didn’t return messages left by The Daily Beast, and the jail’s administrator, Kay Solomon, declined to comment.
Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the state department of corrections said the agency, which only oversees state prisons, has “medical staff review all ob/gyn options with each pregnant inmate so that the woman can make the choice appropriate for her life.”
Fowler will remain in prison until her sentence expires in April. (Fowler pled guilty to aggravated statutory rape in February 2016 and was sentenced to three years of supervised probation, court papers show. It’s unclear how she violated her probation.)
She has post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of allegedly being raped and impregnated by Hopkins—and having to deliver a baby while incarcerated, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Nashville, is against both Moore County and Hopkins in his individual and official capacities.
Hopkins and Moore County violated Fowler’s civil rights, including her right “not to be subjected to sexual abuse and cruel and unusual punishment as guaranteed by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments,” the complaint alleges.
According to the suit, prison officials should have been aware of the risks of leaving a male corrections officer alone with a female inmate—especially on multiple occasions and in an area without surveillance cameras.
When most of the rapes took place, the lawsuit alleges, only one other corrections officer besides Hopkins was on duty. And on at least one occasion, Hopkins was allegedly the only guard on duty at the jail.
“This abuse has completely changed Jessica’s life and devastated her,” Raybin told The Daily Beast. He added that Fowler chose “the silver lining of having a child that she thought she would never have.”
“At the same time, the PTSD and continuing trauma she suffers from having gone through this is not something I’m sure she’ll ever get over,” Raybin said.
Fowler’s mother, Sharon, told The Daily Beast that her daughter is upset and struggling with being in prison, away from her newborn baby.
“This is her first child, and I hate the circumstance and that she had to go through it by herself,” Sharon Fowler said.
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