A sheriff in a small town in Oklahoma has been charged with using female inmates as sex slaves, court records showed.
The allegations against Sheriff Michael Burgess, who resigned after 35 charges of rape, bribery, kidnapping and subordination of perjury were filed on Wednesday, show a disturbing pattern of using his badge to force vulnerable women to do his bidding.
The married 55-year-old grandfather is accused of forcing inmates and convicts to have sex with him in his office, his cruiser, their homes, hotels and even the house of a friend who was away on vacation.
Burgess, who had been in charge of the Custer County sheriff department since 1994, is also accused of repeatedly sexually harassing a female deputy over the course of three years, including putting his hand inside her trousers when she was being fitted for her first uniform.
One woman said the abuse began when she was being transported to jail and continued upon her release, when Burgess would knock on the door of the hotel where she was staying to announce a “booty call.” During one of these encounters, he allegedly handcuffed her and sexually assaulted her with a flashlight.
Another said she had her jail sentence cut by six months in exchange for performing sexual favors in his office. A third woman was forced to have sex with him two or three times a week for more than a year in order to stay in a drug treatment program that would keep her out of jail, prosecutors allege.
During this time, Burgess forced her to break up with her boyfriend and coached her to make up lies of abuse in order to get a restraining order against him. When the woman failed a drug test in May of last year, she told officials that she “had been having sex with Sheriff Burgess and that he had promised her that he would protect her and keep her from going back to jail.”
Burgess is accused of calling the woman’s cousin that evening, who was also in drug treatment, and asking her to break into the woman’s house and steal any DNA evidence that could prove that they had been having sex. He allegedly promised to get her brother out of prison if she succeeded.
A special prosecutor was called in to investigate the woman’s accusations and a dozen inmates filed a civil suit last year.
The details of the criminal complaint filed on Wednesday nonetheless shocked the small department, said undersheriff Kenneth Tidwell.
“He was always very good to us as an employer and we were all friends,” Tidwell said.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS