The suspect says the man making the accusation was trying to avoid deportation. The Sauk County Jail assists other law enforcement agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as I.C.E., by holding inmates.
By Annie Pulley, THE BADGER PROJECT
An inmate in the Sauk County Jail accused his cellmate of raping him in June.
The district attorney has since charged Cory Nelson, the 37-year-old accused, with third-degree sexual assault, a felony that, if he were convicted, could carry as much as a $25,000 fine, a 10-year prison sentence, or both.
Nelson claims the sexual contact was consensual, according to the criminal complaint. That document states Nelson is 6 feet 2 inches tall and 235 pounds.
Katherine Pence, Nelson’s public defender, declined to comment on the case.
Nelson is already a registered sex offender, and in a 2015 case, he pleaded no contest to charges of child enticement, exposing himself to a child and having sex with a child 16 or older.
Asked how this potential attack could be allowed to happen, the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office, the agency that runs the jail, refused to respond to questions about the specific accusation, citing the active criminal case.
The jail “utilizes several systems to enhance inmate safety and is compliant with legal and best-practice standards,” Eric Van Den Heuvel, the chief deputy for the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office, wrote in an email to The Badger Project. The jail also adheres to the standards set by the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, he added.
The man Nelson is accused of assaulting is not named in the complaint. Van Den Heuvel said that inmates are housed together according to criteria set by the state Department of Corrections. These criteria include the inmates’ offense record and their history of behavior in jail.
“For two inmates to be housed in the same cell, they would have to be classified at the same or similar level,” Van Den Heuvel wrote.
The alleged victim said Nelson assaulted him on June 15 while they were in their cell. He told detectives Nelson pressured him to perform sex acts before Nelson initiated intercourse later in the day.
The complaint alleges that when detectives interviewed Nelson, he denied knowing why he was being questioned and lied multiple times throughout his interview. At first, he explicitly and repeatedly denied having sex with his cellmate, according to the complaint.
Nelson told investigators his cellmate was making the story up to avoid being deported.
In his email, Van Den Heuvel would not confirm the immigration status of the inmate, saying the alleged victim’s “deportation status” was the responsibility of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and not a topic for his agency.
The Sauk County Sheriff’s Office says it has a “long-standing tradition of assisting our local, state and federal partners with the housing of inmates,” which includes the state Department of Corrections, U.S. Marshals, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as I.C.E.
Detainees of I.C.E. booked into the county jail were already in I.C.E. custody or were booked for non-immigration-related reasons, the sheriff’s office’s website says. The sheriff’s office says it is reimbursed “for all costs incurred” and can raise revenue from contracting with other agencies to house offenders.
When questioned further, the complaint says Nelson started to change his story.
“Even if something did happen, why’s it even an issue?” Nelson reportedly asked in his interview with investigators. “It was consensual. There is no reason for any of this to be a thing. It was consensual. If anything, he was more forceful than I was.”
Nelson said having intercourse was his cellmate’s idea, according to the complaint. He then denied having his cellmate perform sex acts on him. With more questioning, he changed his story and admitted to it, again saying the sex acts were consensual, according to the complaint.
He is scheduled to appear in court Sept. 25.
Nelson is currently serving a criminal sentence for previous convictions. Van Den Heuvel said Nelson “was in jail on a hold from the Department of Corrections.” A hold means the state Department of Corrections asked the jail to confine the offender, who had been released from incarceration and allowed to continue serving his sentence on community supervision.
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