State to pay $2.5M to woman sexually abused by female prison officer in jail

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The State has been or­dered to pay over $2.5 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion to a woman who was sub­ject­ed to a cam­paign of cru­el and un­usu­al pun­ish­ment, in­clud­ing be­ing re­peat­ed­ly sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed by a fe­male prison of­fi­cer, while serv­ing a 12-year sen­tence for manslaugh­ter. 

High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed or­dered com­pen­sa­tion for Na­dia Pooran on Fri­day as he up­held her land­mark con­sti­tu­tion­al claim pur­sued by her lawyers, led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers. 

In up­hold­ing Pooran's case, Jus­tice Mo­hammed found that she had been failed by ser­vants and agents of the State at every lev­el. 

"That fail­ure was not the prod­uct of mal­ice. It was the prod­uct of in­sti­tu­tion­al in­dif­fer­ence, ad­min­is­tra­tive in­com­pe­tence, and a cul­ture with­in the prison sys­tem that has been the sub­ject of ju­di­cial and pub­lic com­men­tary for decades," Jus­tice Mo­hammed said. 

He ex­pressed hope that his judg­ment in the case, high­light­ing the se­vere con­sti­tu­tion­al breach­es en­dured by Pooran, would lead to re­form in the prison sys­tem. 

"That cul­ture can­not be al­lowed to per­sist. The Con­sti­tu­tion de­mands bet­ter. The Claimant de­served bet­ter," Jus­tice Mo­hammed said. 

"It is the hope of this Court that the find­ings made here­in will serve as a pow­er­ful sig­nal to the State that the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of pris­on­ers must be re­spect­ed, that those who are en­trust­ed with their cus­tody bear a se­ri­ous le­gal and moral re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to up­hold those rights, and that the Courts of this ju­ris­dic­tion will not hes­i­tate to hold the ac­count where that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is not dis­charged," he added.

Pooran, Shelly-Ann Anganoo, Nicholas Ali, and Tes­fa Jones were ac­cused of mur­der­ing 41-year-old teacher Ral­phy Ram­cha­ran on March 25, 2003. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed dur­ing their tri­al, the women were lim­ing with Ram­cha­ran at a bar in Curepe and agreed to leave with him. 

When they got in­to the car, Ali and Jones en­tered the ve­hi­cle. 

Ram­cha­ran was robbed of his cash and re­strained be­fore one of the men drove the group to a lone­ly area of Barataria. 

Ram­cha­ran was beat­en with a wheel span­ner and re­peat­ed­ly stabbed with a pair of scis­sors be­fore be­ing thrown in­to a near­by riv­er. 

The group was even­tu­al­ly al­lowed to plead guilty to the less­er of­fence of manslaugh­ter and each was sen­tenced to 20 years in prison. 

Pooran's three co-ac­cused won their ap­peals over the sever­i­ty of their sen­tence and re­ceived five-year re­duc­tions. 

Pooran pur­sued her ap­peal sev­er­al years lat­er and her sen­tence was even­tu­al­ly re­duced to 12 years in 2016. Pooran was im­me­di­ate­ly re­leased as she had al­ready served more than a year over her sen­tence when the Court of Ap­peal up­held her ap­peal. 

The law­suit be­fore Jus­tice Mo­hammed cen­tred around the harsh prison con­di­tions Pooran en­dured while on re­mand await­ing tri­al, af­ter en­ter­ing the guilty plea, and while ap­peal­ing the sen­tence she re­ceived. 

In her lengthy af­fi­davit sub­mit­ted for the law­suit, Pooran claimed that she and oth­er in­mates at the Women's Prison in Arou­ca were sub­ject­ed to over­crowd­ing, poor ven­ti­la­tion and san­i­ta­tion. 

She claimed that they were sub­ject­ed to long pe­ri­ods of con­fine­ment to their cells as they were giv­en in­fre­quent air­ings, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the rainy sea­son. 

She claimed that in 2005 she joined pris­on­ers in a hunger strike as she suf­fered se­vere food al­ler­gies from the meals be­ing served by the prison. 

"I was forced to eat white rice and peas or bread and but­ter alone," she said. 

Pooran claimed that she could not af­ford to pur­chase food from the prison's can­teen as her moth­er could not af­ford to give her mon­ey while car­ing for her sev­en younger sib­lings al­most sin­gle-hand­ed­ly. 

Pooran, who gave birth one month be­fore she was charged and re­mand­ed, claimed that she suf­fered post-par­tum med­ical con­di­tions but was not af­ford­ed any spe­cial­ist med­ical treat­ment. 

She al­so claimed that in 2012 she de­vel­oped ab­scess­es on her arm and calf and was forced to treat them her­self us­ing san­i­tary pads as a sub­sti­tute for gauze. 

She claimed that she on­ly saw her new­born son once with­in her first three years of prison as  there was not a pro­gramme in place at the time to al­low chil­dren to vis­it in­car­cer­at­ed par­ents. 

De­spite what she en­dured, Pooran still par­tic­i­pat­ed in nu­mer­ous re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, ed­u­ca­tion­al and life skills pro­grammes while in prison and left with nine CXC pass­es and Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE) diplo­ma.

Pooran pro­vid­ed ex­plic­it de­tails of her re­peat­ed sex­u­al as­sault by in­mates and a par­tic­u­lar prison of­fi­cer, who abused her re­peat­ed­ly over a four-year pe­ri­od. 

She claimed that the at­tacks were par­tic­u­lar­ly trau­mat­ic for her as she was forced in­to pros­ti­tu­tion and sex­u­al­ly ex­ploit­ed at a young age be­fore be­ing in­car­cer­at­ed. 

"There was one par­tic­u­lar of­fi­cer who re­peat­ed­ly ex­ploit­ed and abused me and turned me in­to her per­son­al sex slave," she said. 

"I was pun­ished when I re­ject­ed these sex­u­al ad­vances and over­tures," she added. 

She claimed that in one in­ci­dent the of­fi­cer forced her to per­form oral sex on her while she was as­signed to clean the toi­let area of the prison. The of­fi­cer al­leged­ly record­ed the in­ci­dent on her cell­phone. 

"I was cry­ing for part of the time as I felt dis­gust­ed, ashamed and hu­mil­i­at­ed," she said. 

She claimed that she was placed in soli­tary con­fine­ment when she re­port­ed the at­tacks by the of­fi­cer. 

She claimed that while iso­lat­ed, the of­fi­cer vis­it­ed her with a set of white lin­gerie and forced her to mod­el in it for her to take pho­tographs. 

She claimed the at­tacks stopped in 2010 af­ter she fought back and pro­fessed her will­ing­ness to die to pre­serve her dig­ni­ty. 

"I told her that I did not care if I die but that she would have to kill me," Pooran said.   

In de­ter­min­ing her case, Jus­tice Mo­hammed found that her right not to be sub­ject­ed to cru­el and un­usu­al pun­ish­ment was breached. 

"The State not on­ly failed to pro­vide the el­e­men­tary ne­ces­si­ties of hu­mane de­ten­tion but per­pe­trat­ed and fa­cil­i­tat­ed abuse against the Claimant through­out her in­car­cer­a­tion," Jus­tice Mo­hammed said. 

"The cu­mu­la­tive weight of these con­di­tions, sus­tained over thir­teen years with­out re­lief, went far be­yond harsh and crossed the thresh­old of what can prop­er­ly be de­scribed as cru­el and un­usu­al. 

Jus­tice Mo­hammed up­held her claims of re­peat­ed sex­u­al abuse, which she main­tained while un­der in­tense cross-ex­am­i­na­tion from State at­tor­neys. 

While he not­ed that the of­fi­cer pro­vid­ed an af­fi­davit cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly deny­ing the al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against her, she (the of­fi­cer) did not at­tend the hear­ing of the case to be cross-ex­am­ined by Pooran's lawyers. 

"The Claimant's ev­i­dence on the sex­u­al abuse stands un­con­tra­dict­ed be­fore this Court and is ac­cept­ed in its en­tire­ty," he said. 

Jus­tice Mo­hammed al­so found that Pooran's con­sti­tu­tion­al right to equal­i­ty of treat­ment from a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty was breached as she was not trans­ferred from the con­vict­ed sec­tion of the prison while pur­su­ing her ap­peal, as was done with oth­er pris­on­ers in­clud­ing her for­mer co-ac­cused. 

He re­ject­ed claims from the State that Pooran was treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly from Anganoo be­cause she (Pooran) was al­ready serv­ing her sen­tence when she ap­pealed lat­er than Anganoo. 

"The De­fen­dant has of­fered no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion root­ed in law...No le­git­i­mate aim had been iden­ti­fied by the De­fen­dant that could jus­ti­fy the dif­fer­en­tial treat­ment," he said. 

In as­sess­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion for Pooran, Jus­tice Mo­hammed or­dered $2 mil­lion in gen­er­al dam­ages, which was cal­cu­lat­ed at $450 a day for the pe­ri­od of her in­car­cer­a­tion. 

He al­so or­dered $450,000 in vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages to high­light the con­sti­tu­tion­al breach­es Pooran en­dured. 

"The grav­i­ty of the breach­es es­tab­lished in this judg­ment is ex­cep­tion­al," Jus­tice Mo­hammed said. 

Pooran learned of her le­gal vic­to­ry in the case in the Unit­ed King­dom (UK), where she is cur­rent­ly seek­ing asy­lum. 

Sev­er­al years af­ter be­ing re­leased from prison she wit­nessed the mur­ders of her cousin Ker­ron Ram­per­sad and his girl­friend Crys­tal Her­ralal, who were shot dead in front of her at their home. 

She said that she de­cid­ed to seek asy­lum in the UK as homi­cide de­tec­tives could not pro­vide wit­ness pro­tec­tion for her. 

She al­so claimed that even be­fore wit­ness­ing the mur­ders, she was con­tem­plat­ing leav­ing the coun­try. 

"It was vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble to sur­vive af­ter I left prison. No one would hire me and the on­ly op­tion that pre­sent­ed it­self was join­ing crim­i­nal gangs that specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed and re­cruit­ed me to be a drug mule and pros­ti­tute," she said. 

Since mov­ing to the UK, Pooran has sought to fur­ther her ed­u­ca­tion. 

In 2023, she ob­tained a BA in So­ci­ol­o­gy with First Class Ho­n­ours from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Brad­ford. She is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing an MA in Pol­i­tics and In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leices­ter and is set to grad­u­ate in Jan­u­ary next year. 

In her af­fi­davit, Pooran ex­pressed re­morse for her role in killing Ram­cha­ran, who was de­scribed as an "in­no­cent man". 

"I was young and kept bad com­pa­ny be­cause I came from an ex­treme­ly poor fam­i­ly and was forced to live on the streets. I had no home and no fam­i­ly sup­port and hence got in­volved with the wrong crowd in or­der to sur­vive on the streets," Pooran said. 

She al­so ad­mit­ted that she has not been able to rekin­dle her re­la­tion­ship with her two chil­dren due to her lengthy in­car­cer­a­tion away from them. 

Pooran was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan, Ganesh Sa­roop, Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, and Natasha Bis­ram. The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Mon­i­ca Smith, Maria Bel­mar-Williams, and Sav­it­ri Ma­haraj.