A man has been sentenced to nine years in prison in the United States for raping a detainee in transit. Rogeric Hankins, 37, assaulted the woman while she was pulled over in a parking lot in Missouri.
In March 2020, according to prosecutors, Hankins was contracted to transfer the woman, who was on remand, from a prison in Olympia, Washington, to a prison in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The US Department of Justice announced Tuesday that during a stopover in Joplin, Missouri, he forced the woman into a restroom and raped her there. DNA testing upon his arrival in Minnesota confirmed the woman’s story.
As a private prisoner transporter with the Inmate Services Corporation, Hankins was often employed to transport prisoners who needed to be transferred to another country.
“The defendant sexually assaulted and violently assaulted a woman in his care, abused his position of authority and denied her constitutional right to bodily integrity,” Christine Clark, assistant attorney general with the Department of Justice, said in a statement.
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