Lucas County has spent $230,000 fending off a federal civil rights lawsuit against jail officials and will likely spend more in the coming years.
Several female corrections officers filed the case in 2023, and say that county and jail officials failed to protect them from “severe and pervasive” sexual harassment by male inmates at the Lucas County Corrections Center.
Court documents contain graphic descriptions from 19 corrections officers who said they frequently dealt with lewd sexual behavior targeted toward them, verbal harassment, and sexual threats by inmates. The women say their supervisors dismissed the abuses, discouraged reports, and rarely punished the inmates…