Guard accused of sex with inmates fired; may be charged
State officials say they were given a positive employment reference from Virginia authorities on a correctional officer even though he resigned because of "a substantiated allegation of... having a sexual relationship with a female inmate" in that state.
And now that officer, Bishme Allah, has been fired after the State Bureau of Investigation began looking into allegations Allah had sex with prisoners at Raleigh's Women's Prison.
According to the affidavit of an SBI search warrant obtained by ABC11, the investigation began in August after the bureau was asked to look into "An allegation from female inmates that indicated that these individuals had consensual sex with a correctional officer."
Consensual sex with prisoners is illegal in North Carolina, and although he was fired, Allah has not been charged, according to an ABC11 search of Wake County arrest records.
"Regardless of what crime you've committed to find yourself incarcerated, sexual violence, rape, sexual assault is not part of the penalty," Tricia Smar of the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault told ABC11.
Smar is an expert on PREA, the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act.
Smar was especially upset when she read in the search warrant that the SBI discovered Allah's resignation over the same allegations in Virginia.
"It's enraging to me to know that someone who is now accused of sexually abusing an incarcerated person there has a history of this happening in other positions that this person has held," Smar said.
In Smar's viewpoint, the positive reference North Carolina officials said they received from Virginia only make the situation worse.
"If something has happened in Virginia, that's something that needs to be made aware of all the states that this person is trying to get jobs afterwards particularly if it's in a corrections environment," she said.
Though there may be more questions to come about that situation, the SBI is continuing to investigate.
The search warrant is for Allah's DNA, which investigators said they want to use to compare with any DNA found on the clothing of female inmates at Women's Prison.
That process is often lengthy and could likely be one of the reasons no charges have yet been filed.
