Metro
exclusive
Ex-Rikers guard sexually assaulted by inmate claims deputy warden laughed at attack, said ‘don’t tell your husband’
A former Rikers guard who was sexually assaulted by an inmate claims a nurse at the notorious jail could have been spared an attempted rape if supervisors had taken her attack more seriously, The Post has learned.
Yessica Delacruz told The Post she was working an overnight shift at one of the jail’s clinics and was transferring incoming inmates from an intake cell to the medical unit when she first encountered Michael Cleaver just after 2 a.m. on Nov. 12, 2021.
“He grabbed my upper area aggressively,” said Delacruz, 40, who is suing the city for compensatory damages and emotional distress in Bronx Supreme Court. “Then, he grabbed my breast.”
Cleaver, 55, had just been arrested on Nov. 9 on charges of burglary, harassment and menacing, records show.
The officer said she managed to push Cleaver back into the cell and lock the door before calling a supervisor about the attack.
When nobody came, she said decided to close the clinic.
But as she tried to return other inmates to the holding cell, Cleaver tried to break free again.
“He came to the door and started pushing the door, like a football player,” she said of the 5′ 6″, 210 pound inmate. “He tried to grab me and attack me. He was desperate to attack me.”
Eventually, Cleaver backed up, and a male officer came to her aid. But Cleaver wasn’t finished, Delacruz said.
“The guy pushed the officer to the side and he rushed back to me,” she said, explaining that she was standing 20 feet away for safety. “He threw himself on me.” Delacruz, who stands about the same height as Cleaver but weighs 50 pounds less, held him back with her left hand and discharged pepper spray at him.
Nobody was there to help her because her partner had been moved to work in another area, she said. The nurses in the clinic cowered in fear, she said.
A short time later, she was crying from shock and pepper spray while washing her face in the locker room when an assistant deputy warden knocked.
“I go into his office and he’s looking at the video laughing at the nurses running away,” she recalled. “He’s just, ‘Ha, ha, ha. Look at her running.’ I just couldn’t believe it. The laughing and the sarcasm.”
The jail boss told her to do a report and that everything would be fine by the next day. He also told her “Don’t tell your husband,” she recalled. That confused her, she said, but she now believes he was trying to hide the attack.
A jail officer then allowed her to go to medical.
“Guess who’s in the cubicle next to me?” she asked. “The same inmate I sprayed that was attacking me. Thank God he didn’t see me.”
She ran away from the clinic. It was about 7 a.m. and she was coming off a double shift, she said.
About 14 hours later, Cleaver allegedly tried to rape a 51-year-old unidentified nurse, throwing her to the ground, locking a cell door and pulling her clothes down. The attack was halted by another inmate who socked Cleaver, prosecutors said in court.
Cleaver faces criminal raps for both attacks, records show. The cases are pending.
Delacruz believes Cleaver would have had more security around him when he tried to commit the rape if her bosses had taken her assault more seriously immediately.
“He would have had chains on his hands and feet,” she said. “That attempted rape would haven’t happened.”
Her attorney John Scola said she’s suing in hopes of creating change.
“The Department of Corrections fails to protect women officers from being sexually assaulted by inmates and then refuses to accommodate them as they deal with the trauma of their attacks,” Scola said.
Delacruz, who’s in the Air Force National Guard, said she quit the department because they refused to send her to a different area.
Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association President Benny Boscio said the supervisor should “no longer be serving in a supervisory capacity if the allegations are proven to be true.”
“We fully support our female officers who come forward with their accounts of being sexually assaulted and sexually harassed and have introduced legislation to make the sexual attacks on our correction officers a felony instead of a misdemeanor and it’s well past time for Albany’s lawmakers to act,” Boscio said. “It’s time to protect us, too.”
