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In 1996, 25-year-old Tasha Carter Beasley stepped through the gates of Rikers Island. Years later, she became a key figure in a sexual abuse lawsuit with 23 women against Keith Fant, nicknamed “Officer Champagne.”
The war on drugs and broken windows policing sent a record-breaking number of New York City women into pretrial detention. Beasley’s community struggled with addiction. Instead of resources, Rikers offered sexual abuse. A Gothamist investigation is revealing even more.
The same year Riker’s women’s facility, known as “Rosie’s,” overflowed, a new law declared that incarcerated people cannot consent to sex with staff. That didn’t stop officers from raping imprisoned women. One anonymous plaintiff, “Lisa,” says Fant impregnated her. Another woman, Karen Klines, says staff medicated and placed her in a mental observation unit after she reported him.
A now-retired Fant claims all 24 women are lying for money. But several women who are suing insist that money isn’t their reason. “There’s not enough money in the world that will ever take away the scars that I have,” Beasley argues.
Mayor Eric Adams still hasn’t launched the promised investigation into the flood of Rikers’ sex abuse cases. That’s the bare minimum - because Rikers is just one element. Anti-Black policing, displacement, health crises, and the systemic misogyny inherent to harming victims and survivors, have all been normalized to enable decades of predation behind its bars.