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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We want to acknowledge some of our colleagues for a few minutes now because it's not every day that you learn that you're working with people who've been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. As our editor in chief, Audrey Cooper, describes it, "The WNYC newsroom did what no other outlet or government official bothered to do when we started pouring hundreds of lawsuits filed under a Me Too era law that extended the deadline for people to file civic lawsuits against sexual abusers."

The majority of lawsuits filed in New York State focused on a single location, as it turned out, Rikers Island. We uncovered, "we" meaning my colleagues, uncovered and explained generations of institutionalized abuse that went ignored by authorities. The "we" in this case includes WNYC and Gothamist investigations editor, Christopher Werth, and reporter Jessy Edwards, now a writer and editor for the publication Hellgate. Jessy and Christopher, welcome back to the show, and congratulations on being nominated for the Pulitzer in audio reporting. Hi.

Jessy Edwards: Hi, Brian. Thank you so much. It's thrilling.

Christopher Werth: Yes. Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Going to leave it to you two to decide who answers which questions. What did you and some of our other colleagues do as journalists in the context of that law that led to your findings?

Christopher Werth: What did we do? Jessy and another reporter in the newsroom, Samantha Max, polled all of the lawsuits that had been filed in New York City courts, separated the ones out that pertained to Rikers, where there were people who were making allegations of sexual assault, sexual abuse while they were held at Rikers. They just started to pour through each one of these lawsuits. I remember looking over and seeing them working through this spreadsheet and just logging names, logging allegations, times, years, dates, and all the details that they could pull out of these lawsuits. We just started to look for patterns within this database that they had created of the lawsuits.

Brian Lehrer: In brief, Jessy, what did you find? What would be a headline if you were writing one for today for what you uncovered?

Jessy Edwards: We uncovered, essentially, decades of systemic sexual assault on Rikers Island, specifically at the women's jail. What we found is that more than 700 lawsuits filed under the Adult Survivors Act in New York State had been filed containing allegations from Rikers Island. The vast majority had been filed from the women's jail, Rosie's, the Rose M. Singer Center.

One of the huge takeaways was that there were a number of officers named in these lawsuits whose names came up over and over again. One of these officers had 24 women file claims alleging that this particular person had sexually assaulted them on Rikers over a span of 17 years.

Christopher Werth: What's remarkable, Brian, is that what we had was a nickname. Jessy, we were able to zero in on who that person actually was. We identified him as a correction officer named Keith Fant, who was accused by these 24 women.

Brian Lehrer: His nickname was Champagne. How much of an outlier was he, at least in terms of how many people accused him? You said 24, but relative to any of the other guards at Rikers. Did the fact that he had this very notable nickname, recognizable nickname, and that's usually used in a celebratory context, help get other people to take notice of your reporting?

Jessy Edwards: Yes, absolutely, I think so. There were other names that actually came up more often, names like Brown, but of course, it's such a common name that it's really hard to dig into. With Champagne, it immediately caught my eye and my fellow reporters’ eyes, even separately. It was also easy to find out that it was a nickname. When I went to the City and asked, "Hey, can you tell me who this officer is? His last name is Champagne." They said, "No, we don't have anyone by that name," which then sent us on this separate investigation.

Brian Lehrer: Part of the note from our editor in chief, Audrey Cooper, that I read at the beginning that congratulated you just recently on being nominated for a Pulitzer for this reporting, that jumped out at me makes me ask. Did no government official think to look through the Adult Survivors Act lawsuits in this way, to look for patterns of accusations against certain individuals or in certain contexts, in this case, Rikers Island, that would have led them to the pattern that you uncovered in the context of your journalism?

Christopher Werth: Brian, it appears that no government official in the City actually took that effort to do that work. I think that we were the first to go through each of these allegations and look for these commonalities, and look for are the same guards named over and over and over again, for example. After we started doing this reporting, we started publishing stories, Mayor Adams actually did promise a thorough investigation. The only thing that we have seen is that we've been told repeatedly by City Hall that the city's law department is going through these cases.

Now, when you sue the city, the law department does that anyway. It's hard to see that any kind of thorough investigation has actually taken place. We've also pressed the Bronx District Attorney's Office about these cases. It is responsible for oversight, or that's part of its jurisdiction, Rikers Island. The Bronx DA set up a hotline for people who could contact the District Attorney about these cases. We were told that they were going to review these cases. We haven't heard anything substantial from the Bronx District Attorney's Office about that, any kind of review.

The City's Department of Investigation, is also responsible for taking on these kinds of investigations into City agencies. Jocelyn Strauber, the Commissioner, was actually asked about this at a City Council hearing that was held, actually, in response to our reporting. Basically, what she said is that the Department of Investigation would look into these cases if it had the resources. That's what she told the City Council members.

Brian Lehrer: Jessy, I'm guessing one of the reasons you got the Pulitzer nomination is your reporting seems to have led to some actual reforms as well as personnel changes. What would you say has actually changed?

Jessy Edwards: One of the big pieces that we pulled out of our spreadsheet data analysis was that there were officers who were accused of sexual assault on Rikers Island who were still working there. One of the early pieces of impact that we had was to report on some of these officers who were still working on Rikers Island. We found out that they had no idea that they had been accused in these lawsuits, which indicated that the Department of Corrections had not investigated them. We know that after our report went up, those officers were moved.

Of course, Christopher just mentioned this City Council hearing. Our reporting led to this oversight hearing at City Hall, which I attended. Some of the women who we interviewed got to sit down in front of the council and give some of their testimony. There was this remarkable moment where the current Department of Corrections commissioner said to them, "I believe you."

Now, one of the really interesting things that's happening is that-- so there's cases that are filed against the City of New York, and there's a whole other batch of Adult Survivors Act cases that have filed against the State for alleged sexual assault in state prisons.

Now, what we're seeing, and I'm told from the attorneys that this is in large part because of WNYC's reporting that the cases that involve Rikers' allegations are now moving much faster. In fact, some of the cases are moving to negotiations and even settlements. Whereas on the state level, they're not moving at all. In fact, it's looking like the State wants to litigate every single case. Mind you, there's more than 1,700 lawsuits at the state level.

Brian Lehrer: What does that tell you? I think there's an implication in there about resistance. Jessy, give us the next level of that thought.

Jessy Edwards: Yes, I think if we had not done this reporting about these issues at the city level, perhaps we would be looking at the same state of affairs as we are at the state level, where every case would be going to litigation and women would be waiting years and years and years for their moment and potential justice.

I think that it does take the Fourth Estate, Journalism, big J journalism, to really push for a change in these sorts of cases. The allegations of sexual assault on Rikers Island are not new, but it took this huge push from this newsroom to really shame the City, I would say, into really seriously looking at it.

Brian Lehrer: Chris, in our last minute, your thought on the same thing? Do you think what you reported will make it harder in the future for guards at Rikers to commit or get away with sexual abuse?

Christopher Werth: Possibly. Another point of impact here is that the City Council did pass legislation that requires the Department of Corrections to track these cases with an electronic case management system, which the DOC had been promising for years and years and years, and it had just never materialized. Now it's actually required in legislation.

The other is that they have to report annually on these allegations. We saw that during the Adams administration, investigations into sexual misconduct among officers really slowed almost to a halt. It could be that with these new laws in place, that we see more attention paid to sexual assault and abuse at Rikers.

Brian Lehrer: Former WNYC and Gothamist reporter Jessy Edwards, now with Hellgate, and Christopher Werth, still our investigations editor, thank you for your work. All kinds of people win all kinds of awards and nominations in this world, and they're nice enough to have. You two have this to your names now, which is a much higher honor. Along with the actual Pulitzer nomination, you helped prevent future acts of violence against people in circumstances where they have little power to protect themselves. Thank you very much, and thank you for sharing it with us.

Christopher Werth: Thank you, Brian.

Jessy Edwards: Thanks, Brian.

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