A federal jury has awarded a total of $11.5 million in damages to two women who were sexually assaulted by a former Polk County, Wis., jailer.
Darryl L. Christensen, 50, who was also fire chief in Amery, Wis., was convicted of five counts of second-degree sexual assault by a corrections officer. He was given a 30-year prison sentence last year.
According to a criminal complaint filed in 2015, Christensen repeatedly victimized five female inmates at the Polk County jail by groping them, having intercourse and oral sex with them and masturbating in front of them in dozens of incidents that dated back to 2011.
Those women have filed lawsuits in federal court against Christensen and the Wisconsin County located northeast of the Twin Cities where he worked.
On Friday, a jury returned a verdict in cases involving two of the women. The jury awarded $2 million in compensatory damages to each woman, according to their lawyer Thomas Weidner. The women, Wisconsin residents in their 30s, were also awarded $3.75 million each in punitive damages against Christensen.
Christensen has no ability to pay the punitive damages beyond a nominal amount, according to Weidner.
But Weidner said Polk County will be responsible for paying the $4 million in compensatory damages.
Weidner said the women, who are no longer in jail, hope to use the money for therapy and chemical health treatment.
“These women were subject to (Christensen’s) sexual abuse over and over and over,” Weidner said.
Polk County corporation counsel Jeffrey Fuge said if the jury verdict is finalized in its current form, the county will appeal the judgment.
Christensen’s lawyer, Samuel Hall, declined to comment on the jury verdict.
The civil complaint against Christensen and the county alleged that Christensen assaulted the women in areas of the jail including a conference room that did not have security cameras.
The complaint said Christensen was able to control the doorways into the areas of the jail where the assaults took place, preventing other jailers from coming into the area.
The criminal complaint said Christensen once groped one of the victims while she was shackled and handcuffed and being led to court. In another incident, he directed two inmates “to get naked and put a show on for him,” the criminal complaint said.
The civil complaint said the sexual assault amounted to violations of the women’s Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment and lack of due process.
The complaint alleged that the county’s sheriff’s department was negligent in failing to provide training and enacting standards and procedures included in the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act to prevent sexual assaults.
The complaint alleged the sheriff’s department was indifferent to the risk of assault because it allowed one male officer with the ability to prevent the entrance of other jailers to supervise female inmates in areas without cameras.