Former nurse Tony Daniel Klein repeatedly used his position of power to sexually abuse 11 prisoners who sought medical care or worked in a medical unit at the state’s only women’s prison, a federal prosecutor alleged Monday.
“He counted on them not reporting him,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Gavin W. Bruce said during his opening statement in a criminal trial expected to last up to three weeks in U.S. District Court in Portland.
But defense lawyer Matthew G. McHenry argued that the prisoners were part of an interconnected group of women who knew one another in and outside of custody and schemed to make up false accusations to “set up” Klein to get “free money.”
McHenry noted six-figure settlements several have received from the state after filing civil lawsuits over the alleged abuse.
McHenry further argued that the federal government has continued to provide benefits, such as clearing an arrest warrant or helping find a lawyer, for some of Klein’s accusers and has “contributed to the cycle” of allegations.
“Tony Klein is innocent of these accusations,” McHenry said in his opening statement to the 12-member jury. “The value of these accusations is zero, and zero added to zero added to zero is still zero.”
Klein is charged with 21 counts of subjecting women in custody to cruel and unusual punishment through sexual abuse and assaults, plus four counts of perjury.
The perjury counts allege he lied when he denied, during a civil deposition in November 2019, that he had kissed, had sexual contact or had sex with any incarcerated woman while employed at Coffee Creek Correctional Institution in Wilsonville.
Federal prosecutors say Klein sexually abused inmates who either sought medical care or worked as orderlies in the medical unit from 2016 to 2017.
The alleged abuse ranged from over-the-clothes touching to groping during exams and forced sexual assault.
He often groomed the women by casually complimenting them about their makeup or body, sharing details about his own life or marital problems and bringing them small gifts, considered contraband in prison, such as coffee or hair clips, according to Bruce.
Some women feared reporting what had occurred, concerned doing so could lead to discipline and the loss of their sought-after jobs as orderlies responsible for cleaning the medical unit or could push back their prison release dates.
“They tried to avoid him. They asked him to stop. They froze in fear or they submitted because they felt they had no other choice,” Bruce said.
Prosecutors will call prison staff to testify about the Prison Rape Elimination Act, passed by Congress and signed into law in 2003. It called for national standards to prevent sexual assaults in prison.
Klein was trained that sexual conduct with prisoners was absolutely prohibited and instructed about the importance of maintaining clear boundaries with people in custody, Bruce said.
“The defendant ignored” his training with the women in his care, Bruce said.
Klein manufactured reasons to get them alone in secluded areas, including medical rooms, janitor’s closets or behind privacy curtains, according to Bruce. There, he’d force his hands under his victims’ clothes, force them to touch his genitals and sexually assault them, the prosecutor said.
Nurses will be called to testify about Klein’s “exceedingly casual demeanor” around inmates and how he used to call certain inmates to the medical unit on weekends, when it was far less busy, Bruce said.
One nurse will testify that she came into an exam room and found Klein “doing up his pants, buckling his belt with a top button of his pants undone, all with an inmate right in the exam room,” the prosecutor said.
Klein, wearing a dark blue suit, white dress shirt and striped tie, sat beside his two lawyers and occasionally took notes during the opening statements.
He worked as a nurse at Coffee Creek from 2010 until January 2018, when he resigned.
His defense lawyer urged the jury to note that Klein’s record was clean until December 2017, when a prisoner filed the first accusation of sexual misconduct against him.
From then until June 7, 2018, prisoners filed 18 complaints against him, according to McHenry.
Some of the women also asked the FBI to clear their warrants and help them find an attorney or get their child out of state custody, McHenry said. Some have prior convictions for falsifying drugs tests and tampering with drug records and one admitted lying to a state Corrections Department disciplinary board, McHenry said.
According to the Oregon Board of Nursing, the Department of Corrections reported him to the nursing board in September 2018 for “alleged boundary violations with patients” and alleged sexual misconduct involving inmates. State police and the corrections Office of Inspector General conducted an earlier investigation and submitted it to the Washington County District Attorney’s Office, which declined to prosecute “due to insufficient evidence,” according to the nursing board.
On June 10, 2020, the board issued a reprimand to Klein for “conduct derogatory to the standards of nursing” and issued a $2,500 civil fine. His nursing license expired on Oct. 15, 2022, according to Barbara Holtry, the board’s interim executive director.
Klein was indicted on the federal charges in March 2022, following an investigation by the FBI, with help from state police and the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office. The criminal section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights division is helping to prosecute the case.
Klein remains out of custody.
Separately, the state paid about $1.8 million to settle 11 civil lawsuits stemming from Klein’s alleged sexual abuse while working as a nurse for the Corrections Department, according to Michelle Burrows, the lawyer who filed the suits.
— Maxine Bernstein
Email mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212
Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian
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