A Black man filed a civil rights lawsuit in December 2025, accusing Division of Correction (DOC) officers of sodomizing him in 2024 throughout his pretrial detention.
Courtroom paperwork within the lawsuit filed on behalf of Kyle Knight, 29, title two DOC officers who allegedly participated in forcibly inserting a finger in his rectum throughout a retaliatory strip search after one accused guard struck and pepper-sprayed him. The submitting additionally alleges the defendants uncovered Knight in entrance of your complete housing unit with only a sheet over him, whereas additionally blowing kisses at him and commenting on his genitals.
A 3rd DOC workers member — the supervising captain — can be named as a defendant within the lawsuit. The submitting alleges that this particular person most likely didn’t report the incident as a result of he discovered about it afterward. Knight additionally reported the incident by way of 311 and thru the DOC’s confidential hotline, established by the federal Jail Rape Elimination Act (PREA).
“The officers at Rikers are supposed to guard us, not damage or humiliate us,” mentioned Knight in a press release. “They’d no proper to sexually violate me. I wish to maintain them and the Division of Correction accountable for what they did, in order that it doesn’t occur once more.”
Knight has enlisted the Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel (ECBAWM) legislation agency to signify him in suing town. One in all his attorneys, Debra Greenberger, mentioned the invention course of will shed extra gentle on how the DOC addressed the incident, together with whether or not and the way the division carried out a mandated PREA investigation after Knight known as the hotline.
The defendants can even must testify below oath concerning the incident’s particulars. The attorneys imagine the officers contradicted themselves once they individually reported use-of-force after the encounter. They each accuse Knight of refusing to give up and trying to get rid of an “unknown” merchandise, however one officer mentions a second object. Disciplinary measures towards Knight over these claims have been later dismissed.
“The listening to officers mentioned that there was no proof that Kyle was doing the unhealthy issues that they mentioned [he did], which is fairly notable, as a result of that’s not a discussion board the place there’s full due course of and lawyer,” mentioned Greenberger. “For that criticism to be dismissed speaks to how baseless the officers’ claims have been concerning the accusations they made towards Kyle.”
The invention course of may power town to current a recording made by one other corrections officer with a hand-held digicam displaying “some or all” of the alleged sexual assault. The footage is at present lacking regardless of Freedom of Info Regulation requests by Knight’s attorneys, however they imagine it exists since different recordings from stationary jail cameras present the DOC workers member taping the encounter.
For Greenberger, substandard documentation of Knight’s incident attracts from broader oversight issues. She individually co-represents plaintiffs for the Nunez class motion, arguably probably the most essential lawsuit about extreme and pointless power in NYC jails, which led to a settlement settlement mandating a body-worn digicam pilot in DOC services. The litigation additionally introduced in a court-appointed monitor whose studies addressed correct use of chemical brokers like pepper spray.
Town fell in need of assembly court-ordered reforms from Nunez for almost a decade, resulting in a federal decide greenlighting a receivership-like takeover of DOC jails by a court-appointed, third-party “remediation supervisor” final yr.
“The rationale that we’ve been pushing for a remediation supervisor is that there’s an ongoing tradition of the officers not following the principles,” mentioned Greenberger. “There’s simply humanitarian disaster after humanitarian disaster. And the purpose of a receiver or a remediation supervisor is to have a spot the place folks in custody and officers really feel secure strolling into the person buildings [and] strolling onto the Island.
“If we had a tradition of security, that might cease not simply the pepper spraying, however would additionally go a great distance towards assuaging the sexual assaults that this case is about.”
The DOC declined to remark, citing pending litigation.
