Oklahoma sheriff charged with using inmates as sex slaves
ARAPAHO, Okla. (AP) — Authorities have charged a western Oklahoma sheriff with coercing and bribing female inmates so he could use them in a sex-slave operation run out of his jail.
Custer County Sheriff Mike Burgess resigned Wednesday just as state prosecutors filed 35 felony charges against him, including 14 counts of second-degree rape, seven counts of forcible oral sodomy and five counts of bribery by a public official.
Yikes, just plain yikes! It looks like our salacious sheriff of that unknown party is really in dutch for this one.
Among other things, Burgess is accused of having sex with a female drug court participant who was in his custody. The crimes are to have occurred between October 2005 and April 2007.
A federal lawsuit filed in October claims Burgess told one drug court participant he would have her sent to prison if she didn't comply with his sexual demands.
The lawsuit, filed by 12 former inmates, alleges the sheriff's employees had them engage in wet T-shirt contests and offered cigarettes to those who would flash their breasts.
One prisoner alleged she became a jail trusty [sic] with more freedom after agreeing to perform a sex act on Burgess, but lost that status when she later refused.
Burgess also faces two counts each of sexual battery, rape by instrumentation and subornation of perjury, and one count each of engaging in a pattern of criminal offenses, indecent exposure and kidnapping.
I am amazed that with all this information, the AP couldn't find room to mention -- even if just in passing -- that our overly friendly sheriff was a Democrat. (As this .PDF Document from the Oklahoma Election Board shows. See page 30)
Yes, it turns out that our sex pervert isn't a Democrat from New York as one might suspect, but a Democrat from Clinton, Oklahoma. And a fitting name his hometown has, indeed.
He's been the elected sheriff of Custer County since 1994 but it looks like this fellow is getting his “last stand,” anyway.
But, don't imagine that the AP is the only one that missed that one little factoid in the story. While ABC News has this sensational bit of the tale:
"During the night of their stay at the Biltmore Hotel, Sheriff [Burgess] directed and required that [the woman] stay with him at the hotel rather than go with other participants and their counselor for dinner," according to the probable cause affidavit for the sheriff's arrest. "Sheriff [Burgess] took [the woman] to his room at the Biltmore Hotel where he engaged in multiple acts of sexual intercourse with [the woman] during the night."
... they DIDN'T have the sheriff's party.
Neither did USA Today, nor KOCO, eyewitness News 5 from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Yeah, there is a LOT of info out there about our busy little sheriff. Everything but his party affiliation, of course.
Where's that "Republican culture of corruption" we kept hearing about before 2006, again?
(Photo credit: USA Today)
(h/t newsbusters reader Dennis Lathem)
Note: edited to remove mistaken assumption that the AP story had the word "trusty" misspelled.
