COLORADO SPRINGS — For two women held at a Colorado Springs halfway house, the chance to earn day passes and other special privileges went hand in hand with unwanted sexual advances from a 45-year-old maintenance worker.
That’s according to a federal lawsuit filed against Community Alternatives of El Paso, where female residents reportedly made a pact never to leave each other alone with maintenance supervisor Joseph Garcia Chapman.
“The female inmates were forced to do this because (operators of CAE) refused to protect them from the sexual predator they had enabled,” according to the suit brought by Colorado Springs attorneys Joshua Tolini and Jeff Barker on behalf of two female residents Chapman admitted assaulting.
The complaint was filed Dec. 20 in U.S. District Court in Denver, three weeks after Chapman, of Fountain, pleaded guilty in 4th Judicial District Court in Colorado Springs to forcing himself on the plaintiffs during separate encounters — sexually assaulting one and groping the other. Chapman, who had been an employee for six months at the time of the crimes, was sentenced in November to 10 years to life on sex offender intensive supervised probation as part of a plea bargain.
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