Rikers Captain's arrest raises questions about inmate supervision

  The Eyewitness News Investigators' Sarah Wallace

(New York- WABC, February 1, 2006) (WABC) -- A high ranking official at Rikers Island finds himself facing possible time behind bars.

The captain at Rikers is now charged with sexually assaulting several teenage inmates. It's a story Eyewitness News first broke last week.

Now, the alleged victims and their families are raising questions about how this could happen.

The Investigators Sarah Wallace has more.

Captain Dominick Labruzzi is out on bail tonight and now suspended without pay from the Corrections Department.

The bigger issue, however, is supervision of teenage inmates. The allegations are that this captain, alone, repeatedly took different young males from various housing areas to a locked basement with no one questioning it.

One mother says she has cried every day since receiving a call from Rikers Island, just before Christmas. Her 17-year-old son, locked up in the adolescent jail, claimed he'd been sexually abused by 30-year-old Captain Dominick Labruzzi.

It was more than this mother could bear.

"He stay in jail ... why more?" she said.

City investigators now claim Labruzzi abused eight teens in 10 separate incidents. Our sources say he focused his attention on Hispanic males, new to the jail.

In a jailhouse interview last week, one inmate told me he was so traumatized by his experience, he thought about committing suicide.

"I wanted to kill myself," the inmate said.

Sarah Wallace: "You wanted to kill yourself, why?"

"I was frightened," the teen inmate said.

Labruzzi was charged Tuesday night with 10 counts of endangering the welfare of a child, 10 counts of forcible touching, 10 counts of sex abuse in the third degree and 10 counts of harassment.

His union President responded:

"We were told this was a confidential investigation ... why they allowed Sarah Wallace to go in that jail and have inmates make allegations ... the question I have for everybody is how does this captain get a fair trial now? But I will just say that I just spoke with the captain and he maintains he's innocent," said Union President Peter Meringolo.

Now, two attorneys are representing the alleged victims and their families free of charge, and conducting their own investigation.

"How did this captain just go willy nilly from one section to another and just pull these people on a continuous basis?" one lawyer asked.

"The police were aware of what was happening to these kids and nobody is taking any action," another lawyer responded.

The city's Department of Investigation, which oversees corrections, maintains it responded as soon as the allegations were reported to that office.

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