But somewhere during the heat of the moment, some of the brain cells
inside of Pelley’s head must have finally began connecting. While
she was in the middle of the salacious encounter, it occurred to her
that this behavior may not exactly be appropriate and acceptable
conduct for her employer.
Billie Pelley
And by the way, it is definitely not legal.
Furthermore, the entire incident was also recorded by the jail’s
video cameras.
And it was this monitoring that prompted dispatcher Andrea Million
to interrupt the illicit rendezvous. The dispatcher found a sheepish
Pelley inside Cell 10. She had already thought better of what she
was doing and halted the oral sex so she was sitting beside the
inmate on his bed.
The corrections officer was promptly arrested and slapped with a
felony charge.
During the interview with investigators, Pelley admitted to
servicing the prisoner. And besides, there was no way she could
wiggle out of this one because surveillance cameras caught her sex
act so she confessed.
Bobby Man
But since there was no precise statute for Pelley’s
crime, prosecutors charged her with forced sodomy. It is a bit
convoluted because Bobby Mann was not forced to do anything he
didn’t want to do since he readily agreed to having sexual contact
with the female guard. Regardless of the circumstance, prosecutors
claim that there was no way Mann was capable of legally offering his
consent since he was in custody.
The bottom line is that the circumstance is purely a technicality
because what Pelley did was wrong and completely inconsistent with
the behavior and professionalism expected from corrections officers.
And precisely for that reason, state legislatures need to revamp
their laws to ensure that there really is no way out for outrageous
incidents like this.
Numerous states have already modified their legal codes after the
wake of so many teacher scandals involving female educators having
sex their male students. In some cases, many teachers claimed that
there was no sex crime because the child was of the legal age of
consent such as 16 or even 18.
For a lot of states, that loophole was closed when statutes were
changed to focus on a “position of authority” which made the bogus
argument of consent irrelevant. States need to do the same thing for
corrections officers.
The kind of reckless conduct that Billie Pelley exhibited is
disgraceful and downright reprehensible and all offenders who wear
the uniform need to be harshly punished.
Fortunately, technology such as surveillance cameras makes crimes
like these a snap to prosecute. But the best approach is to prevent
an incident like this from ever occurring. There is no way to stop
one hundred percent of the violations but a proactive methodology is
a good start.
Corrections officers need to know right from the beginning that they
will be slapped with a felony for having sexual activity with
inmates and that there is no way out of it. And that message has to
be explicitly explained at new employee orientations and reinforced
regularly on an annual or semi-annual basis.
Perhaps it is not possible to entirely prevent guards from making
bad decisions or from exercising poor judgment but a stern message
about the irrevocable impact to their professional careers can have
a profound influence.
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