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A guard denies accusations that he had an alcohol problem and tortured
Jump to full article: Roanoke (VA) Times & World News, 2009-10-07
Author: Mike Gangloff * The Roanok
Intro: A former inmate at the Botetourt Correctional Center claims in a newly filed federal lawsuit that he was tormented by a guard with an alcohol problem and an inventive streak of sadism.
But the guard, now retired, denies it -- and says the prisoner was the one with the drinking problem.
In a lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, Thomas W. Jackson said that during a year at Camp 25, as the correctional center is sometimes called, Officer Michael Fletcher carried out a program of harassment and torture. It included such things as putting a habanero pepper on Jackson's cut lip, mixing manure into his chewing tobacco, beatings and electric shocks to Jackson's genitals, the complaint claimed. . . .
Fletcher, now retired and living in Scott County, said Tuesday that while he had not yet seen the lawsuit, Jackson's story was wrong.
He recalled two things about the former prisoner: his difficulties with alcohol and love for chewing tobacco.
"He was willing to pick up chewing tobacco that visitors left on the ground and put it in his mouth," Fletcher said.
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