Attica Inmates Raped, Tortured Post-Riot

After the 1971 riot that left 43 people dead at New York’s Attica prison, witnesses and inmates reported being tortured and sexually abused by guards. A two-year inquiry by the New York attorney general found that in the aftermath of retaking the prison following a five-day riot, investigators did not interview people who had seen abuses and could identify the perpetrators. In documents unsealed Thursday, the inquiry found reports of people who “saw stretchers deliberately tilted, saw guards beat inmates on medical carts with clubs, saw a prison doctor pull an inmate off a cart and kick him in the stomach.” A physician working at a nearby hospital reported that he saw “an inmate with large wounds around his rectum which were not from gunshot and which, he later heard, had been caused by a broken bottle.”