The incident occurred in December, but it wasn't reported to the police until March 15.
A female prison officer from Miami claims that she was sexually assaulted by 17 inmates during a mass fight at Miami-Dade's pretrial detention facility, but her supervisors took months to report the incident, NBC Miami reports.
"You know, I don't do anything but literally play this incident in my head over and over again,"
the officer, who wishes to remain unidentified, told NBC Miami. "I'm devastated, I feel embarrassed. I'm ashamed."
After the incident, in which three other guards were injured, the officer took about two months off from work, but upon returning to the job, she was horrified to find out that her ordeal hadn't been reported, New York's Daily News reports. She ultimately threatened to go against protocol and report the assault herself if her supervisors didn't call the police right away.
"I was pushed, punched … in my head, face, neck… abdomen and back; the inmates began to grab my vaginal area, breast, and buttocks," she wrote in her report. "I was kicked in the vaginal area and groped by several inmates. While I was being sexually assaulted … I thought I was about to be gang raped."
In the video showing the outbreak at the facility on Dec. 30, inmates could be seen trying to gain control of the open housing bay, NBC Miami notes. There was a cell door open that should not have been, leaving officers and inmates in a showdown.
One of the men in the facility is Derrick Harrell, a 23-year-old awaiting his murder trial. The officer pointed him out as the leader in her assault.
"We have protocols and policies when it comes to incidents, and they failed to act," the woman told the news station.
She also wants the state attorney to investigate why it took so long for the proper authorities to be notified of her attack. Harrell is being charged with battery on a law-enforcement officer, but she wants the other possible perpetrators prosecuted, too.
Read more at NBC Miami.