Deputy accused of inmate sex
Sheriff ’s office says it was consensual, but seeks officer’s dismissal
Contra Costa County Sheriff ’s Office officials said Thursday that they arrested a deputy for having unlawful consensual sex with two female inmates — but a woman at the jail told The Chronicle the deputy raped her and another inmate in her cell.
Deputy Patrick Morseman, 26, was arrested Wednesday by his agency, which said it received information that Morseman engaged in “unlawful sex acts with two female county inmates” at the West County Detention Facility in Richmond. He was booked on suspicion of sexual activity with a consenting adult in a detention facility, a felony, and was released on $100,000 bail.
The sheriff ’s office said the investigation is ongoing and that it expects to soon turn the case over to the district attorney’s office.
In a phone interview Wednesday from the county jail, one of the women described to The Chronicle the alleged incident in detail, saying Morseman forced himself upon her and the second inmate in the middle of the night last weekend — then gave them money to stay quiet.
The Chronicle is not identifying the inmates because they may be victims of sexual assault. Two days after the alleged assaults, the women approached an attorney who was visiting the jail on a sep-
arate case. The attorney, Joseph Lacome, shared their account with The Chronicle. One of the women also phoned The Chronicle from jail to tell her story.
She said the incident began at about 7:45 p.m. Friday, when she and an inmate she had befriended went to the deputies’ desk in the center of their jail unit and began flirting with Morseman, asking questions like, “Do you have a wife?”
The woman said she asked Morseman if the other inmate could hang out in her cell that evening. She said he told them yes but they needed to stay quiet. Neither had cellmates, the woman said.
The woman said that between 1 and 1:30 a.m. on March 31, Morseman entered her cell, left the door open and told her and her friend they could get in trouble for being together. She said they reminded him he had told them it was OK and that he laughed as he walked out, saying he’d be back.
About an hour later, the woman said, Morseman re-entered the cell, closed the door, grabbed her friend by her hair and forced her to her knees, making her perform oral sex. She said he did the same to her.
“Then he grabbed me by my shoulder and put me on my bed and had vaginal sex with me,” the woman said. “He didn’t say anything. He didn’t voice anything. But I felt like, if I were to push him, that he would get me for assault on an officer.”
Morseman, she said, didn’t use a condom.
“I wanted to say so much, but nothing was coming out,” the woman said. “I was just scared, and just wanted it to hurry up and get over with.”
According to the woman, her friend told Morseman he needed to get out of the cell, and that the other deputies would come looking for him. She said she told him this three or four times.
Morseman, the woman said, ejaculated on the floor. After he adjusted his pants, he walked out of the room and left the door open, she said. The women turned on the light, grabbed a sanitary napkin and wiped the floor, putting the napkin into a plastic bag the jail uses to issue toothbrushes, combs and toothpaste, the woman said. They turned this over to an attorney they met at the jail, who also spoke with The Chronicle.
Morseman stuck his head in the cell an hour later, the woman said.
“Please don’t tell anybody,” the woman recalled him saying. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”
The women were silent, she said.
“What do I have to do for you guys to be quiet?” she said he asked.
Their demand: Put $500 in their jail commissary accounts and provide cigarettes and a lighter. The woman said Morseman put $300 into her friend’s account but gave her no money.
The woman said that on Monday her friend approached Lacome, an immigration attorney who frequents the West County Detention Center, and asked him whether the inmates could get in trouble for having sex with a corrections officer. Lacome said the women told him their story and gave him the evidence they had collected.
“I happened to have a mailing envelope in my bag so I handed it to her, because I didn’t want to touch it, and I said, ‘You put it in the envelope and then close the envelope and then hand it back to me,’ ” Lacome told The Chronicle. “So that’s what she did.”
Lacome said the women were initially unsure whether they should say anything, fearing what would happen to them. He said the following day, on Tuesday, the women consented to his reporting the assault to jail officials, and he turned over the evidence to sheriff ’s deputies.
That afternoon, the women were taken to the Contra Costa County Regional Medical Center, the county hospital in Martinez, where rape kits were administered, the woman said. They also were questioned by sheriff ’s investigators and moved to the jail in Martinez, she said.
Morseman could not be reached for comment. He has worked as a deputy for 2½ years, said Jimmy Lee, a spokesman for the Contra Costa County Sheriff ’s Office. He said Morseman is on administrative leave. The sheriff ’s office said it is seeking his dismissal.
Asked to comment on the allegations of rape, Lee said, “During the investigation, it does appear that the acts were consensual and that there was an exchange of funds with money placed into the accounts of the inmates.”
Lee said both alleged victims have “extensive law enforcement contacts for a variety of offenses that include fraud, drugs and theft.”
“Within 24 hours of learning of the allegations, we had interviewed the victims, collected and analyzed physical evidence, obtained search warrants, located the suspect, and made the arrest,” Contra Costa County Sheriff David Livingston said in a statement. “We are now moving forward with termination of employment and providing assistance services to the victims.
“The actions of this one deputy are criminal, offensive and do not reflect on the good work of the other one-thousand employees of the Office of the Sheriff. We will work closely with the District Attorney to see the deputy is held accountable and make every effort to regain the public trust we work so hard to earn.”