For nearly four years behind bars at the Golden Grove Women’s Prison in Arouca, former inmate Nadia Pooran says she endured a relentless cycle of sexual exploitation, abuse of power, and systemic neglect that reduced her to what she describes as a personal “sex slave” for a senior prison officer. Her decades-long fight for accountability has now ended with a landmark High Court ruling ordering the state to pay her roughly $2.4 million in compensation for the horrors she experienced during her incarceration. Pooran, who has since sought asylum in the United Kingdom, laid out the full details of her ordeal in a sworn legal affidavit, pulling back the curtain on widespread failings and abuse inside one of Trinidad and Tobago’s maximum-security correctional facilities.
Pooran first entered the prison system in April 2003, remanded into custody after being charged with murder. Five years later, she pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter and was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor, a sentence that was ultimately cut short on appeal. She secured her release on April 28, 2016, but the trauma of her time in custody has followed her for years beyond the prison walls. Beyond the sexual abuse she alleges at the hands of both staff and fellow inmates, Pooran detailed a pattern of abysmal living conditions that defined her incarceration: severe overcrowding that left cells packed far beyond capacity, unsanitary conditions where human waste was left uncollected, rampant vermin infestations, nutritionally inadequate food, and near-total lack of access to basic medical care.
At the center of her allegations is Katyann Grant, a female prison officer who Pooran says repeatedly targeted her for sexual exploitation over multiple years. Pooran’s affidavit claims that the facility’s power structure left incarcerated women completely vulnerable to the whims of uniformed staff, who could summon inmates to private areas at any time with no oversight, opening the door to routine verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. Pooran documented three specific, brutal incidents that marked the progression of her abuse, starting in mid-2009. The first occurred around 4 a.m. on August 9, 2009, when Pooran was called out of her cell to clean Grant’s dormitory. When she arrived, she found Grant naked, who she says taunted Pooran about her sexuality, pressured her to engage in sexual activity, and physically grabbed her in an aggressive attempt to force compliance.
When Pooran reported the incident to the prison’s senior superintendent, she says no investigation was ever launched. Instead, the abuse escalated. Pooran was publicly labeled a lesbian and a prostitute by other staff, who used the slander to dismiss all her future complaints out of hand. A second, more violent incident followed just two months later, in October 2009. Pooran was summoned to Grant’s room to fix an overflowing toilet. When she finished the work and informed Grant, she found the officer naked. Grant allegedly pulled Pooran inside the room, sexually assaulted her, forced her to perform oral sex, and threatened to make her life “miserable as hell” if she resisted. Pooran says the entire assault was recorded on Grant’s personal cellphone. “I was crying for part of the time as I felt disgusted, ashamed and humiliated,” she stated in her affidavit, noting that Grant repeated her threats to destroy her life in prison if she told anyone about the encounter.
When Pooran refused to stay silent and protested the ongoing abuse and unwanted sexual advances, she says the prison administration punished her rather than investigating her claims. On or around December 22, 2009, she was placed in solitary confinement and put on a restricted diet for 10 days as retribution for her complaints. Even in isolation, Pooran says Grant continued to harass and threaten her, visiting multiple times to pressure her to comply with her sexual demands. During one overnight visit, Grant brought white lingerie for Pooran to wear, and forced her to pose for explicit photos on her cellphone over the course of two hours, threatening to extend her isolation sentence if she refused to cooperate. By this point, Pooran wrote, the prison administration’s complete refusal to address her complaints left her with no way out: “I was therefore reduced to being Officer [Grant’s] sex slave.”
Pooran alleges the abuse, harassment, and abuse of power continued for roughly four years before she was able to escape the cycle following her release. She subsequently filed a major civil lawsuit against the state of Trinidad and Tobago, alleging systemic negligence and responsibility for the abuse she endured at the hands of a correctional officer. After reviewing the evidence and testimony, the High Court ruled in Pooran’s favor, finding that her account of the abuse was credible, and ordering the state to pay the $2.4 million in damages to compensate for the trauma and harm she suffered. Pooran is now building a new life in the United Kingdom, where she has been granted asylum, and her landmark case has drawn renewed attention to longstanding allegations of abuse, neglect, and sexual exploitation inside the Golden Grove Women’s Prison.