An attorney who represents multiple women who say they were sexually assaulted by a Rikers Island corrections officer is asking the Department of Corrections to review how it responds to civil sexual assault claims, saying some women might have avoided harm if officials had investigated sooner.
Attorney Anna Kull says her client, Karina Collado, filed a civil lawsuit in May 2023, accusing Rikers Island correction officer “CO Martin Jr.” of sexually assaulting her while she was detained at the jail complex about three years prior.
But even though there was only one correction officer with that surname working at the jail at the time, the Department of Corrections did not suspend Anthony Martin Jr., and he was allowed to continue working as an officer, according to an agency spokesperson and previous reporting by Gothamist.
About a year later, Martin Jr. was arrested by the NYPD and accused of a new attack — this one luring a woman to his home and sexually assaulting her. A jury last week convicted Martin Jr. of sexual abuse in that crime, but acquitted him of two rape counts, a spokesperson for the Queens District Attorney’s Office said.
Kull told Gothamist that at the very least, the agency should have looked at the names of the officers included in civil lawsuits and checked that against their current roster of employees, she said.
“I think this demonstrates that there was not a priority of maintaining safety of currently incarcerated women perhaps because the allegations by formerly incarcerated women were not taken seriously,” Kull said.
Martin Jr.’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
The alleged sexual abuse by Martin Jr. at Rikers came to light after the passage of the Adult Survivors’ Act prompted a flood of lawsuits by people who said they were assaulted by staff at the jail complex.
The law, passed in 2022, opened a one-year window for people to sue for sexual assaults that otherwise would have been barred by the statute of limitations. An investigation by Gothamist in 2024 found that 60 percent of the cases filed in New York City’s state supreme court dealt with a pattern of alleged sexual assault at the jail complex that goes back decades.
In the criminal case, prosecutors said Martin Jr. lured a 20-year-old woman to his Queens home after posing as a filmmaker and telling her she could be cast in a new television show. Martin Jr. sexually abused her after she showed up to his home expecting to meet other producers and potential cast members, the jury found.
He was suspended without pay after his arrest in April 2024.
Prosecutors secured the indictment against Martin Jr. more than a year after former Rikers Island inmate Karina Collado accused him of sexually assaulting her at the jail complex in 2020.
In her lawsuit, filed in May 2023, Collado said Martin Jr. brought her to a storage closet at the jail complex and assaulted her by restraining her while forcing his fingers in her vagina.
Collado reported the assault after being transferred to a correctional facility north of New York City, but her claims were never properly investigated, Gothamist previously reported.
In addition to Collado’s claims, three other women have filed civil lawsuits that accused an officer with the last name Martin of assaulting them while they were detained on Rikers, Gothamist reported.
In a statement, Department of Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie said Martin Jr. would be fired by the agency.
“We will not tolerate such behavior from any individual who tarnishes the solemnity of the oath of office they were sworn to uphold. In light of Tuesday’s guilty verdicts, the department will move forward with termination,” the statement said.
