ILL TREATMENT OF PRISONERS

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27752, 1 September 1955, Page 11

ILL TREATMENT OF PRISONERS

CHARGE BY RELEASED WOMAN IN U.S. (Rec. 11.30 p.m.) CHICAGO, Aug. 30. A woman just released from the Chicago county gaol said todav that male guard? beat women n - oner® during a disturbance yestercLy. Officials denied it. * The woman, Mrs Ruth O’Neal, spoke at a press conference arranged by Chief Justice Richard Austin of the Criminal Court, to whom she went after completing a nine-month term for obtaining money under false pretences. “I have come to the press and Judge Austin because there are 19 girls who desperately need medical attention after they were beaten up on two occasions yesterday by 12 male guard* in the county gaol,” Mrs O’Neal said. She said that in the aftermath of a brawl between two women prisoner* yesterday, the 48 inmates began banging their tin cups and demanding to see the warden, Mr Irwin Blazek, about loss of privileges. Mrs O’Neal said 12 male guards entered the women’s day room. "Fists started flying, and there were girls all over the floor,” she said. She said all clothing was torn off two or three women. The guards hit women with closed fists, knocking them to the floor, and dragged them to their cells. She said she stopped to help a woman lying on the floor and was hit on the back of the neck by a guard. Last night the women banged on their cell floors with their shoes, demanding medical attention for the injured prisoners, she said. Mr Blazek promised to take three injured women to the doctor, but instead locked them in three segregation cells in the basement. She said one woman had been strapped to a bed in the “hole" —segregation cell—for six weeks.