On Tuesday, a Justice Center jail nurse in Syracuse, NY, was charged with engaging in sexual contact with a male inmate. The nurse, Beth A. Ours, 37, was arrested on Tuesday morning for third-degree criminal sexual act, and for engaging in act of oral sex with an inmate in jail.
Though the relationship continued even after the prisoner got out of jail, the twist to the story comes from the authorities holding, according to statute, that a prisoner is legally incapable of consenting to sex with a prison employee – so the sex was non-consensual, and punishable with up to four years in jail.
The penalties and stigma attached with non-consensual sex usually arise out of a person being victimized, and it does seem a bit difficult to visualize an adult male, 39-year-old, inside a state prison (not privately imprisoned in the woman’s cellar) being ‘victimized’ by blowjobs of a 37-year-old woman. He could have said no. But then again, he might have been afraid of complicating matters.
For Beth A. Ours, however, this one is surely hard to swallow.
According to records, Beth A. Ours is an employee of a Pennsylvania-based company, Correctional Medical Care Inc. It provides medical care staff to the Hillbrook juvenile detention facility, the Onondaga County Correctional Facility and the Justice Center.
Papers at the Syracuse City Court show that the 39-year-old victim reported to the medical pod for health problems while he was an inmate at the Justice Center in April. According to the written statement of the man given to Sheriff’s Detective William Gabriel, Beth was friendly from the first and the man said, “…we would smile at each other.”
Things progressed, and during later encounters, Beth Ours had asked the man (whose name is not published as he is a victim of non-consensual sex) to kiss her, and then started performing oral sex on him in jail. The blowjobs continued until the man was released from custody on May 21.
Beth A. Ours, apparently, had given the man her phone number and address, and the man began visiting Ours to continue the sexual relationship. The house where Ours lived was also shared by two other female employees who worked at the jail. The man admitted to have smoked crack cocaine with Ours at her home several times.
The man returned to Justice Center jail in September and the affair became public with Ours being open and casual, and kissing the man in front of other jail employees. The man has told the authorities that he is afraid that Ours would retaliate against him and his family. A hearing has been scheduled next week.