InvestigateWest

**Editor’s Note: The following article discusses incidents of sexual assault. Reader discretion advised.**

It was November 2023, in a staff break room at South Idaho Correctional Institution, when prison guard Blas Covarrubias unbuttoned Michele’s pants and sexually assaulted her, she told an investigator. She was one of six inmates that the corporal — known as “Covi” to the women he was entrusted with protecting — was accused of abusing in 2023 and 2024.  

Eight months later, Michele was sexually assaulted again. This time by someone else: a correctional officer named Justin Tillema, a witness reported.

Content Warning: The following article discusses themes of sexual abuse and assault.
For the first time since InvestigateWest exposed widespread sexual abuse by Idaho prison staff, the director of Idaho’s prison system laid out plans to increase protection for inmates and accountability for those accused.

Those plans include the Department of Correction working with lawmakers to change a state law that makes it difficult for prosecutors to criminally charge prison workers who take advantage of inmates. Department of Correction Director Bree Derrick also said the department will review its public records process, implement ways to ensure inmates know their rights, and update its prison sexual misconduct policies — though she did not give specifics about what those policy changes would look like.

Content Warning: The following article discusses sexual assault.
For nearly a year and a half, Andrea Weiskircher has been pleading with prison officials, state leaders and law enforcement to look at the evidence. 

In the summer of 2024, Weiskircher accused five Idaho prison workers of sexually abusing her while she was incarcerated. She had sexually explicit texts, Facebook messages and emails from correction officers and a prison delivery man, Weiskircher told investigators. Any sexual contact between an inmate and prison staff — even voyeurism and harassment — is prohibited by federal standards designed to protect people in custody who are vulnerable to sexual extortion by workers.

Content Warning: The following article discusses sexual assault.

During a yearlong investigation, current and formerly incarcerated women told InvestigateWest how they were raped in janitor’s closets, employee offices and at work sites where cameras couldn’t see. They said guards exploited closed-door disciplinary hearings to coerce sexual favors. Some women refused to file reports against the correction officers who harassed, groped and assaulted them for fear that they would be written up, placed in segregated housing, or chastised by other inmates and staff. And when they did speak up, their complaints were frequently ignored and investigations were sloppy.

Editor’s note: The article discusses sexual assault.

At a medium-security prison in the desert outside Boise, two Idaho State Police detectives begin to interview corrections Sgt. Brian Klingensmith. All three officers dedicated their lives to keeping criminals in line, but now Klingensmith is accused of raping one. 

In January 2018, a woman imprisoned at South Idaho Correctional Institution outside Boise was taken to a medical clinic to get abnormal cervical tissue removed. A guard named Ricardo Quiroz — known among inmates as “Corporal Q” — was her only escort, and he let her sit up front in a white van.

Afterward, still in pain and bleeding from the procedure, she and Quiroz walked back to the van. This time, she tells InvestigateWest, Quiroz told her to go all the way to the back. She complied. He followed her, telling her to take off her pants, says the woman, who asked to be referred to by her middle name, Lynn.

“There’s certain times where you fight, and there’s certain times that you don’t, and when you’re an inmate …,” Lynn trails off.