Woman says Missouri prison workers raped her. The state wants to send her back there
Karen Backues Keil is still suing the guard and the mental health counselor she says raped and sexually assaulted her at Chillicothe Correctional Center. Now the Missouri Attorney General’s Office is trying to send her back there.
Keil was released from Chillicothe in February 2017 after a Platte County judge reduced three of her six felony embezzlement charges to misdemeanors. By then she had already served six years of her maximum 15-year sentence in the state prison. There, she says, she was repeatedly raped by corrections officer Edward Bearden, and when she told counselor John Thomas Dunn about it, she says, he assaulted her.
Keil has since completed her parole and moved to Georgia with her family. But last year, then-attorney general Josh Hawley and assistant attorney general Gregory Barnes filed a petition asking the Missouri Supreme Court to restore her original sentence, saying the lower court judge had overstepped his authority.
Keil’s lawyer, Kent Gipson, formally responded last week, and the Missouri Supreme Court could rule at any time.
Gipson said the letter of the law may be on the attorney general’s side, but reimposing Keil’s sentence would re-traumatize her for no practical reason.
Gipson had written to Barnes months earlier asking him to withdraw the petition. He said it would be “bad optics” to send Keil back to Chillicothe, given that the attorney general’s office is defending Bearden in the civil suit as the state’s legal representative.
He also wrote it would be “gratuitously cruel” given the amount of time Keil has already served for a non-violent crime and given what she says she endured at the prison.
“In light of all these considerations, I would urge you to give serious thought to this proposal,” Gipson wrote. “I believe that your time and limited State resources could be better spent on other matters.”
Gipson said Barnes never responded to his letter but acknowledged receiving it during a court hearing.
A spokeswoman for Hawley, now a U.S. senator, referred questions to the Missouri Attorney General’s office. Barnes said via email that the office was transitioning to new attorney general Eric Schmitt, who was sworn in Thursday, and he wasn’t sure yet who was authorized to talk to the media.
Andrew Dziedzic, a spokesman for Schmitt, later said the office wouldn’t comment on pending litigation.
Gipson said Keil has already served enough time to be eligible for parole if her sentence is reimposed, but it could take months to get a parole hearing — months she would have to spend in the Chillicothe prison.
Keil is one of three former Chillicothe inmates who have filed federal lawsuits accusing Bearden of sexual assault in a supply closet, a locker room or other concealed locations at the prison. Bearden could not be reached for comment. A Missouri Department of Corrections spokeswoman said he no longer works for the agency.
Dunn was an employee of a state contractor that handles medical and behavioral health care for all of the Missouri prisons.
He pleaded guilty in April to improper sexual conduct with a prisoner, a felony. Keil’s attorneys have said those charges were related to another inmate. Dunn, who is from Kansas City, got a four-year prison sentence, but it was suspended. He’s currently on probation, and his attorney, Lance Sandage, said he no longer works at Chillicothe Correctional Center either.
Gipson said that even if Bearden and Dunn are no longer at Chillicothe, Keil is still concerned about going back there.
“Whether or not they’re still there, they’re going to put her back in a place where this all happened,” Gipson said. “I’m no expert on PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) but that would seem to me to be, as I said, gratuitously cruel to do that.”