Prison employee sentenced to prison for having sex with inmate

(CNN) -- A former prison secretary has been sentenced to six months in federal prison for having sex with an inmate she was supposed to be supervising, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in the District of Colorado said Friday.

Janine Sligar, 47, of Wray, Colorado, was sentenced Thursday for sexual abuse of a ward. After serving her sentence, she will serve five years of supervised release and must register as a sex offender, spokesman Jeff Dorschner said in a news release.

Sligar, who must surrender to a facility designated by the Bureau of Prisons on March 2, did not respond to a telephone call to her home for comment.

She was indicted in July by a federal grand jury in Denver and pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in October.

According to the plea agreement, Sligar, a 14-year Bureau of Prisons veteran, said she and inmate Eric McClain met in February 2007, when he was assigned to clean her office.

"They began to have conversations and realized they had similar interests," the plea agreement said.

That summer, they initiated a sexual relationship that included 10 to 20 sessions of oral sex and sexual intercourse, ending in October 2007, it said.

The liaisons primarily occurred in a staff restroom in the housing unit at the Federal Prison Camp in Florence, Colorado, according to the agreement.

Sligar, who acknowledged having detailed her activities in a journal, said she obtained a cell phone with a non-local phone number so McClain could call her without raising suspicion and admitted she gave him contraband that included photographs with explicit sexual poses, the plea agreement added.

"Defendant also admitted using her cell phone camera to take graphic pictures of a sexual nature which depict defendant and this inmate," it said.

Authorities began investigating the incident after receiving a tip about the inappropriate relationship. They then learned that Sligar had changed the primary beneficiary on an insurance policy from her children to McClain. A subsequent search of her home turned up the journal and photographs.


Source: edition.cnn.com