Class Action Lawsuit Alleges Grainger County Jail Officer Forced Female Inmates into ‘Sex Shows’

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Tennessee’s Grainger County, its sheriff and two corrections officers are among those facing a proposed class action lawsuit that alleges multiple female inmates at the Grainger County Jail have been subjected to sexual abuse, coercion, intimidation and exploitation. 

The 57-page lawsuit alleges defendant Travis Hank Davis, an officer at the jail, had for months in 2021 sexually abused and exploited multiple female inmates “for his personal sexual pleasure and gratification,” including by forcing the plaintiffs and other inmates to “strip naked and either engage in forced-sex acts or witness them.”  

The suit alleges that Davis, from at least February 2021 and continuing until roughly April 18 of that year, repeatedly forced female inmates to participate in “sex shows” inside their jail cells, with Davis “routinely orchestrating, announcing, and then directing” the “shows” via the jail’s intercom or loud speaker. The lawsuit alleges Davis “watched and masturbated” from within the Grainger County Jail’s control room, known as “the bubble.” 

In the process, Davis “used and abused his position” and flagrantly violated the constitutional rights of “innumerable” female inmates, the complaint alleges. The lawsuit charges that the overtness and frequency of the alleged “sex shows” meant the incidents were “hardly a secret” at the jail, yet Grainger County Sheriff James Harville and jail administrator Chris Harville “failed to investigate, discipline, question or stop” Davis’s alleged sexual abuse and degradation of female inmates until he was fired around April 24, 2021. 

“As of April 12, 2021, there is an ‘open criminal investigation’ regarding Officer Davis’s conduct,” the case says, stating that Davis was terminated for “violating the [c]ode of [e]thics.” 

According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs’ complaints about Davis’s alleged conduct and requests to transfer to new cells were ignored, which the case says led the individuals to believe Davis was “untouchable” at the facility. The complaint alleges the defendants “decidedly abandoned” female inmates who entered Grainger County Jail and allowed them to be “repeatedly oppressed, sexually abused, coerced, and intimidated for months by Officer Davis.” 

“Grainger County’s wanton indifference to the safety of female inmates violated the Plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches, their Eight Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, and their Fourteenth Amendment right to bodily privacy and freedom from bodily intrusion, among other violations of law,” the case alleges. 

The filing contends that the alleged oppression, sexual abuse, coercion and intimidation at Grainger County Jail were the result of the facility’s decision to permit a single male officer to keep watch over female inmates and failure to develop protocols to adequately monitor and protect inmates housed in the jail’s female pod. The plaintiffs and other inmates have suffered and continue to suffer “debilitating psychological trauma, permanent and catastrophic psychological injuries, severe emotional distress, permanent physical ailments associated with psychological injuries, pain, humiliation, loss of enjoyment of life, and loss of quality of life,” the lawsuit alleges. 

The lawsuit looks to represent all inmates who, from May 4, 2020 to April 24, 2021, were incarcerated in the female pod of the Grainger County Jail and were subjected to sexual abuse, coercion or intimidation by Davis. 

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