Nearly $528,000 Paid by Kansas Jail to Detainees Raped by Guards
Two suits filed by victims of guard rapes at Kansas’ Sedgwick County Adult Detention Center were concluded in April 2025, with three women taking $527,979.50 from Sheriff Jeff Easter for the sexual predations of a pair of his guards.
The saga of one hapless jailer, Dustin Burnett, added its next chapter on April 23, 2025, when County commissioners voted to approve a $375,000 payment to settle claims filed by two former detainees whom he raped at the county lockup in July 2022. For that he was criminally charged and convicted of unlawful sexual relations with detainees and official misconduct, both felonies, earning a 68-month sentence in state prison in March 2023; by that time he had also been fired for dereliction of duty after turning a blind eye while other detainees punched a hole in a jail window with a stolen pipe and held a sheet outside, collecting contraband cellphones and marijuana delivered there by unincarcerated accomplices, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, May 2023, p.63.]
The two women victimized by the former guard filed separate suits in July 2024 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, accusing him under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 of violating their Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Their complaints began by questioning why Sheriff Easter hired Burnett, then 22, in January 2022, two years after he was drummed out of the U.S. Army for possessing child pornography and shoplifting personal lubricant from a PX. The complaints also referenced a report filed under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in early July 2022 by a third unnamed detainee, who claimed that Burnett attempted to solicit oral sex from her.
Eight days later, on the morning of July 17, 2022, he was the lone staffer guarding the housing pod when he found Elizabeth A. Ponce in Isabel D. Martin’s cell and sodomized both. Violently forcing them to perform oral sex him, he grabbed each by “the back of her head, causing her to gag, choke and struggle to breathe,” the complaints said. Returning that afternoon, Burnett again sodomized Martin—who avoided having intercourse by lying that she was menstruating—and vaginally raped Ponce, as his duty belt “bang[ed] against the bed, making enough noise that he held it to keep it quiet,” the complaints recalled. He then withdrew from Ponce and ejaculated on her back, weirdly “smear[ing] the ejaculate around with his hand” before telling her to shower and redressing to leave.
Ponce saved her underwear in a plastic bag as evidence. Later, when she and Martin went for “tampons and a razor, Deputy Burnett used the opportunity to ‘apologize’ and shared pictures of his girlfriend and child,” the complaints continued. But both added that Burnett reportedly solicited sex from a fourth detainee that same day, which helps explain his dereliction of duty when the smuggling plot unfolded under his nose, and he dismissed the perpetrators with a bland warning, “don’t get into trouble.”
After the suits were filed by Burnett’s victims, the parties proceeded to reach their settlement agreements, paying $200,000 to Ponce and $175,000 to Martin, including costs and fees for the attorneys representing both, Andrew W. Hutton, J. Darin Hayes and Matthew M. Dwye of Hutton & Hutton in Wichita. See: Ponce v. Sedgwick Cty., USDC (D. Kan.), Case No. 6:24-cv-01124; and Martin v. Sedgwick Cty., USDC (D. Kan.), Case No. 6:24-cv-01125.
Two Other Guards Arrested, Another Suit Tried
The complaints included a damning list of similar incidents at the jail, including the December 2019 arrest of guard Shawn McGonnigil for stalking an unnamed coworker; the July 2020 arrest of guard Timothy Baskerville on eight counts of sexual relations with detainees; and the May 2021 arrest of guard Tony LoSavio, also on eight counts of sexual relations with detainees.
KSN in Wichita reported that Baskerville, 33, was sentenced for the sexual battery of two unnamed jail detainees on January 20, 2023, when he was ordered to serve a 12-month probated sentence that would balloon to 28 months in prison if he violated its terms. KWCH in Wichita said that LoSavio, 41, was sentenced to 31 months in prison, also for sexual battery of two unnamed jail detainees, on April 20, 2022. It was unclear what became of the charges against McGonnigil.
One of LoSavio’s victims, Kenna Rothermel, also filed a § 1983 suit in the district court. But the County was able to get claims dismissed against him in his official capacity on May 17, 2023, arguing that his conviction proved he had stepped outside of that role to rape her. See: Rothermel v. Bd. of Cty. Comm’rs of Sedgwick Cty., 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86757 (D. Kan.).
Rothermel described a harrowing experience on May 1, 2021, when LoSavio stood in the door of her cell with his penis out until she performed oral sex on him. But the district court was not convinced that this implicated the County and dismissed it from the suit on February 27, 2024, also declining to dismiss claims against Easter. See: Rothermel v. Sedgwick Cty., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 33308 (D. Kan.).
The case proceeded to a trial on June 27, 2024, and the jury the next day returned a verdict against LoSavio but in favor of Sheriff Easter. Considering Rothermel’s injuries minimal, jurors awarded her nominal damages of $1. A request for a new trial or to alter or amend the damages award was denied by the district court on February 27, 2025. See: Rothermel v. Easter, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 35419 (D. Kan.).
However, Rothermel fared better with her motion for legal fees. Though the district court said that she didn’t conduct the proper analysis to recover costs, she was awarded $152,979.50 on April 30, 2025, in fees for her attorneys, J. Craig Shultz and Michael J. Shultz of Shultz Law Office, PA in Wichita. See: Rothermel v. Easter, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 82075 (D. Kan.).
Additional sources: KSN, KWCH
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Related legal cases
Ponce v. Sedgwick Cty
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (D. Kan.) |
| Level | District Court |
Rothermel v. Easter
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 82075 (D. Kan.) |
| Level | District Court |
Martin v. Sedgwick Cty
| Year | 2024 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (D. Kan.), Case No. 6:24-cv-01125 |
| Level | District Court |
Rothermel v. Sedgwick Cty
| Year | 2024 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 33308 (D. Kan.) |
| Level | District Court |
Rothermel v. Bd. of Cty. Comm’rs of Sedgwick Cty
| Year | 2023 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86757 (D. Kan.) |
| Level | District Court |