by Chuck Sharman

On March 13, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida entered a $100,000 judgment against state Department of Corrections (DOC) healthcare contractor Centurion of Florida LLC and its gynecologist Ader Benoit, in a suit brought by five prisoners who accused him of sexually molesting them at Lowell Correctional Institution in Ocala.

The largest women’s prison in the U.S., Lowell was slammed in a December 2020 report by the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) for “fail[ing] to protect women prisoners from sexual abuse by staff” and “expos[ing] women prisoners to substantial risk of serious harm from sexual abuse”, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, June 2021, p.28.]

A total of 13 prisoners accused Benoit of sexually assaulting them between 2018 and 2021. That prompted investigations pursuant to the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), 34 U.S.C. § 30301 et seq., resulting in 10 reports from the prison’s PREA administrator to the DOC Office of the Inspector General (OIG). Of those, the OIG declined to further investigate one and deemed allegations unfounded in four other cases. The remaining five cases were deemed unsubstantiated because the evidence was inconclusive, the OIG said.

With the aid of attorneys from Florida Legal Services in Orlando and the Florida Justice Institute in Miami, a complaint was filed against Benoit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida in February 2024 by five prisoners: Ethel Anderson, Wanda Meadows, Jacqueline Luongo, Jennifer Johnson and Virginia Crowley. Pursuant to Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978), they also sought to hold Centurion liable for maintaining a de facto policy of tolerating his abusive behavior.

Finding the Monell claim “sufficient, although perhaps not great,” the district court denied Centurion’s motion to dismiss it on July 17, 2024. The case proceeded to Centurion’s motion for summary judgment the following year. But when the district court ruled on January 15, 2026, it again refused to let the firm off the hook.

The court agreed with Plaintiffs that a jury could find then-Vice President of Operations Vicki Love, who is currently Centurion’s Chief Operating Officer, was on notice of accusations against Benoit since 2018, when a Lowell psychologist advised that a prisoner had accused the doctor of taking sexual liberties while conducting a pap smear.

When prisoners then began refusing pap smears from Benoit, Centurion directed prisoners to undergo group informational sessions—at which some also reported his sexual abuse. Love even suggested to her then-superiors that Benoit might be relieved or moved. Yet Centurion failed to place him on leave until the prisoner’s suit was filed six years later.

For their part, Centurion and Love relied on the OIG findings, insisting that they would have acted sooner had the reports not cleared Benoit. But Plaintiffs pointed out that the reports did no such thing, and the district court agreed. “[N]othing in the record suggests that all the PREA reports were without merit,” the district court said, noting that “several” reports “were incomplete and never absolved or exonerated Dr. Benoit of any wrongdoing.

Moreover, the OIG relied heavily on the testimony of “chaperones” who accompanied the prisoners to appointments with Benoit. Since they were not medically trained, the prisoners argued, these chaperones couldn’t know whether his labors over their vaginas were necessary or perverted. Again, the district court took Plaintiffs’ side, finding “evidence that OIG’s investigations were not reliable” and agreeing that “it is a disputed issue whether Centurion knew there may be flaws in OIG’s investigations into PREA complaints.”

This left “genuine issues of material fact as to whether Centurion was on notice of the risk posed by Dr. Benoit once it received several PREA reports, and whether Centurion acted with deliberate indifference to the ‘known or obvious consequences’ of its unofficial policy to never act unless it received a substantiated or sustained PREA report.”

Accordingly, Centurion’s motion for summary judgment on those claims was denied; however, the district court granted the firm’s request to strike Plaintiffs’ claims for punitive damages, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit does not make available when government officials—or those acting in their stead—are sued in their official capacities, as Plaintiffs had sued Centurion. See: Anderson v. Centurion of Fla. LLC, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7744 (M.D. Fla.). Centurion then offered the judgment that the Plaintiffs accepted and the district court duly entered. See: Anderson v. Centurion of Fla. LLC, USDC (M.D. Fla.), Case No. 5:24-cv-00089.

Florida Legal Services attorney Andrea Costello told the Tampa Bay Times that she applauded the district court for not taking the OIG reports at face value, since “[y]ou have the Department of Corrections essentially investigating itself.” She further acknowledged some improvements that the DOC had made, including employing a female gynecologist at Lowell and placing surveillance cameras in areas where the prisoners reported abuse. But she remained critical of the use of chaperones, saying that is “a very wrong word to use for them.”

Benoit has denied the allegations against him and retains his medical license, though he has since left Centurion. Meadows, 53, was released in 2023, according to the DOC website. Anderson, 44, remains at Lowell. Luongo, 56, and Crowley, 49, are currently held at Homestead Correctional Institution, while Johnson, 40, is at Gadsden Correctional Facility.  

Additional source: Tampa Bay Times

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