Former correctional officer found guilty of raping women in prison

INDIANAPOLIS – A former correctional officer at the Indiana Women’s Prison has been found guilty of abusing his authority to sexually assault and rape inmates while working at the prison.

Gbenga Afolabi was arrested by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police and subsequently charged with 19 misdemeanors by the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office in November 2021.

On October 31, 2024, a jury found Afolabi guilty of five counts of sexual misconduct, two counts of harassment, three counts of official misconduct and three counts of rape, after a two-day jury trial.

Afolabi is expected to be sentenced for his crimes on November 11, 2024.

Which led to Afolabi’s arrest

In July 2021, Indiana Department of Correction investigators learned that a woman in prison had filed a report that a correctional officer had forced her to have sex with him in the staff bathroom on two separate occasions, court documents show .

After learning of this report, investigators discovered that Afolabi had forced four women to have sex with him multiple times over four months.

Investigators began reviewing security camera footage at the jail, which showed Afolabi entering the staff bathroom several times with two different women for several minutes before they were allowed to walk out when the hallway was empty, hitting them several times entered a third woman’s cell and a fourth woman into a washroom, according to court documents.

After investigators obtained the footage of Afolabi’s possible misconduct, they began interviewing the women seen in the footage.

Investigators initially interviewed the woman who filed the report against Afolabi, and she explained to investigators that their sexual relationship was not consensual and that she was initially afraid to report him after he threatened to retaliate against her, according to according to court documents.

“No one would believe an inmate more than an officer,” she told investigators, court documents show.

Her mother urged her to press charges after learning about the rape and the possibility that she could be pregnant, according to court documents.

After filing the report, the woman was sent to hospital for a sexual assault examination, where Afolabi’s DNA was present in the examination results.

Investigators then interviewed the other women seen in the security footage, who were initially reluctant to talk about Afolabi for fear that he or the department would retaliate against them.

But after some reassurance, the women told investigators what had happened.

A woman told investigators she kept some of Afolabi’s semen in a plastic bag after she was raped in her cell, court documents show.

Investigators collected the evidence and sent it to the state police laboratory for DNA testing. Tests later showed it belonged to Afolabi.

Investigators confront Afolabi

On July 19, 2021, investigators confronted Afolabi and asked if he had taken any of the women to the employee bathroom.

Afolabi initially denied the accusation, but when investigators informed him of the security footage, he changed his statement, court documents show.

Afolabi explained that he had taken the women to the restroom to “get information” about things going on in the department, according to court documents.

Afolabi then told investigators that he did not have a sexual relationship with the women and that they could collect his DNA to prove his innocence, court documents show.

The DNA samples collected from his saliva, the sexual assault kit and semen collected from one of the women showed “very strong support” that the DNA came from Afolabi, according to court records.

Contact IndyStar reporter Noe Padilla at [email protected] or follow him at X @1NoePadilla.