Former corrections officer found guilty of raping women in prison

INDIANAPOLIS — A former corrections officer at an 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 Indianapolis Metropolitan Police and then charged with 19 offenses in November 2021 by the Marion County District Attorney’s Office.

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

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

What led to Afolabi’s arrest

According to court documents, in July 2021, Indiana Department of Corrections investigators learned that a woman in prison had filed an allegation that a corrections officer forced her to have sex with him in a staff restroom on two occasions.

After learning about the report, investigators discovered that Afolabi forced four women to have sex with him several times over a four-month period.

Investigators began by reviewing surveillance footage from the prison, which showed Afolabi repeatedly entering the staff restroom with two different women for several minutes before allowing them to leave when the hallway was empty, entering a third woman’s cell several times and accepted According to court documents, the fourth woman ended up in the sanitary checkpoint.

Once investigators received video footage of Afolabi’s potential misconduct, they began interviewing the women seen in the video 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 court documents.

“No one was going to trust the inmate more than the officer,” she told investigators, according to court documents.

According to court documents, her mother encouraged her to come forward after learning about the rape and the possibility that she might be pregnant.

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

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

But after some calming, the women told investigators what happened.

According to court documents, one woman told investigators she saved some of Afolabi’s semen in a plastic bag after she was raped in her cell.

Investigators collected evidence and submitted it to the state police laboratory for DNA testing. Testing later revealed that it belonged to Afolabi.

Investigators confront Afolabi

On July 19, 2021, investigators met with Afolabi and asked if he took any of the women to the staff restroom.

Afolabi initially denied the charges, but once investigators told him about the surveillance video, he changed his story, according to court documents.

Afolabi explained that he took the women to the restroom to “get information” about what was going on in the department, according to court documents.

Afolabi then told investigators that he had not had sexual relationships with women and that they could collect his DNA to demonstrate his innocence, according to court documents.

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

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