A woman inmate who was sexually assaulted by a civilian employee at the Federal Detention Center here last year has filed a $750,000 claim for damages against the federal government and her attacker, her lawyer said yesterday.

Attorney Eric Seitz made the comments after Markell Milsap, 36, an electrician at the FDC for 4 1/2 years, pleaded guilty to having sex with the inmate on Sept. 28, 2007.

Seitz asked that his victim not be publicly named because she was the victim of a sexual assault. She is identified in court papers only by her initials, J.P.

Seitz pointed out that a U.S. Appeals Court recently ruled that his client was being wrongfully held at the FDC at the time she was assaulted by Milsap.

The appeals court in May overturned a May 2007 decision by Hawai'i Chief Federal Judge Helen Gillmor, who ordered J.P. locked up because of alleged use of cocaine while on supervised release from federal custody.

The appellate court ruled that Gillmor improperly denied J.P. an opportunity to challenge the results of a drug test and ordered the inmate immediately released from custody.

Milsap admitted to U.S. District Judge Michael Seabright that he had sex with J.P. in an equipment storage closet at the FDC last September.

Milsap faces a maximum of 15 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 when he is sentenced by Seabright March 9.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Loretta Sheehan told Seabright that Milsap was supervising the work of three men inmates near J.P.'s cell when she complained to him that she had earlier received an electrical burn while operating a floor polisher.

At Milsap's request, a corrections officer unlocked J.P.'s cell so she could show him the burn on her torso and then Milsap took the inmate to the storage closet so she could show him the faulty piece of equipment, Sheehan said.

After Milsap asked the corrections officer to keep an eye on the three male inmates, the electrician held J.P. against a wall, "forced down her pants," and had sex with her, Sheehan said.

"He instructed J.P. not to say anything as he had a lot of friends who worked there," Sheehan told the judge.

Milsap told the judge, "We entered the storage room and we had sex."

Although Milsap agreed with Sheehan's statement that he forced J.P. to have sex with him, Sheehan said he may claim when he is sentenced that the sex was consensual.

"The government's position is that this was a forceful, nonconsensual act," Sheehan said.

Seitz pointed out that it's against the law to have sexual relations, consensual or not, with an inmate.

He said the federal government earlier settled another lawsuit, filed in 2006 by a woman inmate at the FDC who claimed that she had sex with a corrections lieutenant on multiple occasions from mid-2003 to July 2004.

Seitz represented the lieutenant, Michael Lacson, in that case. Lacson denied wrongdoing in that suit. He resigned from his job at the FDC in 2005.

Terms of the settlement are confidential. Seitz said the plaintiff in that case, a Nicaraguan woman convicted of drug charges, has since returned to Central America.

Seitz said yesterday that after the 2006 lawsuit was filed, the federal Bureau of Prisons should have taken steps to prevent any possibility of sexual contact between inmates and guards or civilian FDC employees.

"You send someone to prison to be punished, but not to be sexually assaulted," he said.

Seitz said he filed the $750,000 "tort claim" against the FDC and Milsap April 30. The government has 90 days to respond to such a claim, after which he can file a lawsuit on behalf of J.P.

"We don't expect them to respond, so we'll file a lawsuit on Oct. 30," he said.

FDC officials were not available yesterday afternoon for comment on the Milsap case or the 2006 civil suit.

Seitz said J.P. was convicted of bank robbery and firearms charges in 1998 and was sentenced to 77 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

Court records show that while on supervised release — the federal equivalent of parole — J.P. was twice returned to prison by Gillmor for conduct violations, once in 2005 and again in 2006.

In 2007, after being released from prison again, J.P. was accused of drug use. She denied the charge, arguing that tests showed the urine sample that had been tested had been "adulterated."

Despite evidence of problems with the results of the test, Gillmor denied J.P. the opportunity to dispute the results and returned her to prison for another eight months.

The appeals court reversed that ruling in a 13-page decision issued May 16.

The appellate panel said Gillmor concluded that J.P. "had no credibility because of a long history of dishonesty."

The appellate ruling said that at one point, Gillmor "exclaimed" that if J.P. "told me it was daylight, I would go open the window and check."

Prosecutor Sheehan yesterday declined to comment on the appeals court ruling.

Seitz called Gillmor's ruling "very regrettable."

Court records show that J.P., in addition to the bank robbery an firearms convictions, has also been convicted in state court of burglary, theft, forgery and drug paraphernalia charges.

In late April of this year, a Kane'ohe man obtained a restraining order against J.P., alleging that she threatened and harassed him.

"A relationship that (she) … desired didn't happen," the man alleged.