WHEELWRIGHT – A Hueysville man became the most recent Otter Creek prison guard indicted on sex-related charges Tuesday.

A Floyd County grand jury returned an indictment on Charles Prater, 54, of Hueysville, on one charge charge of first-degree rape.

The Louisville Courier-Journal reported Wednesday the indictment charges that Prater raped an inmate at Otter Creek Correctional Center on June 13.

The indictment was sealed Sept. 1 by Floyd County Circuit Judge John David Caudill.

Prater had not been arrested following the indictment as of Thursday, according to officials with the Floyd County Detention Center.

Prater is the sixth Otter Creek guard to be indicted on sex-related charges since 2006. However, according to reports from the Associated Press, Prater’s is the first felony case brought against a guard at the Wheelwright facility. The five others have been misdemeanor cases.

On Aug. 31, as announced earlier that month, 128 female inmates from Hawaii were moved out of the medium-security prison. There had been 40 Hawaiian inmates removed weeks prior.

Before the removal of the Hawaiian inmates, Otter Creek had contracts to house 476 inmates at the facility.

Hawaii is now conducting its own investigation into the past cases, according to officials in that state, who have said if they were to contract to house their inmates in the future they would seek out prisons on the west coast.

Reports from news media in Hawaii now following the developments said in August that lawmakers there had been calling for the Department of Public Safety to return the prisoners for the past several years.

Authorities have investigated some two dozen claims of sexual abuse at Otter Creek in the past several years. Of these, seven involved Hawaiian inmates.

The Courier-Journal reported that in the last three years, at least five prison workers have been charged with having sex with inmates, while in 2007, one claim ended in the guard being fired and later convicted of a misdemeanor in connection to the allegation.