WHEELWRIGHT – Putting to rest rumors that it might happen, 40 female inmates were removed from Otter Creek Correctional Center at Wheelwright Monday amid allegations that some were sexually abused by guards.

A newspaper in Hawaii, the Honolulu Advertiser, reported Wednesday that most of the 128 woman inmates remaining at the prison will be sent back within the next month.

The newspaper reported that state lawmakers in Hawaii had been calling for the Department of Public Safety to return the prisoners for the past several years.

“It’s good news. The legislature has been pushing for this for a few years now,” state Sen. Will Espero told the Advertiser Wednesday.

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 Louisville 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.

Clayton Frank, Hawaii’s Director of the Department of Public Safety, said he had not been aware that abuse against an inmate was considered a misdemeanor crime in Kentucky and that the move to have the inmates brought back to the island would result in overcrowding and also cost the state more than before.

It costs $38 a day to keep a woman inmate at Otter Creek, while in Hawaii that cost is $86 a day, so Frank told reporters Wednesday that his department would seek to most likely place the inmates at some future point in prisons on the Mainland, but would concentrate on prisons on the West Coast.

When staff at the Advertiser contacted Louise Grant, vice president of marketing and communications for the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the Nashville-based parent company of Otter Creek, Grant said she had not heard of the state’s decision to remove the inmates.

“We’ve been proud of the relationship we’ve had with Hawaii for more than a decade and have been proud of our service for the women in our care,” she said.

Frank said that many inmates after hearing of the move said they would rather stay at Otter Creek, even going so far as to sign a petition at the prison to see that move stopped.

One of those pointed out in the Advertiser’s article, Pania Akopian, had herself reported being sexually assaulted by an Otter Creek guard this past June.

The prison just launched an initiative this week to hire in more female guards, holding three separate job fairs and offering signing bonuses of $1,000 to females hired as officers at the facility.