By Jordan Baker

Copyright brisbanetimes

It’s a commandment among NSW’s prison guards; don’t dob in a colleague or you’ll be known as a dog. So when one of Sarah’s fellow corrective officers, Scott Hawken, now a convicted rapist, turned up at her house, allegedly put his hands down her pants and sexually assaulted her, she didn’t say anything – at first. She worried her life would be “made hell” at work, and she needed the job. Corrective Services was a “boys club”, she said in an affidavit, and “he was one of the boys”.

This was 2013. Over the next decade, at least eight other guards would allege that Hawken had raped, touched or sexually harassed them – some at work, some when he turned up at their homes, some over social media. Several ended up reporting his behaviour. But the retaliation from the “boys club” was swift; one told this masthead she had hot coffee thrown at her, her car tyres were slashed and prisoners were fed lies – such as that she’d shredded their mail – to turn them against her.

As the complaints rolled in, Hawken was moved around prisons “like a paedophile priest” – a phrase used by several people who knew him or were his victims. Speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs, they say little, if anything, was done to protect female staff from Hawken’s sleazy behaviour or the boys club’s retribution. In 2022, he invited himself over to yet another colleague, Clare’s house. She went to the police; last year, a jury found he raped her.

Another of Hawken’s alleged victims, Helen, says women such as Clare may have been spared their ordeal if Corrective Services had acted to protect its staff from a man well known for sexually inappropriate behaviour, and if it had done more to crack down on the protection racket within its ranks. “The culture towards women in Corrective Services NSW,” she told this masthead, “is indescribable.” Says another: “In NSW prisons, blue is more dangerous than green [blue is worn by guards, green by prisoners].”