Exploited for 100 Years: Appalachia's Fight for Justice | Episode 160

Exploited for 100 Years: Appalachia's Fight for Justice | Episode 160

Chapter Markers
0:01 Sextortion in Appalachia
16:49 Legal Advocacy in Appalachia

Esteemed attorney Ned Pillersdorf joins us to peel back the layers on a troubling case of exploitation in Letcher County, Kentucky. Women, already caught in the whirlwind of the region's drug epidemic, allegedly faced sexual extortion within an ankle bracelet program, highlighting glaring vulnerabilities in the justice system. With Ned's expertise, we confront the uncomfortable truths about how cash bond systems and drug court dynamics leave low-income women particularly susceptible to these abuses. This episode isn't just a recount of events; it's a call to arms for reform within the Appalachian judicial landscape, as we scrutinize the increasing challenges faced by female defendants.

Beyond individual cases, we broaden our scope to persistent injustices within correctional facilities, marked by rampant sexual harassment. We explore the relentless volunteer legal efforts aimed at vindicating 4,000 former clients of the notorious Eric C. Conn, illustrating the intertwined narratives of legal advocacy and corruption. Political intricacies come to the forefront with figures like former Senator Tom Coburn and the hopeful leadership of Martin O'Malley at the Social Security Administration. This episode underscores the vital role of media and legal warriors in championing the rights of the underprivileged, setting the stage for change and justice in Appalachia.

• Examination of Sabrina Adkins’ sextortion case
• Discussion on the role of ankle bracelets and cash bonds
• Insights into the vulnerability of women in the legal system
• The importance of advocacy in effecting change
• An exploration of the evolving dynamics in Appalachian courts
• Calls for awareness and collective action against exploitation

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Chapters

• 0:01 Sex Extortion in Appalachia
• 16:49 Legal Advocacy in Appalachia

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to another episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I am your founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, justin Allen Hayes. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for your support. If you can like, share, subscribe, we would greatly appreciate it. This episode, as all our episodes, are really special because we're trying to share the message, get information, education out to as many people, to help as many people across here in the eastern part of Kentucky, but across the United States, because there are some activities that are going on and have been going on that really shouldn't be going on.

Speaker 1: 1:03

So I'll jump into a little bit of his bio. So, attorney Ned Pillersdorf. His tagline is we represent the underdogs. Started out as a public defender in the early 80s and he's been protecting the rights of the underdog ever since. He's been involved in over 400 jury trials and he's also the recipient of one of many awards In 2001, the Criminal Defense Attorney of the Year from the Kentucky Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He has three daughters, sarah, nancy and Samantha Pillarsdorf, and is married to Judge Stumbo.

Speaker 1: 1:49

His areas of expertise in his law firm span from criminal law, civil rights, personal injury, property injury, employment law, injury, employment law and the way like our parallel paths really really met as, as you may know, our viewers, our listeners here, very, very close to where we're filming this.

Speaker 1: 2:18

And still, ohio judge Hoover was recently disbarred from the Ohio Bar Association for activity of charging clients who are unable to pay exorbitant amount of fines to be able to remove their ankle bracelet to help their their case. And that was awful hearing about that, especially as, as local as it was, you know, fines were talking, you know, three thousand dollars to, uh, basically pay to play, and it's a form of extortion. So, our guest attorney, ned pillers door. So our guest Attorney, ned Pillarsdorff, his parallel path from ours of Voices Over Voices is sextortion, where there were sexual acts that were taking place in a judge's chambers, in a judge's chambers, and there were obviously victims who were and are been victimized from these types of activities. And so we want to really shed a light, as he has on you've probably seen on Vinny Palitan closing arguments. Vinny Palitan Investigates and it's really an honor and privilege to have you on.

Speaker 2: 3:54

So thank you, Ned, for joining us today. I appreciate you having me.

Speaker 1: 3:58

You bet, can you talk just a little bit about the underdog, what that means to you and what that means to maybe somebody who doesn't know that, and then we can dovetail into?

Speaker 2: 4:16

the federal case and work our way that way. I think you touched on it. I've been primarily a criminal defense civil rights lawyer here in Appalachia for 43 years. The Judge Stumbo you mentioned is actually. I'm also known as Mr Janet Stumbo. I married a coal miner's daughter and Janet was the first woman elected to the Kentucky Supreme Court and she spent 26 years as an appellate judge and my practice primarily has been criminal law, civil rights.

Speaker 2: 4:49

I assume the reason you have me on is the ongoing situation in Letcher County, which I mean. The facts are something John Grisham could never have imagined. Just to kind of bring your listeners or viewers up to speed, a couple of years ago a woman, sabrina atkins, came in to see me, um, and she alleged she was in an ankle bracelet program and that the bailiff slash ankle bracelet administrator was sexually extorting her. She alleged the allegations that the sex occurred in the judge's chambers. Probably the worst part, they actually pimped her out the deputy sheriff and made her have sex with somebody else Once again part of the extortion, or sex extortion, whatever you want to call it. In other words, you don't have to pay the 85 a week if you agree to have sex, and obviously these are low-income women. So we filed a sweeping lawsuit. I'm a little uncomfortable talking about specifics of the lawsuit is pending right, but it's fair to say it was a sweeping lawsuit where we allege that the the sheriff knew or should have known this was going on. That involved more than one woman and after we filed the lawsuit there was no doubt the sex was going on. There were text messages from the gentleman who ran the ankle bracelet program that left no doubt that it was improper sexual relationship going on and the attorney general's office I don't usually praise them but they did get involved and they did a lengthy interview with Ms Atkins and it went on for four hours and, frankly, the light bulb went on in my head as my client articulated and at one point she told the Attorney General investigator. She said you don't understand the women in the ankle bracelet or drug court programs. They are so vulnerable to extortion. And eventually the bailiff drug court administrator he wasn't indicted pled guilty to multiple felonies registered as a sex offender, et cetera, to multiple felonies registered as a sex offender, etc. And we know that at least three women were sexually extorted.

Speaker 2: 7:10

The bigger point I want to talk about and I'm a little uncomfortable talking about the pending civil rights action. You know what's dramatically changed in Appalachia in my 43 years is. 43 years ago, if you were to walk into an Appalachian criminal court you would not see a woman. My clients then were men fighting, burglarizing, shooting, whatever. If you walk into an Appalachian courtroom today you will see lots of women I want to say almost the majority. They're in jumpsuits.

Speaker 2: 7:46

How do we get them out of jail? Um, I may not be too popular with the various local circuit judges and district judges I practice in front of me, but we have a terrible cash bond situation. Floyd County, the county I'm in, is one of the poorest counties in the nation. I think at one point we had the highest juvenile poverty rate in the nation and the judges typically set cash bonds that these people can't post. And they're women. They're caught up in the drug culture, addicts. How do you get them out of jail? Well, the two ways we get them out of jail is we have had a rapid I would say exponential expansion of drug court programs, which is a wonderful thing. Secondly, we have the ankle bracelet situation. That's there for a couple of reasons. One, the high cash bonds. Two, it gets them out. Many of these women have kids and are worried about the relationship with their kids and three. It gets them out of these overcrowded, terrible county jails.

Speaker 2: 8:52

Now the ankle bracelet program. There's a phenomenon going on and I'm sure it's not limited to East Kentucky. There are these ankle bracelet entrepreneurs for lack of a better word who are scrambling in to sign these ladies up. And I say ladies, it's 50-50, but it's the ladies I'm primarily concerned about. And it's an unregulated industry. But it is expanding all over the place and they contact the judges and you want to get in with the judge or whoever does the assigning to get an ankle bracelet. It's $85 a week typically. That's a lot of money. That's what? $360 a month, if my math is right. $185 a week typically. That's a lot of money. It's like $360 a month if my math is right.

Speaker 2: 9:41

And the issue has come up is how vulnerable these women are to sexual extortion. And the reality is this If you are caught up, especially in an ankle bracelet program I think less so in a drug court you know as a fact a simple phone call to a judge or a court administrator that hey, you violated a term of the ankle bracelet, you tested positive, you were offline, you missed an appointment, you are back in jail and these women know they simply won't be believed if they say, hey, I was extorted for sex. What I'm trying to say is bigger picture is I don't think what happened in Letcher County is an isolated incident. I do think it's really good that we do have bankable bracelet programs. I certainly wish the prices would come down and I certainly wish we could do something about the cash bonds. Now, the drug court programs they are generally supervised by the judges and some judges do a good job and some judges don't do such a good jobs.

Speaker 2: 10:46

But the bigger issue and one of the reasons I've agreed to talk today is you know, the world has changed. Um, who's in an Appalachian court? If you walk in an Appalachian court today criminal court you'll see women, drug charges. How do we get them out of jail? And if the only viable option is an ankle bracelet, I'm almost at the point in my law practice where I almost feel like I need to Mirandize my clients. Yeah, hey, if you go into an ankle bracelet, these are unregulated. We don't know who these Administrators are. We don't know who the administrators are hiring. But you could end up like Sabrina Atkins.

Speaker 1: 11:30

Yeah, that's Incredibly unfortunate. So she came into your office to share what had occurred. That's kind of what got things started out. Then you investigated and brought the lawsuit in that way. So she's really brave for standing up for herself and women and girls uh to to do that, because that's that's hard to do, and then to talk about it and, uh, you know, have it be publicized, that's uh that for anybody, uh, but especially somebody who's he's going against the grain, a little bit of saying, hey, this is what's going on and this needs to be looked at.

Speaker 1: 12:17

And, like you said, it was verified. You know text messages and other communications and I believe the cameras in Judge Mullen's chambers was another way to kind of verify Sabrina's story and the things were going on that weren't supposed to. As opposed to somebody just coming in and trying to make a buck, and sometimes individuals in different cases, they want to get their name out there, they want their 15 minutes of fame. That this was corroborated, it is legit and the amount of really direct evidence is is probably what really helped her and and in the case and other individuals. Have you seen more individuals coming out and talking just about the topic of sextortion since Sabrina came out and talked?

Speaker 2: 13:28

Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 2: 13:30

What's happened interestingly is the chronology of the appointment, you know. First we filed a civil rights lawsuit and the fact that the Attorney General's office came in and paid attention to us, which sometimes is unusual. When I file a civil rights lawsuit against a public official, often Attorney General's offices are protective of public officials. In this case, I give them high praise. Not only did they interview sabrina, they did other investigation and they indicted a local uh bailiff ankle bracelet administrator in his local court popular guy uh and they indicted him. They went to what's called the criminal mediation. They worked out a plea agreement. He pled guilty and is a convicted felon.

Speaker 2: 14:24

The. Where the case, you know, had this unbelievable John Grisham-like turn was we named Sheriff Sean Mickey Steins he's known as Mickey Stein, the sheriff who was the bailiff angle bracelets superior and where this jettisoned into the national news is we actually my co-counsel and I were present for his deposition. My co-counsel conducted it. It was on a Monday. It was a weird I don't know if weird is the right word interesting deposition. Usually when you sue a public official they're gregarious and combative and he was acting for lack of a better word oddly and this was Monday and then, thursday, the sheriff we deposed clearly you can see it on video went in and fired, I don't know, four or five, six shots and shot the judge. In the lawsuit was that Sabrina? Two of the sexual encounters, if you will, occurred in the judge's chambers. So we had this astonishing situation. I don't think it's ever happened before that a sheriff walks in and shoots a judge and kills him, shoots a judge and kills them.

Speaker 2: 15:52

So you know, maybe we're being opportunistic, but it's given me a chance to talk about, you know, the plight of these women in drug court's ankle bracelet and how the world has changed. I'm clearly a strong advocate of expanding drug court programs. Get some out of jail and if they complete it, we can get a clean criminal record, which is important. The ankle bracelet is another option. Get some out of jail. But then we've had this, I guess, side effect or symptom or concern about, uh, the ankle bracelet. Um, and, like I say, they are intra entrepreneurs that were buzzing around the criminal courts in appalachia. Hey, I give me some women, I can sign up and make 85 a week. Uh, put them on an ankle bracelet.

Speaker 2: 16:49

And is this an isolated incident? I don't think so for a minute. You know what I've learned in my criminal practice is the highest rates of sexual harassment actually occurs in corrections. I've done other cases where I've represented. You generally get these Harvey Weinsteins of the world who won't stop at one woman and I've done highly publicized cases and you get this one predator and it especially happens in corrections criminal law cases more than any other workplaces. I think there are statistics out there. I think I was interviewed by NPR at one point after we won a case against the Little Sandy Prison in Kentucky on behalf of four women who were sexually harassed and ironically, literally the day I was participating or sitting in on Sheriff Stein's deposition, I was settling a case where another gentleman pled guilty to having sex with three women in the Pike County Jail. So it's not unusual and frankly a lot of my criminal practice is representing women in drug cases and we have a methamphetamine epidemic and walk into a criminal court and you'll see plenty of women.

Speaker 1: 18:19

Wow, it's incredible. And for our viewers and our listeners, letcher County is a smaller county. You know, letcher County is a, let's say, like a small, smaller county, smaller population, so it's even more, I think, more, let's say, more apparent, homier type of neighborhood and where everybody knows everybody, versus New York City or Chicago, where there's millions of people and so there's a lot of things going on in bigger cities. But for something like this to have occurred, it really does a shine of light that, like you said, it's not an isolated incident. And to be able to represent somebody you know as a, as a turning so we talk a little bit about like the emotional side of things as well Does it make you? What gets you up every day? You're helping people, you're advancing, you're helping clients. Is that something that has really kept you in the practice? For somebody who's looking at going into a law practice or go for their Juris Doctorate degree, what gets you up in the morning and come in and do what you do?

Speaker 2: 20:01

One of the things I like about being an attorney in Appalachian. I generally represent a poverty population a poverty population the cases that keep me going and it is stressful and tumultuous representing the kind of cases I do. There's two reasons I think you might want to take a case. One is to help the people in front of you. The other is is there a bigger issue behind there? And to me the bigger issue was is what Sabrina said when she was given a profit at the Attorney General's office that this is a lot bigger than me.

Speaker 2: 20:36

You know for your listeners and viewers, if you Google Ned Pillarsdorf and you want to learn about poverty in Appalachia, apple TV has a documentary. Appalachia. Apple TV has a documentary called the Big Con. It's four hours. I recommend it. I'm in a lot of it the last two hours, but it really gives you an understanding of Appalachia.

Speaker 2: 21:07

The Big Con if I just digress for a minute we had a lawyer named Eric Kahn probably had one of the biggest social security practices in the country. What did? Massive advertising, I think. In the documentary he said he had more name recognition than the president here in Appalachia did his advertising. What we didn't know was that he was for seven years bribing a social security judge and unfortunately the social security Security Judge and unfortunately the Social Security Administration decided to target almost 4,000 of his former clients for really unfair, repressive hearings Kind of a throwback to the days of Joe McCarthy the 4,000 clients, I guess the politics where they were accused of being in on the scam. And I spent now almost 10 years I've had my law practice and I've also been one of the members of the volunteer representing almost 10,000, 4,000 former con clients. It's been, by the way, it's been the largest volunteer legal effort in the history of this nation. That's not me saying that, that's the Washington Post. But you know I learned a lot and once, once again, certainly I wanted to help the former con clients who were being, uh, mistreated. But there was a bigger political issue. I mean it all started out with the politics of a former oklahoma senator, tom colburn, influential member of the senate, who without any basis decided to smear and paint 4,000 of my neighbors as criminals. They were all in on the scam, he said. And we've been battling the Social Security Administration for almost 10 years. There's good news.

Speaker 2: 22:45

One of the most unreported stories out here is President Biden, I guess in his last year in office, appointed Social Security Administrator Martin O'Malley, former governor of Maryland Social Security Administrator, and that's where a documentary and a podcast like this made a difference. Apple TV heavily promoted the big con and when I first started hearing from newly appointed Commissioner O'Malley, remember he just got an office this year 2024. His first text message to me was he had questions about the big con documentary and why were those people being treated unfairly? And then, as a result, we could never get anywhere with the Social Security Administration to get them back down. By the way, even after we battered them in the federal courts, we wanted every federal appellate court having their mass hearings guilty to proven innocent hearings of these former con clients who are completely innocent. That never slowed them down the bureaucracy.

Speaker 2: 23:51

But kind of what I learned in the bigger picture was you know, we were invited to go up to Baltimore to meet with Commissioner O'Malley and the first thing I said to him is you know, I got this nice award from the American Bar Association, which I really didn't care about me. What I told O'Malley was the thing about my American Bar Association award was, for the first time, uh, the american bar association called the former con clients, victims. And I told o'malley your agency has treated him as hans criminal co-defendants and uh, it was kind of a tense meeting. Uh, commissioner o'malley did mention that hey, andy called me yesterday, andy being uh governor, andy beshear, who I have high admiration for. Uh, he, I mean he, he's been battling for the con clients ever since he was attorney general. Actually, uh, con clients don't have any money, don't have political action committees, but andy's been a great ally.

Speaker 2: 24:50

And then afterwards O'Malley took action and he canceled about more than a thousand of these oppressive hearings. I had frightened neighbors scared to go to their mailbox are they going to be put through a hearing and have their social security benefits pulled, lose their health insurance? And he canceled tens of millions in overpayments. Um, and I told the apple tv podcast I think it was a six-hour apple tv podcast called the big con and the documentary. They made a difference and it's kind of one reason I'm talking to you today. Yeah, you know, sometimes what keeps me going in my law practice is can I make a difference for more than the people in front of me? You always want to try to help them. But you know, one of the reasons I like being a lawyer is. Maybe you can make a difference for something bigger than the people in front of you.

Speaker 1: 25:57

Yeah, yeah, I wholeheartedly agree is I spent a lot of my life being all about myself and what can I do for myself. And now, at this point in my life, it's to your point. It's not just what we can do now, but how can we affect and help people on a bigger scale. And that really keeps going if we, you know, keep taking steps, whether they're baby steps or bigger steps, we start working towards that. Uh, you know, I look at you know when, when I'm no longer on earth, that there will will still be things that I helped a lot along the way and and that helps make me feel good on the emotional side of continuing to go on Like why do this, why go to this event, why interview this guest or what have you?

Speaker 1: 26:54

And those things are, when they're kind of bigger than yourself, it really it really hits home and I, uh, I commend you on on that, because I think there's a lot of people in the world that are just about them themselves and what, what they can do, and well, that's good at times where we need to focus on ourselves, but when we like said, when you're not just helping the clients, that there is the bigger picture that he said you know, with the, the sextortion, that this is going on not just here in Letcher County, it's going on a lot of places and it needs to have kind of not just the flashlight shown on it but, you know, a spotlight to be able to have unfortunate victims be able to step forward and reach out to attorneys like yourself to be able to help them.

Speaker 1: 27:54

And especially, knowing that you're in it for the big picture too, not just for them In Sabrina's case, probably helped make her feel at ease a little bit more than maybe she may have been, knowing that you're behind her on a small picture but then the big picture and to really put that spotlight on is huge. Do you have time to stick around for another 30 minutes? Another episode.

Speaker 2: 28:28

Yeah, I do. I don't know. I got much more to say. I've been pretty talkative yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:33

Okay, yeah, well, yeah, so we'll do this. We'll close out this episode part one, and our viewers, our listeners. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the voices voices TV show and podcast with our guest attorney, ned Pillersdorf. We'll come back next week and you'll see part two. So until next time, I am founder executive director of voices for voices, justin Allen Hayes, and please be a voice for you or somebody in need.