CLARKESVILLE — A former Georgia corrections officer was sentenced Monday to 25 years in prison and decades more on probation after admitting he engaged in sex acts with three incarcerated women, including one who was so severely injured that she required surgery.
Originally charged with raping two of the women, Cameron Larenzo Cheeks, 25, pleaded guilty to three counts of sex with people in custody along with three counts of violating his oath as an officer. Assistant District Attorney Rosanna Szabo of the Mountain Judicial Circuit said prosecutors offered Cheeks a plea deal because the women did not want to testify about their experience.
The charges stemmed from brazen encounters Cheeks had with inmates in his first months on the job in 2022 at Lee Arrendale State Prison, the largest facility for women managed by the Georgia Department of Corrections.
Prosecutors in Habersham County told Judge William Oliver that Cheeks told one of the women in October 2022, “You make me want to f--- you,” then called her to the chow hall, pulled her into a hallway and took off her pants. He had a sexual relationship with another woman throughout the month of November. And in December 2022, prosecutors said, he slipped an explicit note to a third woman before taking her to the showers, pushing her against a wall and penetrating her.
Credit: Habersham County
Credit: Habersham County
The victim of the third attack was hurt so badly she required a partial hysterectomy, according to a lawsuit she filed earlier this year.
Cheeks was fired by the GDC after his arrest in December 2022. He has been held without bail in the Habersham County jail without bond ever since, thus reducing his prison time by two years. Following his sentence, he is to serve 35 years on probation.
As he agreed to impose the sentence worked out with prosecutors, Oliver admonished Cheeks, saying he’d let the former officer keep a photo of his young son with him in prison despite his new status as a sex offender only if “every time you look at that picture, you apologize to him for the man that you turned out to be.”
Oliver asked Cheeks if he wanted his son to grow up to do what he did. “You’ve got a while to think about that,” the judge said after Cheeks indicated he didn’t want that to happen.
Cheeks, from Stone Mountain, began working as a correctional officer for the GDC in July 2021 after previously being employed by Hertz in Atlanta as a lot coordinator, according to his personnel file. He started at Hancock State Prison in Sparta but lasted only four months, resigning, he stated, because he could not find housing.
Eight months later, he was rehired by the GDC, this time to work at Lee Arrendale, and there, after three months on the job, he crossed the line with female inmates.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Two of Cheeks’ assaults occurred in Lee Arrendale’s A Unit, where some of the state’s most vulnerable female prisoners are housed.
Assigned to A Unit in November 2022, he had multiple encounters with a woman who was there for protective custody after she was threatened by gangs.
The victim in that case told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Cheeks was generally the only officer assigned to A Unit. Cheeks began flirting with her, she said, and ultimately asked for sex.
Sometimes, she said, they would go into vacant rooms that usually house prisoners with severe mental health issues. Those rooms have cameras, yet that didn’t deter Cheeks, she said, likely because, as the only officer in the unit, he knew no one would be monitoring them.
She said she at first denied to investigators that she had sex with Cheeks but changed her story when she was told there was video. Even then, she refused to portray him as a predator, a decision she now regrets, she said.
“The statement I gave the investigators was, ‘Oh, I wanted it more than he did. It was completely consensual,’ yada, yada, yada,” she said. “I really made myself look bad, like I was a predator. But in fact he preyed on me. He used me. He manipulated me. And it was completely wrong.”
Under state and federal laws, any sexual contact between staff and prisoners is a criminal act.
The December 2022 case, initially charged as rape, also took place in A Unit. In her lawsuit, the victim contends that Cheeks told her it was time for a shower, then forcibly raped her, causing her to require the partial removal of her uterus.
The lawsuit, filed this past February in federal court, asserts that there were other officers in the unit at the time, and it’s likely they knew Cheeks had assaulted other prisoners.
Through her attorneys, the victim declined a request to be interviewed by the AJC.
The October 2022 case took place elsewhere in the prison. It also was initially charged as a rape. Attempts by the AJC to contact that victim were unsuccessful.
Cheeks’ case adds to a growing list of concerns about the lack of qualified people working at Lee Arrendale, and specifically in A Unit. The unit houses 70-80 women, many of whom have been classified by the GDC as severely mentally ill.
As detailed by the AJC last month, three residents of A Unit have been killed in the last two years, all strangled to death. Each victim was classified by the GDC as Level IV, meaning they were so impaired that they couldn’t be housed in the prison’s general population.
Two of the killings occurred within eight days of each other earlier this year. Sherry Joyce, 61, was killed on April 27 and Hallie Reed, 23, on May 5. The same prisoner, 22-year-old Jeanni Geuea, has been charged in both cases.
