Late-night sex assaults. Invasive searches. The 700+ women alleging abuse at Rikers.

Jeny remembers trying to hide under the rough, jail-issued sheets when the Rikers Island guards would come for her in the middle of the night.

She said they called out the names and ID numbers of women in the room, where she slept on a makeshift pillow of bundled clothing. Then, she said, the correction officers ordered the women to rise from their beds before leading them down a series of long hallways in silence.

“We just had to be kind of like soldiers, walking to where they were leading us,” she said. “Once we passed through a door, everything was pitch black.”

Jeny said the officers took the women to a dark room with benches, which was illuminated only by the occasional glow of a flashlight. They ordered the women to kneel and be quiet before forcing them to perform oral sex, she said. Jeny added that one officer would not let her stop, even as cracks formed on her lips and even as she told him he was hurting her.

“I just cooperated with what I needed to do,” Jeny said. “When something is happening and you don’t have any control of the situation, the more you fight back, the worse it can become for you.”

Jeny sued the City of New York more than eight years after her release, alleging that it failed to protect her while she was in its custody.

Her case is one of 719 civil lawsuits analyzed by Gothamist that were recently filed against the City of New York and the NYC Department of Correction under the Adult Survivors Act, a state law that opened a one-year window for sexual assault survivors to file claims outside of the statute of limitations. That window closed in November.

Although the law was propelled by the #MeToo movement and not written specifically to address abuse behind bars, nearly 60% of the 1,256 lawsuits filed in New York City’s supreme courts during the temporary filing period describe assaults against people held on Rikers Island.