click to enlarge - Vermont Department of Corrections
- Southern State Correctional Facility
A mental health counselor who worked in a Vermont prison is accused of having repeated sexual contact with an inmate, state police said.
Victoria Calogero, 31, was cited for sexual exploitation of an inmate. She's due to appear in a Windsor County courtroom on February 25.
According to police, Calogero worked at the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield during 2017 and 2018. Authorities opened an investigation into her conduct in September 2019, Vermont State Police said in a press release Wednesday.
The news comes about a month after
Seven Days published an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, drug use and retaliation at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, Vermont's only prison for women. The report sparked a probe of the entire prison system and ultimately led to the resignation of Corrections commissioner Mike Touchette.
On Wednesday,
Seven Days reported that 95 state workers, including 35 Corrections employees, spent time on paid administrative leave during the year ending on December 4, 2019.
click to enlarge - Vermont State Police
- Victoria Calogero
Calogero worked as a contractor, and was not a Vermont state employee, according to interim Corrections Commissioner Jim Baker. She no longer works in the prison system. He said the Corrections Department reported Calogero to state police six or seven months ago.
She holds an active license as an independent clinical social worker, though she'd been under investigation by the state's Office of Professional Regulation since June 2019. The case status is listed as "pending-hearing," records show.
Calogero is not the first worker at the Southern State Correctional Facility to be accused of sexual misconduct. In November, a former corrections officer pleaded guilty to one charge and no contest to another stemming from allegations of a sexual relationship with an inmate,
the Valley News reported.