Five women incarcerated at Lowell Correctional Institution have settled a federal lawsuit accusing a prison gynecologist of sexually assaulting them during medical exams, ending a case that a judge had already ruled had enough evidence to go before a jury. Dr. Ader Benoit and his employer, Centurion of Florida, agreed to pay the women $100,000 total, and both denied any wrongdoing as part of the deal.
The women alleged in their federal lawsuit that Benoit fondled, penetrated, injured, and demeaned them during gynecology appointments at the Marion County facility between 2019 and 2021, according to the Tampa Bay Times, which did not name the five plaintiffs. Benoit was the only gynecologist serving Lowell at the time, and he worked for Centurion of Florida, the private contractor hired by the state to provide prison medical care. Andrea Costello, one of the attorneys who represented the women, along with lawyers from the Florida Justice Institute and Florida Legal Services, said the settlement raises public consciousness about suffering inside institutions. The attorneys represented the women free of charge.
U.S. District Judge William F. Jung, presiding over the case in the Middle District of Florida, rejected Centurion's motion for summary judgment before the settlement was reached, finding that enough evidence existed for a jury to weigh. Jung wrote that the defendants' denial did not establish that Centurion or its employees did anything wrong, nor did it establish that sexual abuse had occurred — leaving the underlying factual dispute unresolved even as the case ended in a monetary judgment. Federal court records show the five women filed their complaint on February 23, 2024, in Ethel Anderson et al. v. Centurion of Florida LLC and Ader Benoit, case number 5:24-cv-00089, alleging Eighth Amendment violations against both the contractor and the physician.
Warnings That Went Unheeded, According to Court Records
Court records reviewed by the Tampa Bay Times indicate Centurion was aware of allegations against Benoit as early as 2018. Vicki Love, who served as Centurion's vice president of operations from 2016 to 2021, knew about assault allegations against Benoit and received reports from the prison inspector general, and she suggested at one point putting him on paid leave or transferring him. In December 2018, an official named Justin Clary sent an email describing an inmate's experience with Benoit, in which the inmate reported that he had used tools and gauze during an appointment in a manner that felt wrong to her. Centurion took no action after receiving the reports, per the newspaper's account, and Love also emailed human resources about Benoit that year.
The allegations against Benoit eventually resulted in ten Prison Rape Elimination Act reports. Of those, the Florida Department of Corrections Office of Inspector General deemed four unfounded, suspended five for lack of evidence, and declined to investigate one allegation altogether. Centurion has maintained it would have acted, and would have fired Benoit, had the allegations been substantiated — a position the company's attorney, Peter Bartoszek, reinforced in court by casting doubt on the women's claims. Judge Jung, however, found that the inspector general's investigations were not reliable, according to the Tampa Bay Times report.
Some women treated by Benoit refused to attend their appointments altogether. Centurion responded by requiring women to attend group refusal meetings meant to educate them on the necessity of routine medical screenings, and an official named John Lay wrote a script for inmates who declined pap screenings and breast examinations from Benoit. Not every account of Benoit was damning: Chanel Hopkins, who testified in the case, described him as particular and professional and said he told her he would not put his medical license at risk. Female chaperones were present during the gynecology appointments, though Costello said those chaperones had no medical training. Benoit formally resigned in June 2024, about three months after the federal complaint was filed, and Centurion had already suspended him that April. His Florida medical license remained active as of August 2026 with no listed disciplinary record.
A Facility With a Long History of Federal Scrutiny
Lowell Correctional Institution opened in 1956 as Florida's first women's prison, built with a design capacity of 1,456 inmates, but it has since grown into the largest women's prison in the United States, housing more than 2,200 women. The scale of the abuse allegations at Benoit's hands is not an isolated episode for the facility. The U.S. Department of Justice found in a 2020 report that Lowell experienced severe and prevalent sexual abuse and had failed to sufficiently investigate complaints, identifying 161 official investigations or complaints of staff-on-prisoner sexual abuse at the prison between 2017 and 2019 alone, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Federal investigators concluded that state corrections leadership had documented a pattern of staff sexual abuse at Lowell dating back to at least 2006 without correcting the systemic supervisory breakdowns, as reported by WUSF, though Florida corrections officials at the time publicly contested those findings.
That federal report spurred Florida lawmakers to introduce bills in early 2021 proposing an independent volunteer Citizens Oversight Council and a body-camera pilot program at Lowell, but the major independent oversight legislation stalled in the state legislature, according to Prison Legal News. Prisoner rights advocates have continuously pointed to the lack of independent external monitoring as a primary vulnerability at the facility. Since the alleged abuse, Lowell now has a female gynecologist, and the prison has installed cameras in places where the abuse occurred.
Centurion's Reach — and a Separate Fight Over Its Records
Centurion of Florida, a joint venture between Centene Corporation and MHM Services, entered the state's prison system in February 2016 under an emergency contract that replaced Corizon Health, which had canceled its $1.1 billion state contract early amid widespread complaints and litigation, per Corrections1. Centurion has since expanded into a multi-hundred-million-dollar statewide vendor and now manages healthcare for roughly 89,000 incarcerated people across Florida prisons, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. A February 2026 Florida Senate staff analysis noted that Centurion remains the state's comprehensive prison medical provider, operating under a legal framework that caps compensation to outside emergency community health providers at 110% of Medicare allowable rates, per the Florida Senate.
Even as it settled the Benoit case, Centurion is fighting a separate transparency battle. Civil rights groups filed an amicus brief in Florida's Fifth District Court of Appeal on January 16 arguing that Centurion functions as a state agency subject to Florida's Public Records Act when it comes to civil lawsuit settlement agreements, per the Southern Poverty Law Center's court filing. That fight over disclosure of Centurion's out-of-court settlements remains unresolved, underscoring a broader tension between how quickly individual cases like Benoit's can close and how slowly systemic accountability measures at Lowell have moved.
