About This Case:
Hundreds of women who passed through the La Plata County Jail were subjected to degrading and unlawful strip searches. Each woman was forced to remove her clothing, endure invasive physical searches, and have the entire ordeal recorded on video. Those recordings were then stored—not deleted, even when no contraband was found—and made freely accessible to senior jail officials.
At the center of this abuse was Commander Edward Aber. Despite a prior history of sexual harassment allegations in law enforcement, Aber was placed in charge of the Jail and its database of strip search recordings. During his tenure, Aber openly exploited his position. He repeatedly accessed videos of women being strip searched for his own gratification, encouraged male subordinates to join him, and engaged in disturbing misconduct with female inmates—visiting their cells, taking them out of the jail on errands, and shutting his office door behind them. His predatory behavior was no secret; it was carried out in plain view of jail staff. On one occasion, an employee even walked into Aber’s office to find a woman under his desk.
For years, no one in La Plata County government intervened. The Sheriff failed to train, supervise, or discipline Aber and other staff. Jail employees looked the other way. It was only when fourteen female jail employees came forward to report that Aber had sexually harassed them that investigators began examining his history of accessing the women’s strip search videos. By then, the damage was done. The Jail’s system had already purged much of the evidence of Aber’s misconduct, but what remains makes clear that Aber’s abuse was enabled by institutional failures at every level.
The women who endured this trauma deserve justice. Our firm, RATHOD | MOHAMEDBHAI LLC, along with the help of John Baxter of JOHN BAXTER ATTORNEY AT LAW, has filed a lawsuit on behalf of dozens of survivors and a broader class of women whose identities are not yet known. We are proud to partner with the Rocky Mountain Victim Law Center to ensure that our advocacy is holistic, trauma-informed, and centered on the dignity of the women we represent.
