YOUNGSTOWN — The woman deputy who sued Mahoning County and three sheriff’s officials after she was raped while working at the county jail in May of 2022 has reached a $650,000 settlement with the county.

“We hope this resolution, along with the discipline of relevant personnel, will help our client as she moves forward and that county officials will ensure that nothing like this ever happens again,” said Subodh Chandra, whose Cleveland law firm pursued the resolution in U.S. District Court. His co-counsel was Martin Desmond, a former Mahoning County assistant prosecutor.

Chandra provided the dollar amount of the settlement Tuesday afternoon and filed a document in the case last Thursday with Judge John R. Adams in Akron, reporting that “following private mediation, this case has been settled.”

The filing requested until April 8 to file a notice of dismissal with prejudice, “to ensure sufficient time for bank clearance of funds.” With prejudice means the litigation is final and cannot be filed again.

Sheriff Jerry Greene could not be reached to comment on the resolution.

Rondell Harris, 35, formerly of East Cleveland, was sentenced to 26 to 31.5 years in prison May 1, 2023, in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court for committing the rape. He pleaded guilty to rape, kidnapping, tampering with evidence and disrupting public services.

The rape conviction resulted in a sentence of 11 to 16.5 years, and the kidnapping added 11 more.

The lawsuit named William Cappabianca, Kenneth Kountz and Joseph Hood as defendants, alleging that they did not take “reasonable and appropriate steps to secure an inmate whom they knew was dangerous.”

The original complaint stated that Greene demoted Kountz and transferred Hood to a different position outside of the jail shortly after the rape occurred. The victim has been named throughout the litigation with the pseudonym Mary Stone to protect her from being identified.

When the suit was filed in May, Gina DeGenova, Mahoning County prosecutor, said the matter had been referred to insurance counsel.

The lawsuit stated that Harris was brought to the Mahoning County jail from the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown in April 2022 and was in the jail’s medical unit at the time of the rape. The deputy reported inappropriate sexual conduct from Harris prior to the rape, as did other deputies, the suit alleged.

On May 5, 2022, the day of the rape, the victim “was assigned to guard the unit alone, as female deputies working in male units often were,” the suit states. “After Harris returned from his daily hygiene and shower routine, he refused to provide (the female deputy) with his food tray and hair clippers, forcing her to approach his cell to collect the items,” the filing states.

“As she grasped the food tray that inmate Harris was handing back to her, Harris grabbed (the female deputy), threw her radio in the corridor and pulled her into his cell,” the suit states. She fought Harris for four minutes, “but she was unable to hold him off,” the suit stated.

A response to the lawsuit filed by the county’s lawyers denied an allegation that Harris had engaged in a sex act in front of the victim while she guarded him in the medical unit prior to the rape and denied that several other deputies reported similar conduct in early 2022.

The county response denied “for want of knowledge” the details of the rape as alleged in the complaint.

The county response agreed that Sheriff Greene made reorganizational changes to the corrections division of the sheriff’s office and took “other corrective measures” after the rape.

It also stated that the victim had worked for the sheriff’s office more than 10 years at the time of the rape and had “no history of employment discipline at the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office.”