Former Western North Carolina corrections officer charged in inmate sex case

A former Western North Carolina corrections officer is facing a felony charge after investigators said he had sexual contact with an incarcerated woman in his custody at the Western Correctional Center for Women in Black Mountain.

James Allen Mathes, 66, of McDowell County, was accused of committing a sex act with a prisoner and was charged with felony sexual act by a government or private institution employee with a person in custody. He was being held in the Buncombe County Detention Center on no bond, according to a broadcast report.

The case took on added weight because the investigation reportedly started only after a Prison Rape Elimination Act complaint was made to prison administrators. The warden then referred the complaint for criminal prosecution, a chain of events that raises sharp questions about how quickly misconduct is recognized and escalated inside a correctional setting where staff control nearly every part of daily life for inmates.

North Carolina law makes it a Class E felony for a person having custody of a victim, or an employee or agent of an institution with custody, to engage in vaginal intercourse or a sexual act with that victim. The statute also says consent is not a defense. That legal standard matters in a case like this because the alleged victim was serving a seven- to 10-year sentence at the Black Mountain prison and depended on staff for safety, movement and basic supervision.

The North Carolina Department of Adult Correction’s PREA Office says the agency has a zero-tolerance policy for undue familiarity or personal misconduct between employees and offenders, and says every employee is vital to preventing and detecting such conduct. In Western North Carolina, those protections carry particular weight at the Western Correctional Center for Women, one of only a few women’s prisons in the state.

The Black Mountain facility opened on July 7, 2008, after women were transferred there from the Black Mountain Correctional Center for Women on the former Swannanoa Valley Juvenile Detention Center campus. Its role in housing women, along with the vulnerability inherent in a custody relationship, has made allegations inside the prison especially sensitive for Buncombe County and surrounding communities.

The case also lands against the backdrop of a strained western prison system. The Department of Adult Correction said about 400 offenders were evacuated from the Western Correctional Center for Women and the Black Mountain Substance Abuse Treatment Center for Women on Sept. 30, 2024, and later said more than 2,000 people were moved from five western North Carolina prisons during the Hurricane Helene response. For facilities already operating under stress, the Mathes case puts renewed attention on whether internal reporting systems can stop abuse when the accused is the person in authority.