IDABEL — A former McCurtain County Jail employee has been charged with sexual battery for alleged sexual liaisons with a thrice-convicted violent felon who was incarcerated there.
Hannah Elizabeth Forte, 21, of Fifty-Six, Arkansas, is free from custody on $25,000 bond and working in Melbourne, Arkansas, court records indicate. Her next appearance in McCurtain County District Court on the felony charge is scheduled for Aug. 10.
Forte worked at the McCurtain County Jail from Feb. 15, 2022, to April 6, 2023, a probable cause affidavit written by Officer Audreyauna Childers relates.
Jail Officer Bryan Mattair reported on April 28, 2023, that while he was reviewing outgoing mail from the jail’s male inmates, he noticed one letter that was sent from inmate Dustin Sinner to “EJ Sinner,” which was found to be a pseudonym for Hannah Elizabeth Forte.
Mattair notified his supervisor, James Johnson, who “began to review video visitations” between Dustin Sinner and “EJ Sinner,” who was identified as Hannah Forte.
Officer Taylor Knowles reviewed cameras in the jail’s K Block, where Sinner was housed, and discovered that shortly after 4 a.m. on March 28, Forte entered K Block to awaken the inmates for a head count. After unlocking the door of Sinner’s cell, he and Forte were observed having an “encounter” under a stairwell that lasted for several minutes.
Knowles said that while reviewing all camera footage on days when Forte worked, she and Sinner had 28 more “similar intimate encounters,” each lasting about 4 minutes.
Forte also began video chatting with Sinner on April 19, when she was no longer employed at the McCurtain County Jail, the affidavit relates. All of those conversations were “viewed and downloaded,” Childers reported. During those conversations they discussed her pending divorce, the affidavit shows.
At the time of his assignations with Forte, Sinner, 33, was in the Idabel jail awaiting disposition in a felony case, records of the Oklahoma State Courts Network indicate.
Sinner was accused in 2017 of breaking into the home of a Broken Bow woman, beating her with a bat and stealing her car. After repeated delays and continuances in the case, first-degree burglary and auto theft charges were dismissed and he pleaded guilty in McCurtain County District Court on May 9, 2023, to a single count of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. He was sentenced to serve 80 months in prison, concurrent with a Choctaw County conviction.
Sinner was convicted by a jury in Choctaw County District Court in 2018 of a first-degree robbery that occurred in 2017 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
He pleaded guilty in 2008 in McCurtain County to domestic abuse: assault and battery.
The next year he pleaded guilty, again in McCurtain County District Court, to having committed an assault while masked or disguised. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison but was released in 2015 after serving five and a half years.
Forte’s case is the second time this year the McCurtain County Jail Trust has been beset with issues that burst into public view.
Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix was among several county officials – including McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy, County Commissioner Mark Jennings, and Sheriff’s Department Investigator Alicia Manning – who were secretly recorded making violent and racist remarks during a county commissioners’ meeting in March.
The discussions included murdering the publisher of the McCurtain Gazette newspaper and his son and burying their bodies, reminiscing about lynching Black people, and joking about a woman who was killed in a house fire.
The Jail Trust opted May 2 to place Hendrix on leave rather than fire him. Jennings resigned, but Clardy remains Sheriff and chairman of the Jail Trust.