Justice Fellowship President Pat Nolan has been appointed to the National Prison Rape Reduction Commission, set up by Congress to investigate and eradicate sexual assault in prisons across the United States. Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert announced the appointment on March 10.

“It will be a privilege and a blessing to represent Prison Fellowship on this Commission,” said Nolan, a former California legislator who served time in prison himself. Justice Fellowship is the arm of PF dedicated to criminal justice reform.

“Pat will do a superb job,” said Prison Fellowship Chairman Chuck Colson. “This appointment is a trophy of God’s grace, showing how He can use a man humbled by his time in prison to help achieve great reforms in our criminal justice system, compelled by the compassion of Christ.”

The setup of the nine-member Commission was mandated by the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, passed unanimously by both houses of Congress last summer and signed into law by President Bush. Prison Fellowship, as part of a broad-based coalition led by Michael Horowitz, played a significant role in mobilizing bipartisan congressional and grassroots support of the legislation. Mariam Bell, director of public policy for Prison Fellowship’s Wilberforce Forum, helped Horowitz draft the bill. PF President Mark Earley testified at congressional hearings. Chuck Colson’s “BreakPoint” radio commentaries rallied thousands of listeners to petition their senators and representatives to vote for the bill. Nolan and other staff wrote newspaper and magazine articles to publicize the atrocity of prison rape and the need for reform.

Supporters of the bill ran the gamut of theological and political persuasions: from the Open Society Institute to Focus on the Family; from liberal congressional leaders Ted Kennedy and Bobby Scott to conservatives Frank Wolf and Jeff Sessions.

“We felt it was important to say that this was not a matter of politics but of moral conscience,” explains Nolan. “We wanted to make a statement that prison rape is intolerable. No sentence, even for the most heinous crime, should include being sexually assaulted while in custody.”

Until the Prison Rape Elimination Act was introduced into Congress, few people seriously considered the horror of the problem. During the Enron scandal, for example, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer flippantly suggested that prison rape would be a fitting punishment for Enron chairman Kenneth Lay. “I would love to personally escort Lay to an 8-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, ‘Hi, my name is Spike, honey.’ ”

For years that kind of callousness helped drive the issue into the shadows. Most prisoners hesitate to report sexual assault, knowing that many people believe they deserve it and that authorities rarely take any action to protect them. But congressional hearings related to the bill yanked the offense into the light and gave it a face—many faces, in fact, as victims shared the pain and trauma of being raped by other inmates or even correctional officers.

Nolan remembers ex-prisoner Marilyn Shirley, “who stood bravely at the Capitol and told the story of her brutal rape at the hands of a guard” when she was incarcerated. The authorities simply sloughed off her claims at the time. But Shirley had hidden her sweatpants—with DNA evidence of the officer’s attack—and took them to the FBI after her release. Even then, for three years nothing happened. Finally the case went to trial, and last month a jury convicted the officer of several counts of sexual assault. He now faces a possible 11 years in prison.

The Prison Rape Elimination Act ensures that rape will now be treated as a crime and not just an expected “part of prison life,” Nolan says. As a member of the Commission, he and his colleagues will extensively investigate the prevalence of rape in prison—something that has never been done before. They will look at exacerbating conditions that have produced high rates of rape in some prisons, as well as actions that have led to significant reductions in other prisons. They will set standards designed to cut down on opportunities for rape (such as getting rid of “blind spots” in the facilities—areas not under constant supervision); to prosecute and punish assailants; and to provide treatment for victims. Prisons will be required to meet these standards or risk losing federal funding.

Late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis believed that “sunshine is the best disinfectant,” Nolan quotes. Once the extent of rape in prison is exposed, “I don’t know of any state legislator in the country who, when given a report that their state was outside the standard, wouldn’t say, ‘This is intolerable,’ ” he asserts.

Nolan brings to the Commission a varied background that gives several perspectives on the issue. As a former California assemblyman for 15 years, “I know how the system works,” he says. As an ex-prisoner, “I know how rapes could occur and what the attitude of the staff would be.” And as a Christian, “I come with a Christian worldview—that Jesus has called us to care for those in prison and to do something about injustices like that. I can remind my fellow commissioners that this is not just a legal problem, but a moral problem, too.”

Nolan’s personal vision for the Commission’s outcome is that “no prisoners, no matter how heinous their crime, will have to worry about being raped during their incarceration.”