CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Three female former inmates of a halfway house filed a class action lawsuit Tuesday against a former corrections sergeant accused of repeatedly raping them.

The lawsuit against Douglas Tower, 61, of Goffstown, and the Department of Corrections was filed in Merrimack County Superior Court on behalf of 125 former inmates of the Shea Farm halfway house.

Tower also has been charged in a criminal case. A probable cause on four counts of rape is scheduled for Jan. 20.

The civil lawsuit does not specify damages but the lawyer for the three unidentified women said damages will be outlined later. The women claim they suffered emotional pain, humiliation, embarrassment, anguish and possible delay in being released and rehabilitated.

Lawyer Richard Lehmann said the decision to file a class action suit was made “to assure the likelihood of compensation and to protect their anonymity.”

Telephone calls seeking comment from Tower’s lawyers Tuesday night were not returned immediately.

The lawsuit alleges that the three women were inmates at Shea Farm in 2004 and 2005 and that Tower used his authority to demand from them oral sex and intercourse without condoms.

The suit says that when Tower was accused of sexual harassment with a female corrections officer at the men’s prison in Concord and women’s prison in Goffstown, the Corrections Department transferred him to Shea Farm and failed to supervise him.

Shea Farm inmates struggle with chemical dependency and are trying to re-establish contact with their families, according to the suit.

“All residents know that they can be sent back to the state prison for women … if they do not succeed in their rehabilitative efforts.

“The resident of Shea Farm live … in an extremely vulnerable position between incarceration and freedom,” the lawsuit said, adding that “Tower was aware of this fact” and “abused his position of power and trust to satisfy his own sexual desires.”

According to court records in the criminal case, Tower denied the accusations when investigators first approached him in June. He said that though the inmates at Shea Farm dressed provocatively and flirted with him, he did not have sex with them.

“He also stated that over the prior year, a dozen women at Shea Farm made some sort of sexual advance toward him,” the records say. Tower later admitted having sexual contact with the women, but said that in many cases the women initiated the encounters.

But according to the records, all four women said Tower forced himself on them with threats of punishments if they rejected or reported him. They also described similar patterns that began with verbal come-ons, then progressed to groping and rape.

One woman said Tower raped her in his office right after signing papers granting her a visit with her children. “He told her that she owed him one,”‘ the papers say. “Tower told her not to say anything because she could be sent back to the women’s prison.”

Last year, the Corrections Department was sued by former corrections officer Priscialla DeHotman, who said Tower sexually harassed her at the men’s prison and the women’s prison. That case was settled out of court.

Tower joined the Corrections Department in 1991 and worked at the women’s prison before being assigned in 2002 to Shea Farm, then a men’s facility. In 2004 Shea Farm was converted to a minimum security halfway house for women.