BANGOR – A Bangor woman imprisoned on convictions that followed a dramatic late-night hostage-taking incident and standoff with local police has filed a federal lawsuit against staff at the Charleston Correctional Facility, alleging a lack of medical care worsened her health and drove her to thoughts of suicide.

Sheila Dennison, 52, seeks punitive damages for the alleged wrongdoing of staff at the Charleston facility in a civil lawsuit filed earlier this year at U.S. District Court in Bangor.

This summer, Dennison will complete a three-year sentence for felony kidnapping and criminal threatening after she took two mental health crisis workers hostage at gunpoint on March 6, 1998.

The workers came to her Stillwater Avenue home after she threatened on the telephone to commit suicide.

A five-hour standoff ensued but ended peacefully. Nobody was physically harmed.

Dennison served part of her sentence at the Charleston Correctional Facility and claims in the lawsuit that her health care needs were ignored to the point of “torture and neglect” at the northern Penobscot County prison.

Dennison alleges a violation of her constitutional rights and says she was a victim of retaliation.

Dennison suffers from long-standing mental health problems, the lawsuit states.

Her medical problems include diagnosed osteoporosis and back and joint pain, conditions that were made worse by the alleged indifference and “inertia” of state prison employees who retaliate against inmates like Dennison who break an “unspoken rule” of making no demands, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges that some employees at the Charleston facility tried to ruin Dennison financially by billing medical services for “50-plus” inmates to Dennison’s account, then intercepting bills sent to her “to conceal the fact.”

Dennison seeks a court order that Prison Health Services Inc., a Tennessee-based business that provides health care for Maine prisoners, rectify the billing error.

Dennison’s attorney, Stuart Tisdale of Portland, said her credit rating may have been damaged and her financial future jeopardized by the erroneous bills whose submission, he said, “is tantamount to criminal conduct.”

Dennison names five defendants in the lawsuit. Two of them, nurse Kim Partridge and licensed practical nurse Debra Hartley, are represented by Portland attorney James Fortin. In a telephone interview, Fortin called the lawsuit’s claims “hyperbole.”

“Ms. Dennison’s allegations regarding medical care she received are not true. She received good medical care at the jail and I think the medical department there run by [Prison Health Services} really went above and beyond what was minimally required,” Fortin said.

In response to a question, Fortin said the complaint “borders on frivolity.”

“Ms. Dennison may genuinely feel she was not treated as she wanted to be, but she must remember she is an incarcerated prisoner. Prisons aren’t designed to be hotels, and inmates sometimes have to do things they don’t want to do,” Fortin said.

Three defendants, jail guard Scott Chandler, program director Carol Harvey, and Prison Health Services are represented by Diane Sleek, an assistant attorney general. Sleek declined to comment on the case.

Dennison’s complaint against Charleston “shocks the conscience,” the lawsuit states.

Events allegedly escalated for Dennison in late August 2000, when she complained that an inmate had subjected her to sexual assaults. She quickly was removed from her room and placed in a smaller, dingier room in “discomfiting circumstances,” the lawsuit states.

“This experience of being punished for invoking the aid of her custodians at CCF was her introduction to the unwritten policy that inmates are expected to make no demands on the staff,” the lawsuit states. Any demand, “will be met with opposition, resentment and retaliation as a threat to state-employee inertia and indifference,” the lawsuit states.

She accuses Chandler of ignoring her medical needs and assigning her heavy labor that posed a “serious risk of harm.”

When she asked for lighter physical work, Chandler reportedly “threatened her with punishment if she did not comply,” indirectly forcing her to scrub marks imbedded on a gymnasium floor until she buckled in pain and eventually threw up, according to the lawsuit.

Dennison accuses nurses Partridge and Hartley of acting with “deliberate indifference” to her medical needs. Dennison claims Hartley rebuffed her when she approached her in the cafeteria for medical help, and that Partridge made her fill out unnecessary forms. She claims both nurses denied her access to a prison doctor.

By mid-September, Dennison was confined to her room, suffered constant physical pain, and was not getting adequate nourishment, according to the lawsuit. She reported to officials that she felt suicidal and was quickly transferred to the Maine Correctional Center at Windham.

“But for this hard labor and/or forced labor, Ms. Dennison would not have been driven to the brink of suicide and would not have been transferred to a more restrictive setting at the Maine Correctional Center,” the lawsuit states.

A motion to dismiss the case is under consideration. Should the motion be denied, the case could be ready for trial within a few months.