A former inmate at the Botetourt Correctional Center claims in a newly filed federal lawsuit that he was tormented by a guard with an alcohol problem and an inventive streak of sadism.

But the guard, now retired, denies it -- and says the prisoner was the one with the drinking problem.

In a lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, Thomas W. Jackson said that during a year at Camp 25, as the correctional center is sometimes called, Officer Michael Fletcher carried out a program of harassment and torture. It included such things as putting a habanero pepper on Jackson's cut lip, mixing manure into his chewing tobacco, beatings and electric shocks to Jackson's genitals, the complaint claimed.

Prisoner lawsuits make up a significant amount of federal courts' business, and some contain wild-sounding allegations. But Jackson's filing is unusual in at least two ways. First is the range of alleged abuses, which include accusations that Fletcher sprayed Jackson with Freon to give him frostbite and doused him with fly-trap bait that caused him to stink for days.

And unlike the majority of prisoner lawsuits, Jackson has legal representation, by Roanoke attorneys Melvin Williams and Terry Grimes.

Williams said Tuesday that many of the actions listed in Jackson's complaint might seem like "juvenile horseplay."

"But when you put it in the prison setting, it's stupid, it's inhumane," Williams said.

Williams said the Virginia Department of Corrections, which is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit along with the commonwealth of Virginia, launched an internal investigation of Fletcher's activities. When Fletcher learned that Jackson had talked to investigators, he put the inmate in solitary confinement, Williams said.

The lawsuit also said that Fletcher was often intoxicated while on duty and was sent to an alcohol abuse treatment program. When he returned, he resumed abusing Jackson, the lawsuit said.

Jackson, who lived in Low Moor before his incarceration, was in Camp 25 as part of a two-year, four-month sentence imposed for violating probation received for a third conviction of driving under the influence. In the prison farm from May 2007 until he was released about a year later, he fed cattle, did various welding tasks and performed other chores.

He asked for monetary damages in his lawsuit but asked that the court set the amount.

Fletcher, now retired and living in Scott County, said Tuesday that while he had not yet seen the lawsuit, Jackson's story was wrong.

He recalled two things about the former prisoner: his difficulties with alcohol and love for chewing tobacco.

"He was willing to pick up chewing tobacco that visitors left on the ground and put it in his mouth," Fletcher said.

As for any electric shocks Jackson received, he may have bumped an electric fence, Fletcher said. But torture? "No," the former guard said.

Fletcher's corrections career, which he said lasted 20 years, brought him to court before. In 2002, he was a key witness in the conviction of another officer who tried to sell OxyContin pills to inmates.

Fletcher didn't seem worried about Jackson's accusations. "He's a two-time convicted felon. Consider the source," he said.

Staff researcher Belinda Harris contributed to this report.