Inside one of the only federal womens prisons in the United States, inmates say they have been subjected to rampant sexual abuse by correctional officers and even the warden, and were often threatened or punished when they tried to speak up.
Prisoners and workers at the federal correctional institution in Dublin, California, even have a name for it: The rape club.
An Associated Press investigation has found a permissive and toxic culture at the Bay Area lockup, enabling years of sexual misconduct by predatory employees and cover-ups that have largely kept the abuse out of the public eye. The AP obtained internal federal Bureau of Prisons documents, statements and recordings from inmates, interviewed current and former prison employees and inmates and reviewed thousands of pages of court records from criminal and civil cases involving Dublin prison staff.
Together, they detail how inmates allegations against members of the mostly male staff were ignored or set aside, how prisoners could be sent to solitary confinement for reporting abuse and how officials in charge of preventing and investigating sexual misconduct were themselves accused of abusing inmates or neglecting their concerns.
In one instance, a female inmate said a man, who was her prison work supervisor, taunted her by remarking let the games begin when he assigned her to work with a maintenance foreman she accused of rape. Another worker claimed he wanted to get inmates pregnant. The warden the man in charge at Dublin kept nude photos on his government-issued cellphone of a woman he is accused of assaulting.
One inmate said she was overwhelmed with fear, anxiety, and anger, and cried uncontrollably after enduring abuse and retaliation at Dublin. Another said she contemplated suicide when her cries for help went unheeded and now suffers from severe anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
All sexual activity between a prison worker and an inmate is illegal. Correctional employees enjoy substantial power over inmates, controlling every aspect of their lives from mealtime to lights out, and there is no scenario in which an inmate can give consent.
The allegations at Dublin, which so far have resulted in four arrests, are endemic of a larger problem within the beleaguered Bureau of Prisons. In 2020, the same year some of the women at Dublin complained, there were 422 complaints of staff-on-inmate sexual abuse across the system of 122 prisons and 153,000 inmates. The agency said it substantiated only four of those complaints and that 290 are still being investigated. It would not say whether the allegations were concentrated in womens prisons or spread throughout the system. ... FCI Dublin, about 21 miles (34 kilometers) east of Oakland, was opened in 1974. It was converted in 2012 to one of six women-only facilities in the federal prison system. Actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman both served time there for their involvement in a college admissions bribery scandal.
As of Feb. 1, it had about 750 inmates, many serving sentences for drug crimes. There are increasingly more women behind bars but they are still a minority only about 6.5% of the overall federal inmate population.
Union officials say the vast majority of Dublin employees are honest and hardworking, and are upset that the allegations and actions of some workers have tarnished the prisons reputation.
We have a diversified staff. We have veterans. We have ex-law enforcement. We have good people, and theyre very traumatized, Dublin union president Ed Canales said.
Inmates and prison workers who spoke to the AP did not want their names published for fear of retaliation. The AP also does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission.
Women made the first internal complaints to staff members about five years ago, court records and internal agency documents show, but its not clear whether those complaints ever went anywhere. The women say they were largely ignored, and the abuse continued.
One inmate who reported a 2017 sexual assault said she was told nothing would be done about her complaint because it was a he said-she said. The woman, who is now suing the Bureau of Prisons over her treatment, said she was fired from her prison commissary job as retaliation. When she went to report her firing, she said a Dublin counselor took her abusers side, responding: Child, do you want him to lose his job? The woman was moved to a different prison a week later. In 2019, another Dublin inmate sued first on her own with handwritten papers, then with the backing of a powerful San Francisco law firm alleging that a maintenance foreman repeatedly raped her and that other workers facilitated the abuse and mocked her for it. When an internal prison investigator finally caught wind of what was happening, the woman said she was the one who got punished with three months in solitary confinement and a transfer to a federal prison in Alabama.
Then, in 2020, another inmates report that Dublin workers were abusing inmates broke through to the Justice Departments inspector general and the FBI, triggering a criminal investigation that has led to the arrest of four employees, including former warden Ray J. Garcia, in the past seven months. They each face up to 15 years in prison, though in other recent cases, sentences have ranged from three months to two years.
Two of the men are expected to plead guilty in the coming weeks in federal court to charges of sexual abuse of a ward. None of the men accused in civil suits has been charged with crimes. Several Dublin workers are under investigation, though its not clear whether the men accused in the civil suits are among them.