OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) — Women prisoners in the Bay Area continued testified Friday about abuse by federal employees in a class action demanding that the government reform the prison and stop “horrific abuse and exploitation.”
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who has been handling actions against Federal Correctional Institute Dublin employees like former warden Ray J. Garcia — now sentenced to prison — began conducting an evidentiary hearing on the case Wednesday. The plaintiffs say 13 incarcerated people will testify about the conditions they say they faced at FCI Dublin.
The plaintiffs sued in August 2023, claiming the Federal Bureau of Prisons enabled a pattern of “rampant” sexual abuse of incarcerated people at the prison east of San Francisco. The bureau manages the low-security facility, which houses about 712 women and transgender and nonbinary people.
Prisoners say they endured “horrific abuse and exploitation” by facility staff, including sexual assault, coercion, voyeurism, drugging and abuse during medical exams. Some report being forced to strip for or perform sexual acts on prison staff, or being harassed and raped. They say that the bureau has been aware of these issues for decades without taking action to address and prevent staffers' sexual misconduct.
The judge Thursday scrutinized testimony from defense witness Beth Reese, chief of the bureau’s Office of Internal Affairs in Washington, about the process of investigating abuse reports at FCI Dublin.
Reese said she wasn't aware of accusations that an investigator, Lieutenant Stephen Putnam, withheld reports of sexual misconduct.
She said when she joined a task force to reform the prison in 2022, she saw how frightened the prisoners were.
"They felt like they weren’t being listened to and they were very interested in talking to literally anyone they could find," Reese said. She said she thinks the prison's environment has improved within the last year.
Judge Rogers asked Reese why the situation at FCI Dublin went on for as long as it did, and why officers who reported misconduct were often transferred to other facilities or demoted. Reese said she didn't know of those instances. The judge ordered her to stay in court through Friday to hear testimony from incarcerated people, and then meet with her.
The plaintiffs' first witness on Friday, S.L, said she has been at Dublin since 2016 and was assaulted in spring 2022, when an officer showered her with notes and gifts and began routinely kissing and groping her. When he left the prison, he kept emailing her, and moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where he contacted her mother and got a job at her employer's hospital.
S.L. said at first she did not report the officer out of fear.
“I was scared of retaliation,” she said. “I’ve seen people report in the past since I was there and they would go to the SHU and get shipped out, and we wouldn't see them again. [Officers] all do favors for each other. There wasn't anyone that I felt like I could trust."
S.L. described being placed in the secure housing unit for reporting, and facing bullying from prison staff since filing the lawsuit. She said she thought the new administration's only positive change was installing private phone lines to attorneys, as mistreatment from officers has not stopped.
In tears, she thanked Judge Rogers, who apologized and said, "I am working to try to make things better, and it will not be perfect."
Another witness, Roberta, is serving a life sentence. She described an environment where incarcerated people feared relying upon the chain of command to report misconduct.
Officers cannot be trusted to keep reports confidential, Roberta said, and computer and phone systems are not private from them or from other incarcerated people. She described officials’ failure to discipline an officer she accused of watching women taking showers, who she said harassed her in retaliation.
The hearing will continue in federal court Monday.
FCI Dublin has for decades been identified as the site where at least four employees were convicted or pleaded guilty to sexually abusing incarcerated women. In 1998, the bureau settled claims that officers placed incarcerated women in a men’s solitary confinement unit and allowed them to be raped — and agreed to implement numerous reforms. In 2019, the Congressional House Subcommittee on National Security determined widespread misconduct in the federal prison system had been routinely covered up or ignored, and that problems had plagued the disciplinary process for years.
Plaintiffs claim that prison staff protected each other by failing to investigate abuse claims or by retaliating against incarcerated people reporting abuse, and maintaining inadequate policies to detect and prevent mistreatment. They demand a jury trial on Eighth Amendment and 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act violations, and want the bureau ordered to implement reforms to adequately address and prevent further abuse.
Follow @nhanson_reports
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
-
GOP sues Nevada over late mail-in ballots May 3, 2024
