Inmates hit women’s prison with class action over rampant abuse

OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) – After multiple individual lawsuits claiming decades of sexual abuse at a federal prison for women in the San Francisco Bay area, inmates filed a class action Wednesday demanding the government to do something to stop the abuse.

Eight individuals and the grassroots organization California Coalition for Women Prisoners say that the Federal Correctional Institute in Dublin, east of San Francisco, enabled a pattern of “rampant” sexual abuse of incarcerated people. The Federal Bureau of Prisons manages the low-security facility, which houses women, transgender men and non-binary people. 

The plaintiffs say they endured “horrific abuse and exploitation” by facility staff, including sexual assault, sexual coercion and comments, voyeurism, drugging and abuse during medical exams. Some report being forced to strip for or perform sexual acts on prison staff, while others say they were harassed and raped. They say that the bureau has been aware of such problems for decades and continues to fail to take action to address and prevent staffers’ sexual misconduct. 

They also claim that the facility’s staff protected each other by failing to investigate abuse claims by incarcerated people, or by retaliating against anyone reporting abuse. This violates their civil rights because they have no safe way to safely report sexual misconduct without fear of isolation, deportation or other punishments, the plaintiffs say in their complaint.

Sexual assaults occurred frequently between the 1990s and 2000s, for which at least four FCI Dublin employees were convicted or pleaded guilty to sexually abusing incarcerated women. In 1998, the bureau settled claims that FCI Dublin officers placed incarcerated women in a men’s solitary confinement unit and allowed them to be raped — and agreed to implement numerous reforms. 

“These reforms were ultimately ineffective or abandoned,” the plaintiffs say in their complaint. In the early 2010s, media outlets reported that a dozen FCI Dublin employees were removed for sexual abuse, including one who videotaped himself having sex with inmates and stored tapes in a prison locker — but none were arrested. 

In 2019, the Congressional House Subcommittee on National Security determined widespread misconduct in the federal prison system had been tolerated and routinely covered up or ignored, and that problems had plagued the disciplinary process for years. That year, FCI Dublin’s warden Ray J. Garcia, 55, became one of at least eight FCI Dublin workers charged between 2019 and 2021 with abusing incarcerated people.

In their 87-page complaint, the plaintiffs note how in 2022 a jury convicted Garcia of sexually abusing several women and lying to federal investigators about his behavior under oath. He was sentenced to serve six years in prison this past March, after 32 years of working for the Bureau of Prisons. Others are awaiting sentencing, and more lawsuits against other facility staff are expected, according to the complaint. 

Despite ongoing reports and legal repercussions, the plaintiffs say that systemic abuse of people at FCI Dublin is “deeply entrenched” due to inadequate policies to detect and prevent mistreatment of incarcerated people.

The plaintiffs say the feds failed to properly train and supervise employees to prevent misuse of power, implement a confidential system for reporting abuse, address abuse complaints, to stop placing people reporting abuse into solitary confinement and provide constitutionally adequate medical and mental health care to inmates who have been abused.

The plaintiffs demand a jury trial on claims that the bureau’s employees carried out a form of torture that violated their Eighth Amendment rights. They also cite the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act, requiring the attorney general to promulgate rules to prevent sexual abuse at prison facilities.

They also want a federal judge to order the bureau to implement reforms to adequately address and prevent further abuse, such as by to creating a new reporting and investigative system and ensuring that officers with substantiated claims of sexual abuse and harassment against them are promptly fired and not permitted to return to the bureau. 

Michael Bien, Ernest Galvan, Kara Janssen, Ginger Jackson-Gleich and Rosen Bien of the San Francisco firm Galvan & Grunfeld represent the class, as do attorneys from the groups California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice and Rights Behind Bars.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons said by email that it does not comment on matters related to pending litigation, ongoing legal proceedings or investigations.   

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