Two more former guards at 'rape club' prison charged with sexually abusing inmates

(CN) — Two former correctional officers at the now-shuttered federal women’s prison in Dublin, California, were charged with sexual abusing inmates.

Jeffrey Wilson, 34, and Lawrence Gacad, 33, are the ninth and 10th former guards charged in connection with the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation of abuse at the prison, according to an announcement Thursday by the U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco.

The Northern California prison that became infamous as the “rape club” and was permanently closed down last year.

Wilson is charged with five counts of sexual abuse of a ward. He’s accused of abusing an inmate, identified as C.S., on multiple occasions in a medical room at the prison in 2022. He’s also charged with lying to federal agents that he never had sexual contact with C.S. and that he never gave her contraband while she was an inmate at FCI Dublin.

Gacad is charged with one count of abusive sexual contact related to an FCI Dublin inmate, S.L., in 2022.

The names of attorneys representing the two defendants weren’t immediately available on the docket at the federal courthouse in Oakland where the charges were filed.

Of the other eight correctional officers charged thus far, the prison warden and a guard were found guilty at trial and sentenced to prison. Five others, including the former prison chaplain, have pleaded guilty. Darrell Smith, a former guard known as “Dirty Dick Smith,” is awaiting a retrial in September after a jury deadlocked at his April trial.

The abuse of female inmates at the prison resulted in numerous lawsuits.

Last year, the government agreed to a $116 million settlement with 103 women who sued over their abuse at the prison.

And the U.S. Bureau of Prisons in February got court approval of a consent degree with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners that will guarantee ongoing medical and mental health care for the inmates related to their trauma, as well as oversight measures to prevent future abuse.

FCI Dublin, about 20 miles east of Oakland, was one of six women-only federal prisons in the U.S. The federal Bureau of Prisons managed the facility, which housed women, transgender men and nonbinary inmates.

In its 2023 complaint, the prisoner coalition was joined by eight individuals who claimed FCI Dublin enabled a pattern of “rampant” sexual abuse of incarcerated 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 had been aware of these problems for decades.

The prison’s reputation for abuse led both inmates and prison workers to nickname it “the rape club.” Inmates 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.

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