A girls’s jail in California so affected by sexual abuse that it was identified amongst inmates and employees because the “rape membership” might be closed, the pinnacle of the Federal Bureau of Prisons introduced Monday
Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters stated that the company is closing the Federal Correctional Establishment in Dublin, the place greater than a half dozen correctional officers and the previous warden have both been charged or convicted of sexually abusing the feminine inmates.
Peters said that the bureau had “taken unprecedented steps and supplied an incredible quantity of sources to deal with tradition, recruitment and retention, getting old infrastructure — and most crucial — worker misconduct.”
“Regardless of these steps and sources, we have now decided that FCI Dublin is just not assembly anticipated requirements and that one of the best plan of action is to shut the ability. This resolution is being made after ongoing analysis of the effectiveness of these unprecedented steps and extra sources.”
She stated, “planning for deactivation is presently ongoing” for the jail that homes 605 inmates. The ability east of Oakland is one among a handful of federal girls’s prisons within the Western states.
“It’s a outstanding admission,” stated lawyer Michael Bien, whose regulation agency represents inmates in a class-action lawsuit over situations on the prisons. Jail authorities are “saying they’ll’t function this jail safely.” He stated closure doesn’t handle the underlying situation. “How does this remedy the issues? The identical coverage and procedures are in place at different prisons. It’s not the constructing that did something incorrect.”
Bien stated attorneys representing Dublin inmates had not been knowledgeable of the closure announcement. He added {that a} federal decide had simply been appointed a particular grasp for the jail in reference to the class-action lawsuit and that very same decide had ordered that anybody concerned within the proceedings can’t be transferred from Dublin with out her authorization.
The ladies housed at Dublin might be transferred to different services as close to as doable to their launch location and no workers will lose their jobs because of the closure, in response to Peters. The long-term destiny of the federal facility is unclear. “The closure of the ability could also be short-term however end in a mission change,” she stated. Inmates of the jail have included actors Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman after their convictions within the school admissions scandal.
The developments are the most recent twist in a years-long scandal surrounding the ability. Since an FBI investigation was launched and resulted in arrests in 2021, eight FCI Dublin workers have been charged with sexually abusing inmates. 5 have pleaded responsible, and two have been convicted by juries. One other worker is slated to go on trial this 12 months.
The announcement comes after the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the jail final month and Warden Artwork Dulgov — just some months into his tenure — and three different prime managers have been faraway from their positions by the federal Bureau of Prisons.
U.S. Rep Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) stated “the FBI investigation of the ability make clear a poisonous tradition enabling years of sexual misconduct by workers with 5 pleading responsible to related expenses and two convicted by juries of on a regular basis Californians.”
Dulgov was the third new chief of the low-security jail since Warden Ray J. Garcia, who, together with greater than half a dozen workers, was convicted of sexually assaulting a number of girls serving time there.
Dulgov and employees are accused of retaliating in opposition to an inmate who testified in January within the class-action lawsuit that alleges “horrific abuse and exploitation” on the jail, with rampant sexual assault of incarcerated individuals, in response to a court docket submitting.
Final month, a correctional officer who labored at FCI Dublin was sentenced to 72 months in federal jail. Nakie Nunley pleaded responsible to sexually abusing 5 feminine inmates and admitted to partaking in intercourse acts with two different girls being held on the facility. All of his victims labored at a name heart operated by Federal Jail Industries on the jail, the place he supervised them.
Final 12 months, Warden Garcia was sentenced to 70 months in jail for sexually abusing incarcerated girls and mendacity to the FBI as a part of a cover-up.
The FBI raid got here after the then-warden transferred an inmate who was a witness in a lawsuit in opposition to the jail, violating a decide’s court docket order that witnesses not be moved with out the court docket’s approval.
Within the wake of the raid, Nancy T. McKinney, a prime regional Bureau of Prisons supervisor, was appointed interim warden of Dublin. She is the fourth particular person to carry the workplace since Garcia was faraway from the place.
FBI spokeswoman Cameron Polan informed The Occasions that the FBI raid concerned a “court-authorized regulation enforcement exercise at that location.” Along with paperwork, computer systems have been faraway from the jail, in response to a supply accustomed to the continued investigation.
The raid was carried out because the variety of girls who’ve come ahead in lawsuits in opposition to guards and employees alleging sexual abuse and retaliation has climbed past 63. That quantity, in response to attorneys, is anticipated to surpass 100.
It’s a crime for any jail worker to have interaction in sexual exercise with an incarcerated particular person, and somebody behind bars can’t consent.
In February, KTVU first reported that an incarcerated girl, Rhonda Fleming, was put within the particular housing unit — a standard jail punishment — and transferred to a facility in Los Angeles in opposition to a decide’s orders after she testified in regards to the tradition at FCI Dublin throughout a January listening to in a civil case filed on behalf of incarcerated individuals on the jail.
After studying of Fleming’s switch, U.S. District Court docket Decide Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered jail authorities to return her to Dublin.
In March 2023, the decide referred to the jail’s “tradition of sexual abuse” in sentencing Garcia, the previous warden, whom she stated had perpetuated that tradition.
A federal jury in Oakland discovered him responsible of three counts of intercourse with an incarcerated particular person, 4 counts of abusive sexual contact and one rely of mendacity to the FBI.
He groped three incarcerated girls and made them pose bare for pictures. Earlier than his sentencing, one among his victims informed Garcia: “You’re a predator and a pervert. You’re a shame to the federal authorities.”
In 2022, onetime jail chaplain James Theodore Highhouse was convicted and sentenced to seven years in jail for sexually assaulting a feminine inmate at FCI Dublin. Highhouse engaged in predatory conduct with no less than six girls from 2014 to 2019, in response to prosecutors. He claimed God had introduced them collectively, quoting the Bible and referencing King David’s many wives as justification for his actions.
“There’s a tradition of rot at Dublin,” one other federal decide declared at Highhouse’s sentencing. “It’s essential the world see this egregious conduct and see this severe penalty.”
The category-action lawsuit in opposition to the Bureau of Prisons alleges that FCI Dublin and different federal companies failed to stop, detect and examine sexual abuse, putting these being held on the jail at substantial danger of sexual assault. The jail additionally homes transgender and nonbinary individuals.
The lawsuit alleges that as correctional officers have been being sentenced, different guards continued to sexually harass, grope and assault these being held and topic some people to “transphobic harassment.”
Allegations of sexual assault at Dublin stretch again to the Nineteen Nineties. 4 workers have been beforehand convicted of sexual abuse of inmates. These incidents, together with civil litigation, compelled the jail to decide to reforms.
However legal professionals say these reforms have been “finally ineffective or deserted.” By the early 2010s, they notice, “a dozen FCI Dublin workers have been eliminated for sexual abuse, together with one who videotaped himself having intercourse with inmates and saved tapes in a jail locker — however none have been arrested.”
