A federal women's prison in Alameda County with an ugly history of sexual abuse of inmates by staff needs to be overseen by an outside monitor, a federal judge ruled.
In a decision released Friday, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered the appointment of a special master to implement reforms and other court orders at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, where eight different staff members, including a warden, have been indicted on federal sexual abuse charges. Six have been convicted.
The judge called the prison a “dysfunctional mess.”
“The situation can no longer be tolerated. The facility is in dire need of immediate change,” González Rogers said in his order.
Due to the Bureau of Prisons' repeated failures to initiate changes at the facility, where sexual abuse of an inmate was reported in November, Gonzalez Rogers decided the special master was necessary.
The ruling comes in a class action lawsuit brought by eight women who were incarcerated at FCI Dublin. The women say that despite arrests and charges brought against numerous staff members, abuse continues.
The low-security prison and its adjacent satellite camp have been so plagued by accusations of sexual abuse that the prison has become known as “the rape club.”
The judge's order came just three days after a third prison warden was removed since warden Ray Garcia was convicted of sexually assaulting numerous inmates.
The removal of the most recently installed director, Art Dulgov, coincided with an FBI raid on the facility and the dismissal of three other top managers. Dulgov and his staff are accused of retaliating against a woman who testified in the class-action lawsuit.
A major dispute in the current litigation is whether women incarcerated at Dublin's FCI are still at risk of sexual abuse, the judge wrote in her decision. While many said during the judge's nine-hour visit to the facility that they do not fear sexual abuse, the judge determined there is still a risk.
“Approximately 20 officers have been accused of misconduct, investigations are ongoing and they remain on administrative leave. Taken together, the record undermines the government's argument that the Court should be confident that the risk of sexual misconduct has been eradicated,” the judge wrote.
The Bureau of Prisons declined to comment on the pending case.
