Inmates at one of the only federal women's prisons in the United States say they have been subjected to rampant sexual abuse by correctional officers and even the warden, and were threatened or punished when they tried to speak up.
According to an investigation by the Associated Press, prison officials at the federal correctional institution in Dublin ran what inmates referred to as a "rape club" that enabled years of sexual misconduct by predatory employees and cover-ups that have kept the abuse a secret, until now.
The AP obtained internal federal Bureau of Prisons documents, statements and recordings from inmates, interviewed current and former prison employees and inmates and reviewed thousands of pages of court records from criminal and civil cases involving Dublin prison staff.
Inmates Allegations of Abuse Either Ignored or Punished
The investigation revealed how inmates' allegations against mostly male members of the staff were either ignored or prisoners who reported the abuse were sent to solitary confinement.The officials in charge of preventing and investigating the sexual misconduct were themselves accused of abusing inmates or ignoring their concerns.
In 2020, the same year some of the women at Dublin complained, there were 422 complaints of staff-on-inmate sexual abuse across the system of 122 prisons and 153,000 inmates. The Bureau of Prisons said it substantiated only four of those complaints and that 290 are still being investigated.
In one instance, a female inmate said a prison work supervisor taunted her by commenting "let the games begin" when he assigned her to work with a man she accused of rape. Another worker claimed he wanted to get inmates pregnant. One inmate who reported a 2017 sexual assault said she was told nothing would be done about her complaint because it was a "he said-she said."
In 2019, a prisoner accused a maintenance foreman of repeatedly raping her and that other workers facilitated the abuse and mocked her for it. She said she was even sent to three months in solitary confinement and transferred to a federal prison in Alabama after she reported the rape to the prison investigator.
Warden, 3 Other Employees Arrested, Facing Up to 15 Years in Prison
A Justice Department investigation into the sexual abuse allegations led to the arrest of at least four employees, including the prison's former warden, Ray Garcia. They each face up to 15 years in prison.
Garcia, arrested in September, became the highest-ranking federal prison official to be arrested in over a decade. He was indicted after prosecutors said he molested an inmate, forced her and another woman to undress in front of him, and collected nude images of the prisoners under his watch on his government-issued cellphone and personal laptop.
Ross Klinger, 36, a Dublin prison recycling technician, is scheduled to plead guilty on Thursday to charges he sexually abused at least two inmates between March and September 2020, including inside a warehouse and in a shipping container on prison grounds while another inmate acted as a lookout.
John Russell Bellhouse, 39, a prison safety administrator, is scheduled to be arraigned this month on charges he sexually abused an inmate he called his "girlfriend" from February to December 2020. He was placed on leave in March and arrested in December.
James Theodore Highhouse, 49, a prison chaplain, has already signed a plea agreement and is scheduled to plead guilty Feb. 23 to charges he put his penis on an inmate's genitals, mouth and hand and masturbated in front of her in 2018 and 2019, and that he lied to investigators when questioned about the abuse. He was arrested last month.
