Rape Culture, Sexual Abuse Festered at Dublin, California’s Federal Correctional Institute for Women

Inmates at a federal correctional institution in California said they were subjected to a chronic and pervasive culture of sexual abuse at the hands of predatory prison workers and officials—and were uniformly punished or ignored when they tried to report it, according to a new investigation from the Associated Press. Abuse was allegedly such an open secret at the Federal Correctional Institute in Dublin, California, that the facility had a grimmer title used by inmates and employees: ‘the rape club.’ In one report reviewed by the AP, an inmate said that a male prison work supervisor commented, “Let the games begin,” after assigning her to work with an employee she’d previously accused of rape. At least four employees, including the prison’s former warden, have been arrested on charges related to the sexual abuse of inmates in the last seven months. Warden Ray Garcia, arrested in September, 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 phone and personal laptop. Garcia remains the highest-ranking federal prison official arrested in over a decade.