by Anthony W. Accurso

Since reporting a federal Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation was opened in September 2024 into sexual abuse of prisoners at two California lockups, PLN has obtained documentation of $4 million in settlement payouts to five victims of a former guard at Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla. Documents were also obtained showing another $450,000 in payouts to a former prisoner at California Institution for Women in Chino for sexual abuse suffered at the hands of four other guards.

As PLN reported, former California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) guard Greg Rodriguez is facing 96 criminal counts in state court, including “sodomy, sexual battery and rape with threat to use authority,” for the alleged sexual abuse of 22 prisoners between 2014 and his retirement in August 2022 from CCWF. [See: PLN, Oct. 2024, p.24.]

Rodriguez retired just before prison officials completed their investigation, which found evidence linking him to 39 separate sexual assaults. The information was passed to Madera County District Attorney (DA) Sally Moreno, who filed the charges. Rodriguez remains in the county jail on $7.8 million bond. If convicted on all counts, he faces up to 300 years in prison.

Rocklin attorney Robert Chalfant filed civil suits in December 2022 in federal court for the Eastern District of California on behalf of two prisoners, alleging Rodriguez assaulted them in a Board of Parole Hearing (BPH) office that lacked surveillance cameras. Chalfant filed more suits on behalf of additional victims in June 2023, making similar allegations and adding that administrative staff failed to protect the prisoners despite receiving numerous allegations about Rodriguez’s conduct.

“Jane Doe” then settled her case for $1.2 million on October 24, 2023. “Jane Doe #2” and “Jane Doe #3” settled their suits for $700,000 each on the same day. “Jane Roe” also settled for $700,000 on October 28, 2023, as did “Jane Doe #4” on November 1, 2023. See: Doe v. Rodriguez, USDC (E.D. Cal.), Case No. 1:22-­cv-­01569; Roe v. Rodriguez., USDC (E.D. Cal.), Case No.  1:22-­cv-­01574; Doe#2 v. Calif., USDC (E.D. Cal.), Case No. 1:23-­cv-­00869; Doe#3 v. Calif., USDC (E.D. Cal.), Case No. 1:23-­cv-­00868; Doe#4 v. Calif., USDC (E.D. Cal.), Case No. 1:23-­cv-­01174.

Woodland Hills attorney Joseph Virgilio filed similar suits on behalf of six other victims, as PLN also reported; at least one suit alleged that the plaintiff was tossed in solitary confinement simply for contacting Virgilio. [See: PLN, Sep. 2023, p.53.]

$450,000 Settlement for Prisoner’s Sexual Abuse Claims Against Four More Guards

In June 2022, CDCR agreed to pay $250,000 to former prisoner Keiana Aldrich for abuse she allegedly suffered from guard David Sanches at CIW. That was on top of $200,000 paid to her under a November 2021 agreement for abuse she alleged against three other CIW guards, Ivan Ordaz, Samuel Navarro and Gerardi Romo.

Aldrich worked a janitorial job for 35 cents per hour, minimal pay that helped her afford hygiene products and food to supplement prison food that often lacks flavor or nutritional value or both. Shortly after beginning the job in June 2018, supervisor Ordaz “repeatedly sexually assaulted her,” according to the complaint she later filed. When she complained, he was replaced by guard Navarro, who also forced the prisoner into intimate contact, giving her “shirts and candy, and a ‘love letter’ urging her not to tell.” She turned him in anyway, and Navarro resigned. Despite possessing his “love letter” as evidence, prison officials deemed her grievance about the matter “unsubstantiated.”

Meanwhile, Romo took Aldrich on a golf cart to a secluded location at the prison in August 2018 and forced her to kiss him and touch his genitals, grabbing her again the next day and forcing her to perform oral sex on him, she said. When she turned him in, Romo was transferred to California Institute for Men. After filing multiple grievances, Aldrich was terminated from her janitorial job in January 2019 with a note from the warden “saying she could not work there anymore.” Then in July of that same year, Aldrich was assaulted by Sanches, who followed her into her cell and groped her. He admitted to CDCR investigators that he “repeatedly looked at Aldrich naked from outside her cell and had written her sexually explicit letters.”

Yet a month later, it was Aldrich who was given a disciplinary charge for “extortion by means of force or threat.” Why? Her cellmate wrote a letter to Sanches threatening to expose him for his misconduct. In the charge given to Aldrich, Sanches was called her “victim.” She was found guilty and sanctioned with solitary confinement, plus a 180-­day extension to her sentence. Meanwhile, Sanches confessed but stayed on paid leave for a year before he was allowed to resign, rather than be terminated. San Bernardino District Attorney (DA) Jason Anderson declined to file charges.

With the aid of attorneys Jenny C. Huang and Jessica T. Arena with Justice First in Oakland; Maggie Krell in Sacramento; and Carter C. White with the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of California in Davis, Aldrich filed suit in federal court for the Central District of California in May 2020 against Ordaz, Navarro, Romo and other CDCR staffers who allegedly abetted their abuse. Attorneys Huang, Arena and White helped her file a second suit against Sanchez and his alleged CDCR abettors in April 2021. The settlements reached in both cases included costs and fees for the attorneys. See: Aldrich v. Romo, USDC (C.D. Cal.), Case No. 5:20-­cv-­00974; and Aldrich v. Sanches, USDC (C.D. Cal.), Case No. 2:21-­cv-­02864.

“Intentionally Opaque”

Prisons are “intentionally opaque,” said DA Moreno. “They prefer to handle their own business rather than have anybody do real oversight.” The nonprofit Human Rights Watch places prison sexual violence within “a structural system that disregards women as individuals.” A 2016 report by civil rights lawyers counted over 80 incidents of alleged sexual assault and abuse by guards at CCWF, yet the prison reported only 28 allegations that year, including claims of prisoner-­on-­prisoner abuse. On average, over 600 allegations of sexual abuse by CDCR staff are reported each year, but many incidents go unreported because victims lack faith that officials will take any meaningful action.

CDCR said that it now removes serious allegations of staff misconduct from the standard grievance procedure to be investigated by a “centralized screening team” of specially trained staffers who are required to conduct a thorough investigation. The agency has also mandated body-­worn cameras in women’s prisons for guards, who are expected to keep them on “during interactions with incarcerated persons.” Yet Tess Borden, another civil rights attorney, said that on a recent visit to CCWF, she observed “many officers with their body cameras off.”

“It’s about power that these officers have,” said Aldrich. “They get what they want, and I don’t think it’s ever going to stop.”   

Additional source: The Guardian

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