DOJ Opens Investigation Into Sex Abuse at Two California Women’s Prisons
On September 4, 2024, the federal Department of Justice announced an investigation into sexual abuse of women imprisoned by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) at Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women (CIW) in Chino.
As PLN reported, CDCR fired guard Greg Rodriguez in May 2023 when the 55-year-old was arrested on a 96-count indictment alleging he raped multiple CCWF prisoners; he has been held since on a $7.8 million bond while awaiting a trial at Madera County Jail. Meanwhile at least 10 lawsuits have been filed by his alleged victims. [See: PLN, Sep. 2023, p.53.] The state reportedly settled a half-dozen of the suits for $3.7 million in late 2023. Meanwhile, Rodriguez’s trial was set to begin in state court in September 2024, and PLN will update developments as they are available.
The DOJ investigation comes not quite a year after CDCR paid two CIW prisoners $1 million to settle claims they filed over being used as sexual bait in a “honey trap” that prison officials set to catch guard Stephen Merrill; he later pleaded no contest to a charge of sexual activity by a public employee with a consenting adult—even though prisoners cannot legally consent to sex with prison staff—and CDCR fired him, after which he received a suspended two-year sentence with probation, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, Oct. 2023, p.15.]
PLN has extensively covered the mother of all California prison sex abuse scandals at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons’ Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, now nicknamed the “rape club,” after seven former staffers—including former Warden Ray Garcia—were convicted of raping prisoners; charges are pending against an eighth staffer, even as BOP hastily shuttered the lockup and transferred its prisoners, angering the federal judge overseeing their cases. [See: PLN, July 2024, p.13.]
Source: DOJ Office of Public Affairs
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