The Justice Department has been ordered to pay nearly $116 million to 103 women who claim they were subjected to mistreatment and staff-on-inmate sexual abuse at the now-closed Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, known as the “rape club.” The settlement was approved and will average $1.1 million for each woman who sued the prison.
Plaintiff Aimee Chavira, a former Dublin prisoner, said she was sentenced to prison, not to be assaulted and abused. “I hope this settlement will help survivors, like me, as they begin to heal – but money will not repair the harm that BOP did to us, or free survivors who continue to suffer in prison, or bring back survivors who were deported and separated from their families,” she said.
The prison’s former warden, Ray Garcia, and seven other employees are currently in prison for sexually abusing inmates, while a eighth employee, Darrell Wayne Smith, is awaiting trial on 12 counts of sexual abuse. The settlement is the largest ever paid to incarcerated women by the Department of Justice.
The amount each woman will receive was based on the trauma they suffered and the number of times they were abused, with one attorney, Jessica Pride, saying that if she could, she would increase the amount “ten times as much” due to the severity of the harm caused. The settlement is expected to provide “no small amount of justice” to the victims.
The California Coalition of Women Prisoners has filed a separate class-action lawsuit, which could potentially benefit around 500 women who were housed at FCI Dublin and could lead to court-ordered reforms in the future. The Bureau of Prisons shut down the facility in April and made the closure permanent the following month.
