New wave of scandal hits troubled Dublin prison: FBI raid, warden ousted, more lawsuits filed

The warden at the women’s federal prison in Dublin was ousted Monday as FBI agents raided the troubled facility, where prisoners continue to come forward with sexual abuse allegations against employees. 

The FBI did not provide details about the law enforcement activity at the Federal Correctional Institution, but the Associated Press reported that the federal agents seized computers and documents during a search of the prison. 

N.T. McKinney was named interim warden, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

“Consistent with unprecedented and ongoing actions by FBOP leadership to create a positive change in the culture at FCI Dublin, recent developments have necessitated new executive employees be installed at the institution,” Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Randilee Giamusso said in a statement. “This new team has been charged with developing a plan for the future of the facility.”

Along with the warden, an associate warden and a captain were removed from the prison Monday, the Associated Press reported. 

The raid signals an escalation in an ongoing investigation of the prison, which is under intense scrutiny amid ongoing claims of sexual abuse.

A former warden and other employees have been sentenced to prison for sexually assaulting inmates. Last week 12 more female prisoners filed lawsuits in federal court alleging sexual abuse by guards.

Lawyers said the suits bring the number of damage claims to 63 against the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and employees of the Federal Correctional Institution, and that many more would be filed in the coming months.

One plaintiff, a Native American woman, said she was forcibly raped by a guard one to three times a week, while two other officers held her down and made hateful comments about her ethnicity.

Other women said they were forced to hold strip shows, masturbate or perform sex acts on one another in front of prison guards, who had threatened to write disciplinary reports on them if they refused. The lawyers said officers particularly targeted immigrant women for abuse.

“Officers at every level committed horrific abuse or actively allowed abuse to continue,” attorney Amaris Montes of Rights Behind Bars, a nonprofit representing the prisoners, said in a statement announcing the lawsuits. “These survivors seek accountability for themselves, and for everyone else who remains at risk of abuse at the hands of BOP officials.”

There was no immediate comment on the lawsuits from the Bureau of Prisons.

The low-security East Bay prison, with about 150 incarcerated people, has been wracked by disclosures of sexual abuse that apparently went on for years. The Associated Press reported in February 2022 that both workers and prisoners referred to FCI Dublin as the “rape club.”

Last March, Ray Garcia, a 32-year Bureau of Prisons employee who served as warden from November 2020 to July 2021, was sentenced to five years and 10 months in federal prison and fined $15,000 after a jury convicted him of eight felony charges involving the sexual abuse of three prisoners.

A half-dozen staff members have also been found guilty, including the prison’s former chaplain, James Highhouse. He was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2022 after pleading guilty to five felony charges of sexually abusing a prisoner and lying about it to investigators.

In December 2022, the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found sexual abuse of prisoners by staff in at least two-thirds of federal women’s prisons during the previous decade, with Dublin among the worst. The report said the Bureau of Prisons had failed to prevent or detect recurring attacks.

In October, 29 prisoners at the state-run Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla filed a lawsuit saying they had been sexually abused, some for years, by a guard who was eventually fired but was never prosecuted.

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