SACRAMENTO, the United States, July 14 (Xinhua) -- A scandal involving a women's prison in California sparked anger again Friday as two more correctional officers pleaded guilty to sexual abuse, taking the number of charged officers to eight.
The Federal Correctional Institution (FCI), a low-security all-women's prison in Dublin, California, is now notoriously known for a pattern of shocking sexual abuse of inmates.
The two former officers were the seventh and eighth individuals charged with sexually abusing eight inmates at the Dublin facility, and federal agents were still investigating "these heinous allegations," according to a press release by the U.S. Attorney's Office of Northern District of California on Friday.
The two latest prosecutions involved Andrew Jones, 35, a former cook supervisor who admitted six felony charges of sexual abuse of three women he supervised; and Nakie Nunley, 48, a guard at the prison call center, who pleaded guilty to four charges of sexual abuse and five lesser felonies of abusive sexual contact of five women.
Both also pleaded guilty to making false statements to the government when questioned by federal agents. They will be sentenced at later dates.
Friday's announcement of additional guilty officers, along with earlier convictions, had further revealed the toxic culture of sexual abuse happening in prisons and necessitates urgent actions to reform the country's prison system, said advocates.
The prison, with about 650 inmates, has been wrecked by disclosures of sexual abuse that apparently went on for years. It was first reported by The Associated Press in February 2022.
In the previous cases, the traumatizing experience caused psychological injuries to the victims. During the highly-publicized trial of the former warden Ray Garcia, another individual who was sentenced for sexual abuse, with two victims testifying against him and telling about the horrors they endured.
One of the women called Garcia a "sick predator" while describing how she contemplated suicide due to the trauma of his abuse. Another woman told the court that she still lived with post-traumatic stress disorder and extreme mental anguish.
The nature of prison creates an imbalance of power between guards and inmates, said Jaehyun Oh, a partner at Jacob Fuchsberg Law Firm, which represents some of the victims in Dublin sexual abusing cases.
Rules strictly forbid any sort of sexual contact between prison guards and inmates, said Oh. "However, in FCI Dublin, those rules were openly and widely disregarded because even the Warden and Chaplain participated in sexually abusing the inmates."
"The sheer number of perpetrators and victims have shown that there is a desperate need for systematic change," she said. ■
