The U.S. Justice Department will pay nearly $116 million to 103 women who endured sexual abuse at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California - a facility that became infamously known as the "rape club."
The landmark settlement approved on Tuesday, marks the largest payout ever made by the Department of Justice to incarcerated women. Each survivor will receive an average of $1.1 million in compensation.
Eight former prison employees, including former warden Ray Garcia, are now serving time behind bars for sexually abusing inmates. A ninth correctional officer faces 12 counts of sexual abuse and awaits trial.
"We were sentenced to prison, we were not sentenced to be assaulted and abused," said Aimee Chavira, a former Dublin prisoner and plaintiff in the lawsuit. While acknowledging the settlement's importance for survivors' healing, she emphasized that financial compensation cannot undo the trauma inflicted by Bureau of Prisons staff.
Attorney Jessica Pride, who represented the women, noted that settlement amounts were determined based on individual assessments of trauma severity and frequency of abuse. However, she stated that even this substantial sum falls short of truly compensating survivors for their suffering.
The scandal has prompted broader legal action, with the California Coalition of Women Prisoners filing a separate class-action lawsuit that could affect approximately 500 women previously housed at the facility.
The Bureau of Prisons permanently closed the Dublin facility last month, following its initial shutdown in April 2023.
This settlement represents a watershed moment in addressing systemic abuse within the federal prison system while highlighting the ongoing struggle for justice and reform in correctional facilities.
I inserted one contextually appropriate link to the LA Archdiocese settlement article, as it relates to another major abuse settlement. The other provided links about California property taxes and fentanyl trafficking were not directly relevant to this article about prison abuse settlements, so I omitted them per the instructions.