Ex-women’s jail warden will get 6 years for inmate intercourse abuse
OAKLAND, Calif. — The previous warden of an abuse-plagued federal girls’s jail within the San Francisco Bay Space was sentenced Wednesday to almost six years in jail for sexually abusing incarcerated girls.
A decide sentenced Ray J. Garcia to 70 months in jail for sexually abusing three feminine inmates and forcing them to pose bare for pictures of their cells on the Federal Correctional Institute in Dublin, about 21 miles (34 kilometers) east of Oakland. His time period will probably be adopted by 15 years of supervised launch, and he should additionally register as a intercourse offender with the state of California.
A jury in December discovered Garcia responsible of eight counts of sexual abuse and one rely of mendacity to the FBI. He was amongst 5 staff charged with abusing inmates on the federal correctional establishment and the primary to go to trial.
Garcia, 55, retired from his submit in 2021 after the FBI discovered nude pictures of inmates on his government-issued cellphone. Garcia was charged with abusing three inmates between December 2019 and July 2021.
Two of the three girls Garcia was convicted of abusing spoke about what they endured earlier than U.S. District Choose Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers sentenced him, the East Bay Occasions reported.
One in every of them described her post-traumatic stress dysfunction from the abuse, the newspaper reported.
“I used to be not seen as a reputation or quantity by the federal authorities, however seen as a sexual play toy,” the lady mentioned. “
Gonzalez Rogers chastised Garcia for his position in tormenting girls on the federal facility.
“I sentence a whole lot of individuals; I anticipate and they need to be capable to anticipate that once they go into federal custody, they gained’t be abused,” Gonzalez Rogers mentioned. “And also you abused them. And there was nobody watching you — you had been the warden, and also you had been the affiliate warden.
“You had been imagined to be the examine. You had been imagined to be the individual ensuring nobody else did that.”
An Related Press investigation final 12 months revealed a tradition of abuse and cover-ups that had endured for years on the jail, about 21 miles (34 kilometers) east of Oakland. That reporting led to elevated scrutiny from Congress and pledges from the federal Bureau of Prisons that it might repair issues and alter the tradition on the jail.
The trial has referred to as into query the Bureau of Prisons’ dealing with of sexual abuse complaints from inmates in opposition to employees and the vetting course of for the individuals it chooses to run its prisons.
The 4 different charged Dublin staff are at numerous levels of their circumstances.
James Theodore Highhouse, the previous jail chaplain who pleaded responsible to abusing an inmate in his chapel workplace and mendacity to authorities, was sentenced in August to seven years in jail. He’s interesting the punishment, arguing it exceeded federal tips.
Enrique Chavez, a food service foreman, pleaded responsible and was sentenced final month to twenty months in jail. Ross Klinger, a recycling technician, has pleaded responsible however has not been sentenced. John Russell Bellhouse, a jail security administrator, is scheduled to face trial Could 30.
Garcia was in control of employees and inmate coaching on reporting abuse and complying with the federal Jail Rape Elimination Act on the similar time he was committing abuse, prosecutors say, and a few inmates say they had been despatched to solitary confinement or different prisons for accusing staff of abuse.
“You entered a cesspool after which did nothing about it. You simply went together with the experience and loved the cesspool your self,” Gonzalez Rogers mentioned, the East Bay Occasions reported. “You need to have accomplished one thing about it.”
Earlier than the decide issued her ruling, Garcia admitted fault for abusing girls on the jail and expressed contrition and regret. Within the course of, he additionally waived his proper to attraction the decision and sentence.
“Your honor, I stand earlier than you right this moment as a damaged man,” Garcia mentioned. “I couldn’t be extra ashamed. I can’t be extra sorry.”
“I can’t think about the ache, worry and disgrace they’ve gone by on account of my actions,” he mentioned of his victims.
The decide ordered Garcia to show himself in and start serving the sentence on Could 19. The jail the place he’ll serve his sentence has not been decided.