DUBLIN — Federal prosecutors filed sexual abuse and misconduct charges against more former FCI Dublin guards this week, re-igniting a scandal that led to more than $100 million in settlement payments and contributed to the troubled prison’s closure last year.
The two new cases bring to 10 the number of former prison officials charged with sexual misconduct at the infamous women’s prison, where a reputed “rape club” terrorized inmates for years, all while guards retaliated against women who spoke up against their abusers. The culture inside the jail became so toxic that federal prison leaders shuttered the facility in 2024, just weeks after a federal judge made the unprecedented decision in ordering a special master to oversee the facility.
Newly charged this week were Jeffery Wilson, 34, and Lawrence Gacad, 33, both of whom are accused of abusing women in 2022.
Wilson faces five counts of sexual abuse of a ward, after prosecutors say he repeatedly abused an inmate in the prison’s medical room from March through August of 2022, according to a Department of Justice news release. Authorities claim he then lied about abusing the woman, and about giving her contraband while she was housed at the prison.
Gacad faces a single charge of abusive sexual contact, after prosecutors say he abused an inmate from March through June of 2022. related to his alleged abuse of an FCI Dublin inmate, S.L., between March and June of 2022.
Already, seven prison staffers at all levels of the facility — from the warden down to line-level guards — have either been convicted at trial or pleaded guilty to a slew of charges related to abusing women at the prison. They include former Warden Ray J. Garcia, who was sentenced in early 2023 to nearly six years in prison, as well as former Chaplain James Highhouse, who received a seven-year prison term.
An eighth prison guard, Darrell Smith, is set to appear for trial in September after his first time before a jury ended in a mistrial earlier this year.
Federal prison officials first announced plans to close the prison in April 2024, and made the decision final in December. At the time, the agency had been facing an avalanche of lawsuits from inmates who said they had been sexually assaulted and retaliated against by prison guards for years.
One of those lawsuits achieved class-action status amid claims that prison managers ignored decades of warning signs and providing insufficient mental and physical health care to inmates. It led to a consent decree that called for a federal monitor to oversee nearly 500 inmates who were housed at the prison, and to ensure they are protected from being placed into solitary confinement as a form of retaliation for speaking out about prison conditions.
More than 100 inmates also have received more than $100 million in settlement payouts from the federal government for the abuses they endured.
The court-appointed special monitor later lambasted the Bureau of Prisons for its actions in closing the facility, calling it “unnecessarily rushed.” The prison officials’ decisions led to “mass chaos” as inmates were scattered to other prisons across the country, the special master wrote in a report.
More recently, inmate and migrant advocates have raised concerns that the mothballed prison may be transformed into a detention center as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Check back for updates to this developing story.