DUBLIN — For the fifth time in a year, a prison guard at the federal prison in Dublin has been charged with sexually abusing an incarcerated woman, prosecutors announced Wednesday.
Enrique Chavez, 49, of Manteca, was arrested Sunday in Tuscon, Arizona, where he is due to appear in federal court pending transfer to the Bay Area. He faces two counts of sexual abuse of an incarcerated woman, crimes prosecutors say happened in October 2020, around the same time period as other FCI Dublin employees abused women at the prison, court records show.
Prosecutors announced the case against Chavez in a news release that quoted top officials in the U.S. Department of Justice, weeks after members of Congress and advocates called for federal oversight and Inspector General investigations of the prison.
“Sexually abusing inmates is a betrayal of (prison workers’) responsibility and undermines a just penal system,” Northern California’s U.S. Attorney, Stephanie Hinds, said in a news release. “My office is committed to pursuing charges against anyone – including federal employees – who abuse the public’s trust in violation of federal law.”
It is the latest development involving the prison, which the Associated Press reported last February had become known by the nickname “Rape Club” due to rampant sexual abuse. Earlier this month, U.S. Representatives Eric Swalwell, Jackie Speier and Karen Bass held a news conference outside the prison’s grounds, calling for stronger oversight of the institution.
FCI Dublin has been embroiled in controversy since last year, when the first in a string of staffers were charged with sexually abusing incarcerated women. Previously, four employees — including a chaplain and former warden — have been charged federally for allegedly sexually abusing women at the prison.
The ex-warden, Ray Garcia, allegedly told one of his two victims not to bother reporting the conduct because he was friends with the man who would investigate such complaints.
A former guard, Ross Klinger, pleaded guilty last February to sexually abusing three women. One of the women told the news station KTVU that Klinger would “pick the ones he felt were weak.” Two weeks after Klinger’s guilty plea, ex-prison guard and chaplain James T. Highhouse pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual abuse and one count of lying to federal investigators, court records show.
In addition to the criminal charges, at least one incarcerated woman has sued the prison, alleging she was placed into solitary confinement after reporting being abused by a guard who is not among the five who have been criminally charged or convicted. At the height of the Omicron wave earlier this year, a group of attorneys and advocates, including the ACLU, publicly voiced concerns over rising COVID infection rates at the prison.
Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco said in a written statement that the case shows that the government “is committed to holding Bureau of Prisons personnel accountable.”
“Staff misconduct, at any level, will not be tolerated, and our efforts to root it out are far from over,” Monaco said.
But Susan Beaty, a Senior Staff Attorney with Centro Legal de la Raza, a nonprofit that provides immigration legal services, said in an interview that hearing of sexual abuse inside state and federal prisons is common for those who work with incarcerated people. Beaty said she knows of two other times — in the 1990s and early 2000s — when women at the prison made similar sexual abuse allegations against guards.
“The vast majority of women who are incarcerated experience sexual assault or sexual harassment from staff people, regardless of what facility they’re in,” Beaty said. “What happened in Dublin is horrific, but unfortunately, it’s not unique. What is unique is that the federal government is investigating.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com