Senate Report Reveals Widespread Sexual Abuse of Women in US Federal Prisons

The Justice Department is reportedly considering expanding compassionate release to include women who have been sexually abused inside federal prisons. The proposal follows in the wake of a high-profile case in which the warden at a federal facility in Dublin, Calif., was convicted of sexual abuse, and after an eight-month bipartisan Senate committee investigation chaired by Sen. Jon Ossoff which found that over the past decade, sexual abuse of women occurred in at least two-thirds of federal facilities where women are held.

“The true number of prisons where staff sexual abuse has occurred is almost certainly far higher — a fact that Senator Ossoff acknowledged when he said that the total was at least two-thirds,” said Jesse Lerner-Kinglake, communications director at Just Detention International, a health and human rights organization that seeks to end sexual abuse in all forms of detention. “The two-thirds figure is based on substantiated allegations of sexual abuse. The prison officials are the ones who decide what is or isn’t substantiated. But we know that most allegations are determined to be either unfounded or unsubstantiated, due to flaws in the investigations process. And most sexual assaults are never reported in the first place, because speaking out is dangerous. And when survivors of sexual abuse do come forward, they rarely get justice.”

Although the Justice Department has not made a formal announcement about the program or released details about how it would be implemented, advocates hailed it as an important step. However, the prevalence of sexual violence inside federal prisons is not news and sexual abuse is “not unique to the federal system,” said Lerner-Kinglake. “Women’s state prisons and local jails are also rife with sexual abuse. And just like in the [Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities], when women come forward, they often are not taken seriously — or worse, retaliated against.”

Advocates point to a system staffed by people who are inadequately trained and managed. “Sexual coercion and abuse are endemic in prisons, jails, and other facilities where people are confined against their will,” said David. C. Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project. “There’s no reason to believe that the situation is any better in state prisons and local jails, and significant reason to believe that it's worse. Jails in particular tend to be less professionally run than prisons, and typically operate without any outside scrutiny or oversight. That’s a recipe for mistreatment and abuse.”

The widespread sexual abuse in prisons “is what happens when institutions operate with no oversight,” said Kevin Ring, president of FAMM, an advocacy organization for people impacted by the criminal justice system. “This is the way the world works: watched people behave better. We have to stop waiting for angels. We’re seeing the same thing with police departments: there just has been no real oversight. And this results in facilities having an open secret rape club.”

The Senate investigation found that the Bureau of Prisons also fails to properly respond to allegations of sexual abuse. When women do come forward, they are sometimes threatened with solitary confinement or actually placed there while their allegation is investigated, said Laurette Philipsen, communications director at Florida Cares, an advocacy organization. Spending time in solitary confinement, or even the threat of it, can lead women “to sign a statement saying that they lied. The officers have all the power and they know all the blind spots in a prison where there are no cameras. This happens in state facilities too, and it gets pushed under the rug. Everyone knows it’s happening. It’s not a hidden fact.”

On December 8, the former warden at a women’s federal prison in Dublin, Calif., was convicted of sexually abusing women inside the facility. Although this meant that a top-ranking official was held accountable, the warden was the associate warden when the first cases were reported against him, said Lerner-Kinglake. “So not only did investigations not yield the correct outcome, the perpetrator was promoted to the highest position at the facility.” Additionally, the chaplain at the Dublin prison along with multiple Bureau of Prisons employees, including the compliance officer who is supposed to ensure that the facility was following the Prison Rape Elimination Act, were all found to have sexually abused women in the facility.

It is estimated that 86 percent of incarcerated women have histories of sexual or physical violence that occurred before they were behind bars. These past traumas are only compounded by the experience of being held inside prisons and jails where sexual violence is occurring. “We are talking about buildings where we are incarcerating women, many of whom already have untreated trauma from sexual violence at a young age,” said Andrea James, executive director of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. “And we are bringing in people to ‘guard’ them with low levels of emotional intelligence themselves, who are poorly trained, or are coming directly from military service, have high rates of alcoholism, substance abuse, depression, and are ill-equipped to adequately care for these women. When I was incarcerated, we had officers who would come to work drunk, officers who committed suicide. We can’t just look at all these things as if they are in a vacuum. Sexual violence is never addressed and it’s like it never happened. When you are incarcerated, you are subject to being strip-searched, groped by male guards, having male guards walk past your cell while you’re getting dressed or watching you shower. You would be hard-pressed to find a woman who wasn’t sexually abused while incarcerated.”

Advocates want the Bureau of Prisons to go further in their responses. “There has been a real focus on prosecuting the perpetrators, but that won’t help prevent the problem or help women heal,” said Ring. “We are seeing the abysmal conditions, both in terms of the prevalence of sexual assault but also [physical] violence, in facilities across the country, and since COVID, there has been a nationwide staffing shortage. The question is can we maintain the high levels of incarceration and keep this many people safe, and the answer is no. The Bureau of Prisons has the ability to fix this, and to choose not to just because it hasn’t been done before would be wrong. I hope it’s a question of how and not whether to do it or not.”

The culture in prisons and jails needs to be overhauled completely, said Lerner-Kinglake. “For too long, abusive staff have been able to do as they please, free of any consequence. Building a culture of accountability starts from the top, with leaders who believe survivors. Fortunately, the new Bureau of Prisons director, Colette Peters, has indicated that she is committed to taking the BOP in a new direction, moving toward a system that is trauma-informed and dismantling the culture of abuse that has long plagued the agency.”