DOJ to Pay $116M to Victims of 'Rape Club'

The US government will pay nearly $116 million to resolve lawsuits brought by more than 100 women who say they were abused or mistreated at a now-shuttered federal prison in California that was known as the "Rape Club" due to rampant sexual misconduct by the staff, reports the AP. Under settlements approved Tuesday, the Justice Department will pay an average of about $1.1 million to each of 103 women who sued the Bureau of Prisons over their treatment at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say the deal is the largest ever of its kind with the federal bureau, per the New York Times.

Tuesday's settlements cover an initial wave of lawsuits seeking monetary compensation from the Bureau of Prisons after former warden Ray Garcia and other employees at FCI Dublin went to prison for sexually abusing inmates, per the AP. Subsequent lawsuits have yet to be resolved. The Bureau of Prisons and lawyers for the plaintiffs said individual settlement amounts were decided through a third-party process that included in-depth interviews with each woman. An AP investigation found a culture of abuse and cover-ups that had persisted for years at the prison. That reporting led to increased scrutiny from Congress and pledges from the Bureau of Prisons that it would fix problems and change the culture there.

It's not just an issue that has affected FCI Dublin: Per the Guardian, a 2022 Senate inquiry found that, over the past decade, employees in at least two-thirds of federal women's prisons had sexually abused prisoners. "We were sentenced to prison, we were not sentenced to be assaulted and abused," plaintiff and ex-Dublin prisoner Aimee Chavira said Tuesday, per the AP. "I hope this settlement will help survivors, like me, as they begin to heal." The Bureau of Prisons, meanwhile, said in a statement that it "strongly condemns all forms of sexually abusive behavior and takes seriously its duty to protect the individuals in our custody, as well as maintain the safety of our employees and community." (More Bureau of Prisons stories.)