OAKLAND – For months and sometimes years as they suffered sexual abuse from their jailers at the Dublin federal prison, the women inmates kept quiet.
Whom could they tell when the warden himself, the man in charge of investigating abuse at the prison, was sexually assaulting three of them? Who would believe that the prison chaplain they had sought out for spiritual guidance was quoting biblical parables to coerce and manipulate them into sex? How could they come forward when their predators held all the power to make life in a prison cell even more unbearable?
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“All of us who were victimized were completely helpless while we were inside,” said Darlene Baker, whose attacker still hasn’t been charged.
In an Oakland church Saturday, more than two dozen former inmates who had been victimized during the “rape club” culture at the all-female prison gathered to share their harrowing stories of abuse, and explain how they finally gained the courage to come forward. Their acts of bravery over the past two years – and the efforts of legal advocates, relatives and congressional representatives who took up their cause – led to criminal convictions against the warden, chaplain and six other jailers, a class action lawsuit and ultimately the prison’s abrupt closure in April. Twenty-nine other prison workers are on paid administrative leave during ongoing investigations. So many prison guards were on leave, a special master found, that by the time it closed, the facility was operating with only half its staff. A federal judge called the prison a “dysfunctional mess.”
The Saturday gathering, sponsored by the Dublin Prison Solidarity Coalition, whose members filed the class action lawsuit, included former inmates who traveled from as far away as Seattle and Arizona for the emotional reunion. They started early in the day with a private healing circle.
“Getting in a group of other women that have suffered the very same thing that I did, it brings us closer together,” said former inmate Windy Panzo. “It allows us to share that pain and strengthen one another.”
By Saturday evening, at least four of them were ready to tell their stories publicly – and attach their names.
“My name is Windy and I was raped by the chaplain,” she told more than 100 people packed into a meeting room in the First Unitarian Church in downtown Oakland, including relatives of the victims and other advocates.
She was serving a 25-year sentence on drug charges and was “broken spiritually. I was broken mentally. I was broken physically”
She went to Chaplain James Highhouse for hope, and instead “I was raped multiple times.”
She choked up as she described how her name would be called over the prison speaker system to meet with the chaplain. “He would do anything he could find to get me to go to the chapel,” she said. “And I had to go. You couldn’t say no. You couldn’t walk away.”
Former prison inmate Windy Panzo speaks while sitting with a panel of survivors of the staff sexual abuse at the now-closed Federal Correctional Institution Dublin Prison during a Survivor Support Gathering event held at the Unitarian Church of Oakland in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. The event is sponsored by a group called the Dublin Prison Solidarity Coalition. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
When she begged for a transfer and told her prison counselor of the abuse, the counselor shut her down: “I’m retiring,” Panzo recalled the counselor saying. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Who do you tell when the warden, the chaplain, the supervisors, the kitchen staff, everybody’s dirty,” Panzo said, “and if they’re not dirty directly, they’re hiding it for everybody else?”
When other victims came forward with stories of rampant abuse at the hands of jailers, Panzo finally spoke up about her own. She testified against Highhouse, who is now serving a 7-year sentence for sexually assaulting her. During the sentencing, the judge noted Highhouse’s “sustained predatory behavior against traumatized and defenseless women in prison.” Panzo also gained the strength to testify on a video call in front of a Congressional committee.
Former Warden Ray. J. Garcia was sentenced in 2023 to nearly 6 years in prison for sexually abusing three inmates. Garcia, who had been promoted from assistant warden to the top job in the midst of the abuse, had boasted to his victims he could “never be fired.” The chaplain and warden were two of eight corrections officers who were charged. Seven have been convicted.
The medical officer who Darlene Baker says locked the door to the medical office and sexually assaulted her has yet to be charged, she said.
“He pushed me into the back medical room and violently sexually assaulted me. And I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘stop,’” Baker told the group. “And then I realized very quickly I was completely helpless, completely helpless.”
She told a prison psychologist, who said “we have no mental health (services) available.” If she was suicidal, he told her, she could go to solitary confinement. “And that was the end of my conversation with him.”
When her abuser found out she had complained, she said, he retaliated by denying her her prescription medication for two months.
Baker’s family contacted then-U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier from San Mateo, who helped bring the scandal to light.
The California Coalition for Women Prisoners, which is part of the Dublin Prison Solidarity Coalition, filed a class action lawsuit in August 2023 seeking fundamental reforms at the prison and systemic change in the federal Bureau of Prisons. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers appointed a special master, Wendy Stills, to oversee reforms there. Stills and her team had been on site for little more than a week last April when Bureau of Prisons officials announced its imminent closure — a move the inmates believe was a blatant attempt to cover up the scandal and impede the investigation. The special master immediately turned her attention to what became a chaotic transfer of 603 inmates to other women’s federal prisons across the country – most on the East Coast. In her report last month calling conditions there “unconscionable,” Stills described how she halted a number of buses from leaving on the first day. Some inmates were left on a parked bus for four hours while she made sure the transfers were properly tracked and that anyone set for imminent release was held back. A number of inmates, including sexual abuse victims, were allowed compassionate release.
After the closure, the Bureau of Prisons petitioned to dismiss the class action lawsuit since the prison was closed and claiming the issues raised in the lawsuit were moot. Last week, Judge Gonzales Rogers denied their claim. A trial is set for next year.
The women who gathered Saturday are still waiting for justice for the other corrections officers who remain on paid leave. They plan to continue to speak out to encourage prison reform.
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“It’s very healing just to be able to share our stories with one another. But it’s also empowering, right? It gives us a voice,” said Kendra Drysdale, whose abuser has not been charged. “Our goal is to give a voice to those who are still there, still incarcerated, so we can stop any abuse from happening and try and make changes.”