SAN FRANCISCO — The U.S. Justice Department announced Wednesday that it has opened an investigation into allegations that corrections officers systematically sexually abused women at two state-run prisons in California.
Authorities found “significant justification” to launch an investigation into the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women in Chino, the DOJ said in a news release. Both are run by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The prison service said in a statement on Wednesday that it does not tolerate sexual abuse in prisons and that it welcomes the investigation.
The formal investigation was sparked by hundreds of private lawsuits filed over the past two years alleging that women incarcerated at the Chowchilla facility were raped or otherwise sexually abused, the news release said. A single lawsuit filed on behalf of 21 women incarcerated at the Chino facility alleges that from 2014 to 2020, prison guards groped and forcibly raped the women there, forced them to engage in oral copulation and threatened them with violence, the news release said.
“No woman in prison should be subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of correctional officers who are constitutionally obligated to protect them,” said Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
According to the Justice Ministry, prison staff are accused of seeking sexual favors in exchange for contraband and other privileges. The ministry added that some of the accused are prison officials responsible for handling complaints of sexual abuse in the institutions.
Jeff Macomber, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said in a statement that the department welcomes the independent investigation. “Sexual violence is an appalling violation of basic human dignity that will not be tolerated — under any circumstances — within the California state prison system,” he said.
In April, the federal Bureau of Prisons announced that it will close a women’s prison in Northern California known as the “rape club” after an Associated Press investigation revealed widespread sexual abuse by prison guards.
Chino is located about 35 miles (56 kilometers) east of Los Angeles. Chowchilla is located about 145 miles (233 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco.