At East Bay federal prison tainted by sex-abuse scandal, all of the prisoners have been cleared out

DUBLIN — All of the women who used to live behind the bars at the notorious Federal Correctional Institute of Dublin — where guards and other officials engaged in repeated sexual abuse of inmates — are now in other correctional facilities, federal officials said Thursday.

“All women have been successfully transferred to other … locations, released, or transferred to community placement,” Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Donald Murphy said via email Thursday. “Each individual underwent a thorough assessment to determine the best placement for them with a goal to keep everyone as close as possible to their expected release locations.”

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Collette Peters, the agency’s director, ordered the prison shut down on April 15 after U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers concluded in March that “Dublin is a dysfunctional mess. The situation no longer can be tolerated.”

In his statement, Murphy categorized the closure of the prison as “temporary.” He said no employees will lose their jobs as a result of the closure.

Eight jail officers at the prison have faced criminal charges for sexually abusing prisoners at FCI Dublin. Seven of them have been sentenced after convictions at trial or plea deals.

Rogers in March also noted prisoners’ complaints of ongoing retaliation after the convictions and sentencing of prison officials guilty of criminal sexual abuse and sexual contact. The judge said she would appoint a special master to provide detailed oversight.

A month later, federal officials announced they were closing the facility.

The inmates have said the abuse hasn’t stopped. Some told the Bay Area News Group that the hurried transfer of more than 600 inmates to prisons as far away as Miami and Minnesota brought grueling cross-country bus trips and flights without any sense of destination; they had to travel without medical prescriptions or sanitary products.

“People were crying. I had anxiety the whole time,” inmate Sara Victoria, 47, told the Bay Area News Group last month after she was stuck on a parked bus in the Dublin prison parking lot for some 5 hours before the inmates were sent back to their cells. “We just didn’t know where we were going and what we were doing.”

Staff writer Julia Prodis Sulek contributed to this report.