More guards sexually abused women at CA prison called ‘rape club,’ feds say
A Justice Department investigation continues into a California women’s prison that came to be called the “rape club,” in connection with what federal officials have characterized as a culture of sexual abuse perpetuated by guards.
The federal probe found evidence of more former correctional officers, Jeffrey Wilson, 34, and Lawrence Gacad, 33, sexually abusing women at FCI Dublin in 2022, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California said in a June 26 news release. The facility, which has since closed, is about a 35-mile drive southeast from San Francisco.
Wilson was charged June 25 with five counts of sexual abuse of a ward and one count of false statements to a government agency, prosecutors said. Gacad faces one count of abusive sexual contact.
They are the ninth and 10th FCI Dublin guards to be criminally charged with sexual abuse, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Information on Wilson and Gacad’s legal representation was not immediately available.
Six FCI Dublin staff members, including former warden Ray J. Garcia and former chaplain James Highhouse, have been sentenced to prison following sexual abuse convictions, prosecutors said. A seventh former officer was sentenced to one year of home confinement after he pleaded guilty.
In a statement to McClatchy News on June 27, Federal Bureau of Prisons Director William K. Marshall III said BOP employees are “held to the highest of standards,” adding that the majority do “the right thing every single day.”
“Those who abuse their position, who treat inmates or their fellow employees with anything less than the dignity and integrity I would expect my kids to be treated with, the type this profession demands — they are not BOP employees in my eyes,” said Marshall, who was appointed by President Donald Trump to lead the bureau in April.
“By their actions, they have forfeited that title,” Marshall added.
According to prosecutors, the charges against Wilson stem from a five-month span, from mid-March 2022 to mid-August 2022, when he repeatedly sexually abused a woman incarcerated at FCI Dublin in the prison’s medical room.
He later lied to federal agents by denying his involvement in the abuse and telling them “he had never given her contraband while she was an inmate,” prosecutors said.
Gacad was charged in connection with inappropriately touching a female inmate from March 1, 2022, through mid-June 2022, according to prosecutors.
Specifically, prosecutors wrote in court documents that “he touched (her) buttocks with his hand while they were near the garbage compactor at FCI Dublin.”
$116 million sex abuse settlement
Several lawsuits have been filed over staff-on-inmate sexual abuse at FCI Dublin, McClatchy News reported.
In one lawsuit filed in August 2023 by a woman formerly incarcerated at the facility, she detailed being groomed and sexually abused by Garcia, who she accused of encouraging other staff members “to harass, rape, and abuse inmates without consequence.”
The filing says that because the abuse became so “pervasive,” it became known as the “rape club.”
It was one of many lawsuits brought from September 2022 to July 2024 by women imprisoned at FCI Dublin, according to the National Women’s Law Center.
On Dec. 17, the Justice Department agreed to pay a $115.8 million settlement to 103 women, “the largest award ever to center on sexual abuse claims by incarcerated people,” the non-profit organization reported.
Warden sentenced
On March 22, 2023, Garcia was sentenced to 70 months in prison for sexually abusing three female inmates, according to the Justice Department.
In a statement issued that day, Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said, “Rather than ensuring that female inmates at the Dublin prison were safe and secure, Garcia used his position as warden to sexually abuse three inmates over multiple years, intimidated inmates and lied to cover up his crimes, and created a heinous culture that failed to protect female inmates from widespread sexual abuse and violence at the hands of other Dublin employees.”
Several months later, former correctional officer Andrew Jones received the lengthiest prison sentence in November 2023 of all FCI Dublin officers sentenced to date, McClatchy News reported.
Jones, who supervised the women working in the kitchen, “sexually abused one prisoner after another” within months of starting work at the prison, from July 2020 to June 2021, prosecutors wrote in his sentencing memorandum.
He was sentenced to eight years in federal prison on Nov. 16 for sexually abusing inmates and making false statements, according to prosecutors.
‘No plans to reopen’ prison
In February, agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement toured the shuttered prison, creating concerns about the possibility of the facility re-opening as a detention center for immigrants, The Mercury News reported.
Addressing these concerns, U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (CA-10) said on June 20 that he spoke with Federal Bureau of Prisons officials who promised that FCI Dublin is to remain closed, according to the newspaper.
“They believe it’s not a viable place for any kind of detention facility, for ICE (or) for anyone else,” DeSaulnier said, the newspaper reported.
BOP spokesman Scott Taylor told McClatchy News on June 27 that “there are no plans to reopen” FCI Dublin.
This story was originally published June 27, 2025 at 2:13 PM with the headline "More guards sexually abused women at CA prison called ‘rape club,’ feds say."
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