The trial of a former prison warden for forcing inmates to have sex with him away from surveillance cameras in a women’s prison known to the media as the “rape club” has begun in California.
Ray Gracia, a former prison guard from Dublin, California, is on trial in federal court in Oakland for abusing at least three inmates between 2019 and 2021, taking them to places he knew weren’t under surveillance and forcing them to have sex and take their nude photos.
Garcia was accused of ordering the inmates to undress as he made his rounds and of lying to federal agents who asked him if he told the inmates to undress.
The defendant pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, which could land him in prison if sentenced to a 15-year term, according to the statement. Los Angeles Times.
Gracia, one of five defendants in the case, withdrew after the FBI found nude photos of inmates on his phone last year.
Prosecutors said he was praising the inmates and promising them to move to lower-security prisons to have sex with them, and promised to witness their early release to ensure their silence, one of the inmates said that he was a “close friend” of the corrections officer in charge of investigating the abusive behavior of the employees and cannot be fired from his job.
He was also responsible for training staff and inmates to report abuse and comply with the Federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, while committing the abuse himself, according to prosecutors.
Garcia’s trial comes after an Associated Press investigation in February revealed the extent of abuse and cover-ups at the prison. As a result, Congress has begun verifying this information, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons has pledged to make reforms.
The indictment officially includes three inmates, but the jury heard of six women who said they touched their bodies and ordered them to be naked or in sexy clothes.
One of the female inmates, the victims, testified before the court that she had feelings for him, as she believed he cared for and loved her, noting that their first sexual encounter was in the toilet of the prison visitors area .
The woman, whose job was to clean the examining room, said Garcia had told her he knew of several places that security cameras wouldn’t catch.
After touching his body, she said she was in shock: “I couldn’t believe it was happening, but I felt like he loved me and cared about me and I wanted to make him happy.”
Eventually, he points out, it became “very pornographic, very vulgar.”
James Riley, Garcia’s attorney, argued that there was not a single video documenting the alleged allegations of sexual misconduct.
In case documents, the defense argued that Garcia took photos of one of the inmates because she wanted to document that she was violating the prison’s policy of going naked.
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