Justice Department to pay nearly $116M to inmates sexually abused at California prison dubbed the 'rape club'
The Justice Department has been ordered to pay almost $116 million to 103 women who say they were abused at the now-closed Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, dubbed the "rape club."
The settlement was approved on Tuesday and will average $1.1 million for each woman who sued the prison for mistreatment and staff-on-inmate sexual abuse.
"We were sentenced to prison, we were not sentenced to be assaulted and abused," lawsuit plaintiff and former Dublin prisoner Aimee Chavira told The Associated Press.
"I hope this settlement will help survivors, like me, as they begin to heal – but money will not repair the harm that BOP did to us, or free survivors who continue to suffer in prison, or bring back survivors who were deported and separated from their families," she said.
FBI SEARCHES CALIFORNIA FEDERAL WOMEN'S PRISON PLAGUED BY SEXUAL ABUSE
The prison's former warden, Ray Garcia, and seven other employees are now in prison themselves for sexually abusing inmates.
The eighth remaining correctional officer, Darrell Wayne Smith, is awaiting trial on 12 counts of sexual abuse.
This is the largest settlement ever paid to incarcerated women by the DOJ, according to one of the women's lawyers, Jessica Pride.
Pride also said if it were up to her, the amount would be "ten times as much," because there is "no amount that you can place on what a survivor goes through in being sexually assaulted," according to The AP.
The victims were interviewed to assess how much each of them should get from the settlement. The amount was based on the trauma suffered and how many times the women were abused, according to Pride.
The California Coalition of Women Prisoners has filed a separate class-action lawsuit in which approximately 500 women who were housed at FCI Dublin could possibly benefit from court-ordered reform in the future.
The Bureau of Prisons shut down the facility in April and made its closure permanent last month.