Ex-women’s prison warden gets 6 years for inmate sex abuse
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — The former warden of an abuse-plagued federal women’s prison in the San Francisco Bay Area was sentenced Wednesday to nearly six years in prison for sexually abusing incarcerated women.
A judge sentenced Ray J. Garcia to 70 months in prison for sexually abusing three female inmates and forcing them to pose naked for photos in their cells at the Federal Correctional Institute in Dublin, about 21 miles ( 34 kilometers) east of Oakland. His term will be followed by 15 years of supervised release, and he must also register as a sex offender with the state of California.
A jury in December found Garcia guilty of eight counts of sexual abuse and one count of lying to the FBI. He was among five workers charged with abusing inmates at the federal correctional institution and the first to go to trial.
Garcia, 55, retired from his post in 2021 after the FBI found nude photos of inmates on his government-issued phone. Garcia was charged with abusing three inmates between December 2019 and July 2021.
Two of the three women Garcia was convicted of abusing spoke about what they endured before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers sentenced him, the East Bay Times reported.
One of them described her post-traumatic stress disorder from the abuse, the newspaper reported.
“I was not seen as a name or number by the federal government, but seen as a sexual play toy,” the woman said. “
Gonzalez Rogers chastised Garcia for his role in tormenting women at the federal facility.
“I sentence hundreds of people; I expect and they should be able to expect that when they go into federal custody, they won’t be abused,” Gonzalez Rogers said. “And you abused them. And there was no one watching you — you were the warden, and you were the associate warden.