Global Courant 2023-05-16 00:18:20
A former correctional officer at a troubled federal women’s prison in California was arrested Friday in Florida and charged with sexually assaulting three inmates, federal prosecutors said.
Darrell Wayne Smith, who worked at Federal Correctional Institution Dublin in the Bay Area, was charged with repeated abuse of the women between 2019 and 2021 in their cells and in the prison’s washroom, prosecutors said.
Smith is the facility’s sixth employee to be arrested on charges of sexual abuse, which was so prevalent at the prison it was once dubbed the “rape club” by inmates and workers. The criminal behavior went all the way to the top: Director Ray J. Garcia was convicted in March of having sex with and sexually abusing inmates. Inmates cannot legally consent to sex with prison staff.
Garcia was sentenced to 70 months in prison.
Smith was indicted on 12 counts of sexual assault and ward sexual abuse. The women he allegedly abused were named only by their initials in court documents.
Three of the other FCI Dublin staff accused of sexual abuse have pleaded guilty, while former prison chaplain James Theodore Highhouse is appealing a seven-year prison sentence for excessive sexual abuse of a prisoner.
FCI Dublin is a low-security women’s prison in Alameda County that currently holds about 500 inmates.
