For Years, Abuse Plagued an East Bay Prison Dubbed the ‘Rape Club.’ One Trial Remains

While she was incarcerated at FCI Dublin, one woman says in court documents, her father died. Her mail from her husband was withheld, her calls to him were cut off, and she fell into a depression.

Then, a correctional officer at the East Bay federal prison seemed to offer her a lifeline.

Darrell Wayne Smith told her that if she met him in the prison’s laundry room, he would give her a cellphone so she could have a video visit with her children, she said.

But when she arrived, she said, he put his hands on her breasts and buttocks. According to court documents, she alleges that when she asked about calling her kids, Smith “told her she had to cooperate with him first.”

Smith had blocked her communication, she said, and would come to her cell, force her to walk around and spank her.

Between September 2020 and January 2021, the woman said, Smith got her alone and subjected her to unwanted sexual acts — first by promising contact with her family, and later by threatening trouble if she didn’t comply or by grabbing her physically. She alleges that he made her “model” lingerie, penetrated her with his fingers and ordered her to have sex with him.

After Smith had assaulted her multiple times, the woman told him that she wanted “what was going on between them” to stop.

“Smith responded that she had no choice, and it would not stop until he wanted it to stop,” according to court documents.

Of the eight former FCI Dublin officers charged in a sprawling investigation into the prison’s widespread culture of abuse, retaliation and cover-ups, Smith is the last whose fate is uncertain. His trial on 15 counts of abuse and deprivation of civil rights is set to begin Monday in federal court in Oakland.

More than 100 women have come forward alleging sexual misconduct by correctional officers and high-ranking officials at the low-security women’s prison, which was shuttered last April after the yearslong investigation.

“This trial is something a lot of women have been looking forward to … and are going to be paying attention to and hoping for a just outcome in,” said Jae Oh, who represented three women who made claims against Smith in civil cases, including the one who said she was isolated and abused by him in 2020 and 2021. KQED does not identify victims of sexual violence.

This “will be sort of the last bookend step in this very long process where we’ve been repeatedly trying to get the truth and accountability for everything that these women have gone through,” Oh told KQED.

Known as “Dirty Dick Clark,” Smith, 55, faces six counts of sexual abuse of a ward, seven counts of abusive sexual contact, one count of aggravated sexual abuse, and one count of deprivation of rights by bestowing cruel and unusual punishment. If convicted, he could face a lifetime sentence.

“The defendant’s alleged actions are some of the most disturbing charges we’ve seen for a former federal corrections officer,” Michael Nordwall, executive assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, said in a statement when Smith’s indictment was expanded to add new charges last year.

Smith is accused of digitally penetrating five women as far back as 2016, some on multiple occasions, and forcing one to have intercourse with him while one of the other victims “stood outside to serve as a lookout.” He often bribed them to get them alone and threatened retaliation if they didn’t comply, according to court documents.

That fear of retaliation loomed over many women who were “very scared about participating in this process” by filing complaints against FCI Dublin officers, Oh said.

Some who did were sent to the solitary housing unit, she said, where they lost contact with their families, recreation time and credit for good behavior that could have shortened their time in prison. Another told KQED she lost visitation privileges, phone and commissary access, and was barred from speaking with lawyers.

Some women who are still incarcerated after being transferred to other facilities have not come forward with their stories of abuse at FCI Dublin because of the power imbalance they face, Oh said.

Correctional officers “know where the security cameras are; they know who the women will talk to; they get access to their emails, their phone calls, their mails,” she told KQED. “That great power differential and the fact that these women are reliant on the officers day in and day out for food, for recreation time, for mail, for phone calls to family — I think they just feel powerless.”

But the sentences against the seven other FCI Dublin officers, including former warden Ray Garcia, have shown the power of women coming forward, Oh said.

“Validating their stories and their concerns has been very meaningful because time and time again with the other criminal cases up until now, we’ve seen that there is power in the victims’ voices when they speak up,” she said.

The years of staff violence at FCI Dublin, dubbed the “rape club” by workers and women incarcerated there, was first reported in a 2021 Associated Press investigation. The prison is facing more than 60 lawsuits alleging sexual assault and retaliation by prison officials.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons also faces a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of women who were formerly incarcerated at FCI Dublin, including some who were transferred to other federal facilities after its closure.

“It is unconscionable that any correctional agency could allow incarcerated individuals under their control and responsibility to be subject to the conditions that existed at FCI-Dublin for such an extended period of time without correction,” read a report by court-appointed special master Wendy Still, who was tasked with overseeing changes at the site — the first time such an appointment was made in the history of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Still’s report, unsealed by a judge in August, also says she worried about “the mistreatment, neglect and abuse” that women suffered at Dublin being repeated after they were transferred, “as many of the conditions that existed at this facility appear to be longstanding and systemic in nature.”