Amid increasing civil litigation and a report identifying longstanding deficiencies in how the California prison system addresses staff sexual abuse, the U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday, Sept. 4 announced it has launched an investigation into conditions at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women in Chino.
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Federal officials said in a news release they found “significant justification” for launching a civil rights investigation after reviewing publicly available information and information from advocates, according to federal officials.
The investigation comes more than two and a half years after passage of Assembly Bill 1455 on Jan. 1, 2022, which extended the statute of limitations for victims of sexual assault by police and correctional officers to sue their assailants in civil court.
AB 1455 gives victims two options: One is to sue in civil court up to 10 years after their assailants have been convicted of sexual assault or a crime in which sexual assault was initially alleged. The second is to sue up to 10 years after their assailants left the law enforcement agency they were working at when the assault occurred.
Since the law took effect, a spate of lawsuits have been filed by hundreds of current and former female prisoners in the state prison system describing numerous instances of sexual assault by correctional officers overseen by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Most of the plaintiffs in those cases are current or former inmates at the Central California Women’s Facility and the California Institution for Women.
Last August, attorneys James Lewis and Kyle Gaines of Slater, Slater, Schulman in Beverly Hills said their law firm had filed 135 lawsuits totaling 147 plaintiffs in San Bernardino, Sacramento and Madera counties since AB 1455, authored by Assembly member Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, took effect.
They said at the time they planned on filing at least 100 more lawsuits on behalf of current and former prisoners at the California Institution for Women, the California Central Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, and the now-closed Folsom Women’s Facility.
In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Lewis and Gaines said the number of lawsuits they had filed was now up to 600, with about 530 of them filed on behalf of current and former prisoners at the California Women’s Central Facility and about 30 on behalf of current and former prisoners at the California Institution for Women. All the cases have been consolidated and are being heard in Sacramento Superior Court.
Among some of the allegations in the lawsuits include inappropriate groping during searches, genital rubbing and forcible rape.
A civil lawsuit filed on behalf of 21 women incarcerated at the …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
