24 women remain at FCI Dublin, others relay stories of being moved to prisons across U.S.
DUBLIN, Calif. - Twenty-four women remained at the shuttered Federal Correctional Institute at Dublin on Saturday, as more women have come forward with their experiences of their treks and new lives at prisons across the country.
Meanwhile, two Congressional representatives wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merick Garland asking him to investigate how FCI Dublin was shut down.
Bureau of Prisons Director Colette S. Peters announced the prison would temporarily close on April 15, ten days after a federal judge named a special master to oversee what she called a "dysfunctional mess" at FCI Dublin.
The mess included a rampant culture of sexual abuse where eight officers have been charged with sex crimes since 2022 – seven so far have already been found guilty and sent to prison themselves.
AH, whom KTVU is not naming so that she won't face retaliation at her new facility, wrote to say that she was among the first group to get bussed to a detention center in Pahrump, Nevada.
Echoing similar accounts by other women, AH said the driver was "horrible," veering the bus onto the dirt road, causing everyone on board to scream and feel nauseous.
There were no sanitary supplies and only one roll of toilet paper. Women didn't get their medication, either, AH said, and no one received any food for the entire 11-hour trip.
When the women asked the bus driver to turn the music down on the bus, "he gave us the finger," she wrote. When people threw up, the driver said, "shit happens" and cut off the lights.
Others have told KTVU that at least one bus driver played sexually explicit rap music and The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round over and over again to taunt the women, calling them "whining bitches" for shutting down FCI Dublin.
AH said the trip was especially hard for her. She has a disability in her right leg, and she was shackled so tight it was "brutal."
"I have a large lump on my ankle from the shackles and bruises and lumps on both my wrists," she wrote.
AH landed at a prison in Illinois, where she said staff were "making constant Dublin comments…the Dublin bitches and snitches."
"We are scared here and trying to stick together," she said. "This is not right. We didn't do anything to deserve this. It was better to be where we were with the special monitor bringing in resources than to be in the predicament we are in."
C. Hazelton also shared stories of her rude bus driver, playing music so loud it felt like "mental torture." She was shackled so tight, she said she was swollen and bruised on her wrists and ankles.
Now at FCI Waseca in Minnesota, Hazelton said she is living in a basement on a top bunk with her head under a pipe, which is leaking. She said the ceilings in the prison are all marked where water has caused damage.
"It's all bad," she wrote. "If this place was having issues with buildings like Dublin, why send us here?"
Other women report that they have been misclassified, and that health issues still persist.
Regina Preetorius wrote KTVU to say that she landed at FMC Carswell in Forth Worth, Texas, far away from her family in Arizona.
She said that she was told that she could be housed at the camp, but instead, has to live in a higher security area of the prison.
She also said there is black mold where she is and women are coughing and have the same red skin spots as many women did at FCI Dublin.
"I can't help but feel that I am being punished," she wrote.
There are other, smaller inconveniences, women are reporting, too.
A woman named Carolyn was moved to a prison in Miami, which is a high-rise. According to her husband, they don't have the proper sized clothes for the women, and she has not been told if her move was temporary or if she'll be moved elsewhere.
"BOP is keeping them in the dark," her husband wrote.
Not everyone, though, is upset about leaving FCI Dublin.
For example, Sharon McMillan wrote to KTVU to say she "landed well" at FCI Waseca in Minnesota, which is minimum security.
McMillan said she is eligible for a halfway house and was told she would be placed there soon.
She also said that she is finally getting the medical care she needs.
"The medical department here has been great, and I received the medications that I need," McMillan wrote.
"I am happy," she added. "I just wish that FCI Dublin offered that as well instead of trying tooth and nail to keep us there and not fix anything."
This is her 14th year in prison and "by far, Dublin has been the worst," she said.
Despite many accounts by women who said otherwise, Peters commended her staff last week for their "tireless efforts in facilitating the successful transition" of women from FCI Dublin, according to an interoffice memo obtained by KTVU.
In her opinion, Peters noted that the transfer involved "careful planning and coordination to ensure the safe transfer of women to other facilities, with special attention given to their unique programming, medical, and mental health requirements."
U.S. Representatives Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (D-Virginia) and Mark DeSaulnier (D-California) wrote AG Merick Garland on Friday, asking him to look into these claims of "careful planning."
"The Department of Justice must do more to provide support to the incarcerated women who experienced, witnessed, and were otherwise harmed by the rampant sexual abuse at FCI Dublin," the letter reads. "At a minimum, DOJ must provide trauma-informed emotional support services, from providers external to BOP, for the women and staff who lived and worked at FCI Dublin while the abuses were occurring. The Department must provide support services that are trauma-informed, with organizations and individuals with specific expertise in supporting survivors of sexual abuse in detention. This is of immediate concern for the victims at FCI Dublin."
The Congressional representatives wrote that they are "troubled" by the prison's abrupt shutdown and worried that the women couldn't appeal their transfers or get proper medical care before getting shipped out.
Noting the role of the court-ordered special master, Scott and DeSaulnier said that the BOP should have performed medical evaluations and a review of those eligible for release.
"This process has not been followed," they wrote. "Medically vulnerable inmates, those who are victims of sexual assault at the facility, and those with pending compassionate release requests have been transferred and put on buses and planes to locations hundreds or thousands of miles away with allegedly limited access to basic amenities like heat, food, and water."
The closure also means that the 203 FCI Dublin employees will have to seek new jobs, and, like the incarcerated women, have been given "almost no notice, no opportunity to prepare, and no opportunity to debrief or receive support."
Without the proper oversight of the special master who no longer has easy access to the sexual assault survivors and witnesses, the "potential abusers" who get jobs elsewhere, without the proper review, will simply return "back into the system with no accountability."
Lisa Fernandez is a reporter for KTVU. Email Lisa at lisa.fernandez@fox.com or call her at 510-874-0139. Or follow her on Twitter @ljfernandez