Dozens of sealed FCI Dublin records now public
Powerless in Prison: The fallout of FCI Dublin
In April, the Bureau of Prisons abruptly shut down the troubled FCI Dublin. KTVU interviews dozens of women and explains what led up to the closure, questioning whether this was retaliation for outside oversight over the prison, which has been riddled with sex abuse for decades.
OAKLAND, Calif. - The majority of documents that had previously been private in a class-action lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons as they related to the sexual abuse and retaliation case at the Federal Correctional Institute at Dublin have been unsealed.
Jackie Aranda Osorno, senior attorney at Public Justice, said nearly all the 50 documents that had been sealed are now public because of a suit her organization and the ACLU sued over in mid-June.
It's unclear why these mostly procedural documents were sealed anyway.
One of the documents was the findings of the Moss Group, a 35-page report commissioned by the BOP to assess the culture at the now-closed all-women's prison.
The report sums up what was already widely known at the prison: That seven officers, including the warden, were sentenced to prison for sex crimes and that woman reported being retaliated against for speaking up.
Former FCI Dublin prisoners say they haven't felt sunlight in months
Many of the 200 women who were transferred from FCI Dublin say they haven't felt or been in direct sunlight since moving to federal detention centers across the country.
But after Osorno and her colleagues sued, the BOP conceded that most of the documents did not need to remain sealed and some shouldn't have been sealed at all, she said.
Most of the other documents were unsealed last Tuesday.
There are still some filings that have not been made public, but which have the potential to be unsealed, as well.
The most important one is Special Master Wendy Still's assessment on the prison's closure.
Orsono said she's glad that the BOP decided to let the public see what's going on.
"It's important for the media and the public," she said. "The BOP were never going to do this on their own. And they only did that because we came knocking."
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