Timeline: FCI Dublin sex abuse scandal to shutdown and beyond

DUBLIN, Calif. - The Federal Correctional Institute at Dublin has been mired in a sex abuse scandal for years and was shut down by the Bureau of Prisons in April 2024.

KTVU has been reporting on these events since 2022.

Here is a timeline of some key milestones in the prison's history. 

As of April 2024, seven FCI Dublin correctional officers have been sentenced for sex crimes and the eighth officer seems to be heading to trial. 

March 2025: Two-year consent decree for FCI Dublin women begins on March 31. The decree ends on March 31, 2027.

February 2025: ICE officials visit FCI Dublin to possibly turn the prison into an immigrant detention center under President Trump. Judge approves two-year consent decree providing limited reforms to women once housed at FCI Dublin. 

January 2025: BOP Director Colette Peters leaves office as Donald Trump takes president. 

December 2025: Proposed consent decree is tentatively approved. In a separate suit, the BOP agrees to pay $116 million to more than 100 sex abuse survivors at FCI Dublin. 

April 2024: BOP announces FCI Dublin is closing, 10 days after Wendy Still is named special master over  prison. About 600 women are bussed from FCI Dublin to roughly 13 other prisons across the United States. 

March 2024: FBI raids FBI Dublin, warden and other managers ousted. Judge orders unprecedented "special master" over prison. 

August 2023: California Coalition of Women Prisoners file class-action lawsuit against BOP over sexual abuses and retaliation at FCI Dublin. 

June 2023: Correctional officers Nakie Nunley and Andrew Jones were both charged and pleaded guilty. Jones was sentenced in November 2023 to eight years in prison.  Nunely was sentenced to six years in prison in March 2024. 

May 2023: Darryl "Dirty Dick" Smith arrested on 12 counts of sexual abuse of a ward, aggravated sexualabuse and abusive sexual contact. He was charged with more sex crimes in July 2024. He has pleaded not guilty and his case is headed to trial. 

July 2023: Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters takes the helm of agency, promises reform. 

March 2022: Former cook Enrique Garcia was charged with abusive sexual contact with two women at FCI. He pleaded guilty in October 2022 and was sentenced to nearly two years in February 2023. 

January 2022: Prison chaplain James Theodore Highhouse was charged with having sex with an incarcerated woman and oral sex with another woman in 2018 and 2019. He was convicted and sentenced in September 2022 to seven years in prison. 

September 2021: Warden Ray Garcia was charged with sexually assaulting a woman, sexually harassing another and keeping naked pictures of one of the women on his work computer. A jury found him guilty in December 2022, and he was sentenced to nearly six years in prison in May 2023. 

November 2021: John Russell Bellhouse, who was a safety administrator at FCI Dublin, was charged with sexual abuse of a ward in 2020. His charges were later amended to include three women. A jury convicted Bellhouse in June 2023, and he was sentenced to five years in prison in December 2023.

June 2021: Ross Klinger, former recycling technican at FCI Dublin, first correctional officer to be charged with sexual abuse of a ward. The abuses stem from April to October 2020. Klinger ended up pleading guilty and, in January 2024, received one year of home confinement because he helped convict former Warden Ray Garcia. 

1996: Three women sued FCI Dublin over sex abuses. A settlement was reached in 1998, where the women shared a $500,000 settlement fee. But the settlement was made in "good faith" and most say no reforms were actually put into place. 

1974: FCI Dublin opened and was converted to an all-female facility in 2012. It used to hold 700 women and was considered a low-security facility.