Exclusive: Records and interviews suggest the California prison system let Gregory Rodriguez get away with rampant sexual abuse, while his victims were punished
Records and interviews suggest the California prison system let Gregory Rodriguez get away with rampant sexual abuse, while his victims were punishedHe told her there were no cameras in the room, prison investigators allege, and gave her a choice: she could have sex with him or get a write-up for a rules violation, risking a lengthened prison term, revoked privileges and solitary confinement.
An analysis of court records and misconduct data, as well as interviews with five women who spoke to the Guardian about Rodriguez’s abuse, paint a picture of a system in which the most vulnerable women in the California department of corrections are routinely preyed upon – often lured with promises of basic supplies and small privileges and then threatened into silence.
Prosecution is rare: since 2014, people incarcerated in California’s women’s prisons have filed hundreds of complaints of sexual abuse by staff, but Rodriguez is one of only four officers from those institutions confirmed by the state to have faced charges, internal records reveal. Rodriguez continued to assault the woman through September 2014 – at times in a substance abuse treatment building as well as in clinics, Torres said; Rodriguez allegedly told her she was his “girlfriend” and gave her underwear, cosmetics, jewelry and alcohol. “She felt she was doing what she felt she had to,” the investigator said.
One woman said she confided in Rodriguez about her struggles with substance use, and he coerced her into sex by offering to get her suboxone, medication to treat addiction. She complied, but never got the prescription, and instead he gave her heroin, she reported.CCWF looked into Rodriguez as early as 2014, an investigator revealed in the later criminal case. But the investigator’s testimony suggests that the prison’s first documented investigation failed his victim.
She wanted the assaults to stop, she said, but was desperate to avoid repercussions: “At that time, I felt I was responsible for all of the abuse … I just felt trapped because I couldn’t talk to anybody.” She said she had tried to confide in a male prison psychologist, alluding to the sexual abuse, but that he had quickly made her uncomfortable, asking her questions about masturbation, and, at the session’s end, hugging her. She further shut down: “I was like: I don’t want to do this any more.”
Valerie said at least four officers had started harassing and propositioning her after Rodriguez started assaulting her. In a December statement, after two women filed lawsuits, Pallares said Rodriguez “shamefully hid behind his badge and used it to victimize a vulnerable population”. But he did not acknowledge that he himself was twiceby female colleagues for sexual misconduct. A CCWF administrative worker has alleged Pallares coerced her into sex in 2015, in a lawsuit that was recently dismissed.
Carroll said she too had been placed in segregation after reporting abuse: “That is retaliatory, and that is why victims don’t come forward.”But he argued in a July 2023 hearing about the case that there were “no documented threats” made by Rodriguez, noting the former prison guard did not actually issue rules violations against the women.
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