() Six women who were formerly incarcerated at FCI Dublin in California are telling their stories of surviving a federal prison so notorious for sexual abuse, it was called the “rape club.”

They tell investigative correspondent Natasha Zouves they were assaulted by officers who worked there, and when they tried to report the abuse, they were silenced; some, thrown into solitary confinement, others had their release dates postponed. All in an effort, they say, to cover up what was really happening behind federal prison walls.

‘They’re all in it together’: The Warden’s abuse

Yvonne Palmore says she remembers Warden Ray J. Garcia standing over her, filming her naked body as she was beaten by a group of guards.

“I happened to look up and he’s standing over me with this smirk on his face,” said Palmore. “I woke up in the hospital. I had bruises from head to toe, boot prints, actual boot prints on my body for months. So they hid me in the SHU.”

Palmore said she was put in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) in solitary confinement, at one point, for seven and a half months.

“They told my family I was dead when they came to visit. That they didn’t know where my body was, my remains,” said Palmore.

Warden Ray J. Garcia was one of eight former FCI Dublin correctional officers charged in federal court for sexually abusing women behind bars a record number of correctional officers charged with sex crimes at any federal prison in the United States, according to the Garrison Project.

Garcia is the first warden in the history of the Bureau of Prisons to be incarcerated for a sex offense. He was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 70 months in prison.

“They’re all together. They’re all in it together,” said Palmore. “I didn’t think I would ever see my family again.”

‘Nowhere was safe’: Abuse in the Prison Church

The former inmates say the abuse was everywhere in the cells, the hallways, even the prison church wasn’t safe.

Windy Panzo said she’s just one of the survivors of Chaplain James Theodore Highhouse’s abuse. She said she hit rock bottom at FCI Dublin and turned to faith.

“It got real dark, so I started leaning on God. I wound up going to church. That turned out to be even darker,” said Panzo.

She alleges that the chaplain abused her a total of, “four times… when they call you to go, you can’t refuse. You can’t do anything. So he would call me over to get these certificates that he would write. He would wind up grabbing me or doing whatever that he wanted to. And I couldn’t refuse. You can’t leave.”

Panzo is out from behind bars now, trying to rebuild her life. She says she goes to therapy, but she is forever changed by what happened in the chaplain’s office.

“I was 140 pounds when all of this occurred, and I ate myself up to over 200 pounds. I figured if I became ugly, then no one else would want me, no one else in the prison system would come after me, and that wasn’t true. I can’t go to church. I don’t go to church at all, I don’t pick up my bible. I can’t,” said Panzo.

Highhouse was never charged directly in Panzo’s case, he pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual abuse and was sentenced to 84 months in prison.

‘It was a violent type of episode’: Abuse and Retaliation

Darlene Baker says she still can’t sleep after what happened. In a federal lawsuit filed last June, she claims to have been sexually abused by a medical staff member at FCI Dublin.

“I get a shot every two weeks for a pretty severe autoimmune disorder. And I went in to get my shot, and he said, ‘Oh, go on back to where the refrigerator is, into the back medical room.’ And I didn’t know, but he had then locked the front door and locked the inside door,” said Baker.

“(He) pushed me hard against the wall, and it was a violent type of episode. I kind of, I don’t know, blacked out. And when I came back, when there was knocking on the door and he had finally stopped, my shirt and bra was up to my neck and my pants were down,” said Baker.

Baker says she tried to report the assault, and the retaliation began. She says her release was canceled and extended for eight months. Phone calls, emails and personal visits were cut off. She became determined to be the whistleblower who would help bring this all down.

“I have a legal background, And what I saw, I was like I’m going to do this. I’m going to report what I’m seeing,” said Baker.

She did sending meticulous documentation through another inmate’s mail to her family, who sent it to Congresswoman Jackie Speier.

Representative Speier led a congressional delegation to inspect the facility, and later demanded an investigation into the facility’s compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA).

The U.S. Government did something unprecedented reaching a nearly $116 million civil settlement, paying out more than 100 inmates of FCI Dublin.

Baker is proud of her actions and the information she provided that ended up being critical in building evidence, though that medical staff member is not one of the eight charged.

“I still have really bad nightmares every single night, and I think that’s because I know my offender is free.”

She says the medical staff member told her he would find her.

“He’s still out, there’s a whole bunch of them out there, a bunch of offenders,” said Baker.

Kendra Drysdale says she experienced similar retaliation and over-incarceration after she tried to report staff misconduct during a pat-down. She sent what should have been a confidential message to the DOJ but she says within an hour, she was called into a disciplinary hearing in the prison and accused of lying.

She says the guards asked her what she wanted to keep, “I’m like, oh my God please don’t take my phone. I talk to my daughter every single day. And then she said, ‘We’re going to take your email, we’re going to take your in-person visits. We’re going to take your video visits. And then she looked at the other (officer) and said, ‘What else can we take from her?’ And she said, ‘Well, let’s take her out date.’”

The California Coalition for Women’s Prisoners says Drysdale was left in prison for several months past the date she was supposed to go home.

“They tried to break me in here, they tried to break all of us,” said Drysdale. “They weren’t successful.”

Darrell ‘Dirty Dick’ Smith

The women say they are devastated after the events of this week.

One of the most notorious guards, Darrell “Dirty Dick” Smith, was the last of the eight officers charged with sex crimes at FCI Dublin to go to trial. All seven of the other men have either pleaded guilty or were found guilty, they are awaiting sentencing or are already serving up to 96 months in prison.

Smith was charged in a 15-count indictment the most counts of any of the officers. But after days of emotional testimony from alleged victims women coming face to face with the man they say abused them earlier this week, a federal judge declared a mistrial after jurors were unable to reach a verdict. His new trial is now scheduled for September.

Smith maintains his innocence.

The California Coalition for Women’s Prisoners released this statement after the mistrial:

“Survivors shared extremely disturbing testimony over the course of days, including how Smith raped and digitally penetrated a number of them, masturbated while watching women shower, spanked them, and used coercive tactics such as withholding their mail or not letting them leave their cells if they would not flash their breasts or agree to sexual encounters with him.”

Aimee Chavira alleges “Dirty Dick” Smith abused her. She says the abuse led her to consider taking her own life behind bars.

“Suicide crosses your mind. Depression is a huge issue. How do you tell your family that you’re in a federal prison and that the federal government is allowing this to happen? Is someone going to believe this?” said Chavira.

Help is available, if you need emotional support call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline

Chavira says she confronted Smith one day inside the prison.

“He was in the duty officer’s office downstairs. He would roll back and kick his feet on top of the desk, and he’d be like, ‘you ain’t got no (ejaculate.) You will never get me.’ He goes, ‘Look at you, look at me.’ And I said, ‘I don’t need it. There’s gonna come a day. Trust me, there will be a day where this will come down.’”

One of Smith’s alleged victims, Cassandra Reyes, says she had great apprehension leading up to testifying in court, but ultimately found coming face-to-face with Smith empowering.

“At first I was really afraid and working up to the point of having to go testify. I had been so nervous, stressed out, just so anxious. And then finally when I got to face him in the courtroom, I honestly felt good. I locked eyes with him. I let him know, I’m not afraid of you and I’m here to stand up for myself and I’m here to hold you accountable,” said Reyes.

She testified in graphic detail how Smith allegedly abused her from 2019 until her release in March of 2021. She says even as the abuse escalated, she lived in fear of her release date being jeopardized, or being thrown into solitary confinement.

“I felt disgusting. I felt like I was betraying myself. I felt anxious. I have a lot of sexual abuse in my past and so it really takes me back to like those experiences,” said Reyes.

Smith’s defense used the strategy of attempting to discredit the women who accused him of sexual abuse. In her opening statement, Smith’s attorney suggested that the absence of physical or DNA evidence should lead jurors to question the credibility of the allegations. She emphasized that the case relied solely on the testimonies of the women, all of whom were incarcerated for felony offenses.

In a statement after the mistrial, Aimee Chavira wrote:

“This mistrial is devastating, especially given how difficult and traumatizing it was for survivors to testify. To the families of those still incarcerated: Your loved ones will need your support after receiving this news. No matter what happens, we must remember that the ‘rape club’ at Dublin was made possible by a widespread culture of complicity and cover-ups, and the Bureau of Prisons continues to abuse and neglect people at federal women’s prisons all over the country. We will not rest until this entire system is held accountable.”

reached out to the Federal Bureau of Prisons about this report, a spokesperson replied the BOP “strongly condemns all forms of sexually abusive behavior and takes seriously our duty to protect the individuals entrusted in our custody… Due to active litigation, we will decline to comment further.”

Is FCI Dublin an Isolated Case?

FCI Dublin was abruptly closed in 2024. In a plan U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rodgers called “ill-conceived,” about 600 women were scattered to more than a dozen facilities across the country.

Community organizers tell the abuse and retaliation have continued for former Dublin inmates in these new facilities.

“We are seeing Dublin survivors who are now at over a dozen facilities all over the country, being explicitly referred to as Dublin Girls or Dublin Bitches,” said Courtney Hanson of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP). “They’re hearing things from staff like, ‘Oh, we don’t have toilet paper for Dublin Girls… or we ran out of food. Something as basic as being able to get a meal.”

The CCWP has advocated for survivors and pushed for systemic change to prevent further abuse in federal women’s prisons. Efforts by the CCWP contributed to the nearly $116 million civil settlement in 2024, as well as in 2025, a federal judge approving a consent decree requiring the Bureau of Prisons to implement reforms across more than a dozen federal women’s prisons, including federal monitoring and public reporting on staff abuse, retaliation and medical care.

“We have unprecedented access and oversight over these 12 plus facilities for the next at least two years, to ensure that the changes that the BOP is now mandated to make actually happen and to ensure that it’s not just words on paper,” said Hanson.

Hanson says the fight is far from over, and is deeply disturbed by reports of rapes and sexual abuse continuing for the women formerly incarcerated at FCI Dublin, accounts she calls “harrowing examples of staff sexual abuse at other BOP facilities.”

Windy Panzo, the alleged survivor of Chaplain Highhouse’s abuse at FCI Dublin, says she knows that FCI Dublin is not an isolated case.

“It’s happening everywhere. It’s not just FCI Dublin,” said Panzo.

“(FCI Dublin) was just low hanging fruit,” adds Darlene Baker, who alleges abuse at the hands of a medical staff member at FCI Dublin. “Attorneys just pressed it and pressed it, and pushed their way through, and Congresswoman Jackie Speier pushed her way in. It’s happening everywhere.”

The women hope that by coming forward and telling their stories, systemic change can begin across the country.

“We’re your mothers, your grandmothers, we’re your sisters, we’re your daughters,” said Baker. “We’re regular people who made some bad decisions.”

Aimee Chavira says change begins with the public finally knowing what happened.

“ for us is very important. I want to say thank you for you guys wanting and willing to put this out there, so the people of the world can know. We’re very grateful.”