The Justice Department is required to pay nearly $116 million to 103 women who claim they were victims of abuse at the closed Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, known as the “rape club.”
The settlement, which was given the green light on Tuesday, will result in an average of $1.1 million for each woman involved in the lawsuit against the prison for their mistreatment and experiences of staff-on-inmate sexual abuse.
“We were given a prison sentence, not a sentence to be assaulted and mistreated,” stated Aimee Chavira, a former inmate at Dublin and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, in an interview with The Associated Press.
“I hope this settlement will help survivors, like me, as they begin to heal – but money will not repair the harm that BOP did to us, or free survivors who continue to suffer in prison, or bring back survivors who were deported and separated from their families,” she said.
Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin (FCI Dublin) in Dublin, California, has been plagued with reports of staff sexually abusing the female inmates for years. (Anda Chu/MediaNews Group/The Mercury News via Getty Images)
Pride also said if it were up to her, the amount would be “ten times as much,” because there is “no amount that you can place on what a survivor goes through in being sexually assaulted,” according to The AP.
The victims were interviewed to assess how much each of them should get from the settlement. The amount was based on the trauma suffered and how many times the women were abused, according to Pride.
The settlement, which was approved Tuesday, averages $1.1 million for each woman who sued for being sexually abused as an inmate at FCI Dublin. (iStock)
The California Coalition of Women Prisoners has filed a separate class-action lawsuit in which approximately 500 women who were housed at FCI Dublin could possibly benefit from court-ordered reform in the future.
The Bureau of Prisons shut down the facility in April and made its closure permanent last month.
