California’s Federal Correctional Institution Dublin, in a photograph dated March 11, 2024.Photo:AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

Federal Correctional Institution

AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

The woman did so, according to prosecutors, and the correctional officer “slapped her buttocks several times.”

On Wednesday, that former correctional officer, Nakie Nunley, 48, became the seventh officer to be sentenced for sexually abusing female prisoners at Federal Correctional Institution Dublin in California.

Former Warden Ray J. Garcia, chaplain James Highhouse, and correctional officers Enrique Chavez,John Bellhouse,Ross KlingerandAndrew Joneshave all been previously sentenced in other sexual abuse cases connected to the facility. An eighth worker at the prison – correctional officer Darrel Smith,was indicted last April.

Calling the federal prison “a dysfunctional mess,” in her order earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said that a special master would be quickly appointed to oversee the facility, the first time the Bureau of Prisons has been issued such oversight,AP reports.

California’s Federal Correctional Institution Dublin, as photographed December 5, 2022.AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

Federal Correctional Institution

In September, Nunley, of Fairfield, Calif.,pleaded guiltyto four counts of sexual abuse of a ward, five counts of abusive sexual contact, and one count of making false statements in connection with the investigation into abuse allegations at FCI Dublin.

Each of the five women Nunley abused worked at theUNICORcall center when the abuse took place, per prosectors. UNICOR is the federal prison industries work program that markets itself on its website as helping “offenders learn the skills necessary to transition from prison to law-abiding, contributing members of society.”

In a 20-month span between March 2020 and November 2021, Nunley had oral and vaginal sex with one of the female inmates he was supervising for the federal work program. He fingered another woman on “multiple occasions,” per prosecutors, who said he “admitted that he was guilty of crimes related to his illegal sexual contacts with three other prisoners.”

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Beyond his criminal charges, Nunley admitted to sexually abusing “two additional prisoners,” according to prosecutors who said that he had “engaged in inappropriate conduct with multiple other prisoners who worked at UNICOR.”

In one such case, Nunley admitted to penetrating an inmate’s vagina with his fingers, per prosecutors who said that he also “caused her to touch his penis under his pants, resulting in him ejaculating in her hand.”

Later, while federal investigators were looking into Nunley’s conduct, he lied to them about sexually abusing the inmates and denied sending one of the women “sexually explicit notes,” per prosecutors.

“Rooting out injustice in prisons is difficult work,” U.S. Attorney Ismail Ramsey for the Northern District of California said in the press release. “But we will not shy away from the task.”

source: people.com