The women who fought back when their jailers assaulted them

I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is the Sunday story from up first. #I am Jane Doe is surging on social media in response to allegations of a gang rape at Cornell University. The campaign is seeing women naming their abusers and calling for accountability across the country. Over at Snap Judgment, a podcast from KQED, reporters Maddie Balanyos, and Anna Susman have been doing an investigation into sexual abuse at a women's prison in California. In their new three-part series, We Are Jane Doe, 13 women break the silence about the assaults they experienced at the hands of the prison guards. A warning that this story contains strong language and descriptions of violence against women and sexual assault. Okay, here's episode one of We Are Jane Doe. Okay, I'm going to introduce you to us. I'm Alexandria Pratt and I'm Jane Doe number one, and I think referring to myself as Jane Doe number one was part of the privacy with such a high profile case. This is the first time Alexandria, who goes by Ali, has told her story publicly. I felt like I had no choice but to speak up. I knew I wasn't the only victim. I knew there was other victims, and I just felt like if I didn't speak up, this was going to continue. And by me speaking up, I was going to make a difference for other women. Ali grew up in California in the suburbs, outside of the state capital Sacramento. She was the first born daughter in an immigrant family, so she was responsible and high-achieving. Yeah, it's self-esteem, you know, and I'm educated. I was a varsity cheerleader. I was homecoming queen. Like, I, you know, I'm a good mom. After high school, she trained to work as a medical technician. She had three kids, but things with her ex went really bad. And in late 2021, she says she was in the midst of an ugly custody battle, when the police showed up at her door. I'm holding my six-week-old daughter. They say, "Misprout, we have too felony Nobel warrants for you. We need to take you into custody." So my mom's there. I remember just kissing and smelling my daughter, handing my daughter to my mom and they cuffed me and took me into custody. She was charged with felony stalking in violation of a restraining order for sending threats over text in the heat of that custody battle. Her crime isn't what our story is about, so we're not going to spend a lot of time on it. But what you need to know is that it was a non-violent offense. I was sentenced to three years in prison. What do you remember about the process of going to prison? I remember the drive. We finally get there. We get off of us. They unshackle us. They make you get naked and they put these big moumous on you, like these huge moumous gowns and then they like check you. They make you go through a body scanner and then they give you your oranges and then they give you these black and white platform-looking shoes. They give you everything you're going to need for yourself and you sit there for hours and then finally you line up against the wall and they march you out on the yard. The Central California women's prison near Chaucho, California is this massive sprawling complex of housing units connected with interlocking hallways, checkpoint gates and lifeless brown yards surrounded by miles of barbed wire. About 2,000 people are locked inside, making it one of the largest women's prisons on earth. Allie was taken to A yard, which is for prisoners who've just arrived. And I just remember we were freezing. We were hungry. I think I dropped 20 pounds on A yard. There were narrow metal bunk beds, a toilet and a shower with up to eight women assigned to a cell. And I remember all we had in that cell was a Bible and so we would take turns reading the Bible out loud to one another. She hadn't been there long when she first came across an officer named Gregory Rodriguez. Just a note, we reached out to Gregory Rodriguez for this story but he did not get back to us. I was walking to a medical deckate and he was the officer at the post that had to verify your deckate. A deckate is like a hall pass. It's like this piece of paper that you need in order to move around the prison. And I had an N95 mask on because it was during the time of COVID and so he asked me, "Can you please remove your N95 mask so I can identify you?" So I did. I removed my mask. I lowered it and he said, "You have beautiful lips and beautiful eyes. You're so beautiful." And started making sexually objective comments towards me. She's used to getting looks from men and her Russian Ukrainian grandmother would warn her to kind of watch out. You know, my grandmother always told me you may have it harder in life because you're a very pretty girl and that has its blessings and downfalls at the same time. In prison, she did not want to track that kind of attention. Fast forward three days later, I was in my cell. I was sitting on my bed and they called me over the loudspeaker and they said, "Prowl, you have a duckit," which is a pass. They told me I had an attorney visit. And so I thought, "Okay, great. Maybe I'm getting out of here because my crime just doesn't fit to be here. Maybe there's a technical error. Something good's going to happen." And as soon as I got to the main yard gate, I had seen that it was the same officer that had made this actually explicit comments. And like, my heart just sank. I was like, "Okay, this isn't going to be good." She was still so new to the prison. And she kind of felt uneasy. Officer Rodriguez had been escorted me into the BPH room, which is a board of prison hearings room. And he walked me in there. He said, "There's no cameras in this room." And then he showed me his office next door. He said, "There's also no cameras in this room." And I'm like, "Okay, well, where's my attorney visit? I never had an attorney visit." Officer Rodriguez came close to her and tried to kiss her. And so I'm just like, like, a thousand things are going through my head. And I pushed him away. I'm like, "No, I don't want to do this. Like, what's going on? I don't want to get in trouble." He had told me if I tried to say that I was engaging in sexual misconduct with an officer, I would be written up for a 115. And I would be put into segregated housing. That's solitary confinement. Basically, a jail within a prison. And a write-up could also mean more time in prison and more time away from her little baby. And in that moment in my head, I'm like, I'm an emite here. I'm a convicted felon. This is an officer who's been here for 10 years. He has seniority. I can do one or two things. Fight him and pray that his superiors and fellow correctional officers are going to believe me a convicted felon. Or I can just compartmentalize. And all that mattered to me at that time was going home to my kids on my release date. I did not want to catch more time. I did not want to be there any longer than I had to be. And that's when he proceeded to kiss me. He lifted up her shirt. And he took me to a chair that was up against the wall and began to sexually assault me. He first forced her head down in front of him and then turned her around on this chair. The chair had green upholstery. I remember just like looking down. I remember looking at his boot. He had his boot propped up on the left hand side of me. And I remember just looking at his boot. And then it was over. And you know, what really upset me was he didn't use protection. And I remember telling him, you know, like, this isn't okay. I was like, this is unbelievable. So after he told me to make sure you tell them you have an attorney visit when you get back to the housing unit, don't say anything, don't tell anybody, you know, they're not going to believe you anyways. You're an inmate. Rodriguez left her alone in the room and he went to go clean himself up in the bathroom. I remember crying, but then the fear and the like hurt and the sadness [BLANK_AUDIO] motivated me. I remember walking up to my cell, walking up the stairs to my cell and just sitting in my cell for a minute, and I thought I still have the ducket. The little piece of paper that said that she'd been out of her cell, that had the date and the time. I'm gonna save it and then the 20th of May I get called it again for another attorney visit. Again, there was no attorney. Rodriguez repeatedly called her back to that room where there are no cameras. So she came to know what to expect. The same green chair, the same boots, the same disassociation. She didn't know what to do. She was surrounded by fences. She was state property. And so she turned to someone she trusted. A woman named Katrina Cameron. Tell us about your friendship with Katrina, like how did it start? How did it develop? It started when I first came to her cell like I needed a home and she welcomed me in her cell. And the first night there she saw to blanket together for me and saw to pillow cover for me. She was so sweet and she was just like a big sister to me. I trusted her. I trusted her over anyone. And so I came to her one day. It was about 3 p.m. We were in our cell. I went over to her bunk and I got real close with her because I wanted to keep it real low-tone secret. I said sis. And you tell you something. And she's like do not tell anybody until you get out. Do not tell anyone. They do not tell anybody. She's like you do it. You have to do and be fake until you get out of here. And then you tell somebody. And I remember her telling me when things started happening to her sexually. Katrina Cameron had been in prison for about 11 years when Ali showed up. And she's actually still there now. And I remember telling her that if she wanted to report something to wait until she went home because there are it's a very big chance that things could start happening to her in her retaliatory manner that I've seen before. And I didn't want that to happen to her. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the Sunday story. You're listening to We Are Jane Doe brought to us by our friends over at Snap Judgment. And again a warning. This story features descriptions of violence against women and sexual assault. When we left Ali had just told her roommate a secret and her roommate told her don't tell anyone. It was becoming clear to Ali that this was not a safe place to speak up. I mean from the moment I woke up I was scanning for all correctional staff because there was a level of suspicion with everybody at that point. She would go to the Chow Hall, walk the yard, and then there was her job. She'd been assigned to work at a place called the watch office. We watch all the movement coming in and out of the prison. So we're on a computer and pretty much we can see every inmate in every cell on every yard. And we can see who's leaving the prison and who's coming in to the prison. And in the watch office she would see a list of actual attorney visits for the day. And this is where things suddenly started to click for her. Duckets list a reason a prisoner is moving around the prison. And which would be in the system you know when you don't have an attorney visit there's nothing there. There were cameras recording her movements and there was a paper trail of those supposed lawyer visits. But her ducket was blank. I was nervous of course. I was like okay we're gonna do this. Let's do this. I said you want to issue me attorney visits and not have attorney visits. I'm gonna save those duckets. So I saved those duckets. She was able to save two of the duckets. And she put them at first in her Bible and later to be extra safe. Under the locker. I lifted locker up and hit it. When she was taken to the board of parole hearings room she took note of the cameras along the journey. Like the one at the end of the hall. I drew diagrams with where cameras were placed where they were angled at and like put camera here. Camera there. Camera there. Camera there. Like you really messed with the wrong girl here. Like I'm taking you down. On August 9th Rodriguez walked her past those cameras for what would be the last time. And then a little more than a week later she heard her name called over the loudspeaker. So it was August 19th of 2022. I had just came off the yard. I was in basketball shorts. Sports bra. A white team top in my vans. And I went to go walk in my room. And they said proud come to the cop shop and pick up the phone. And I'm like oh shit. The cop shop is this little room where all the rows of cells meet D yard. It's where all the correctional officers hang out. And I so I asked Katrina why do they want me to go to the cop shop and pick up the phone. She's like just go just go pick up the phone. So I'm like slowly going down the hallway. Like I go to the cop shop and like what does this phone call about? There's this window that slides open for when prisoners come up with questions. And they're like just pick the phone up and it's a R&R which is receiving where you come in. And they're like cost somebody to come get you your paroling tete. She'd been sentenced to three years but she'd kept a clean record in prison. And she was being released early after less than a year in custody. We still don't know why. And I'm like wait can you repeat that? And they're like tete. You're a paroling tete. And I'm like I still have two months left. They're like nope we're not doing any of that. You're paroling tete. Call somebody right now. She walked back to her cell and started packing her things. Most of her stuff she said she'd gave away to her cell mate Katrina Cameron. Things like her makeup and her prison issued hair dryer. And when she saw the guards had passed on their rounds she lifted up her locker. And so I'm like okay I grabbed the decades I put them in my bra. I didn't know if I I just wanted them to be safe. I just wanted to get through the gates and really be free before in case it wasn't real. It wasn't real until I got through the gates. A family member was waiting to give her a ride home so she threw her stuff in the back and got in the car. I had everything with me. That's when I was like that's when it kind of hit me like okay I'm carrying this like big secret. I knew my mission had just started. One of the first things she did when she got out was to meet with lawyers. And she was connected to a prisoner's rights attorney named Robert Chalfon. And I think that's how the domino effect started. I called CCWF. I called the sheriff of Madera County and I said there's an officer down there raping women. We need to stop it. I'll offer up my clients for an interview. Let's go and so next thing you know my clients were being interviewed by CCWFIA officers. He found out that even before Ali came forward the prison had started investigating a couple of complaints about officer Rodriguez. And then when press coverage came out about Ali's lawsuit, Chalfon said his phone started ringing. At that point victims were just coming out of the woodwork. My attorney when I called him he said oh my god this case is bigger than you know. He was assaulting women all over the facility. When I found out there was over 20 women I was like okay I did the right thing. A former correctional officer is accused of sexual misconduct against inmates at the Central California Women's Facility in Chao Chila. They eventually identified at least 22 potential victims. Deements after Ali first spoke up officer Gregory Rodriguez was arrested. A former correctional officer now finds himself on the other side of the cell bars tonight. Good evening I'm Liz Gonzales. And I'm Madi Torres. We thank you for joining us tonight. I saw the picture of him being escorted into the van and arrested and for me I didn't believe it. I still thought it was like it was so real to me. Like it didn't register for me. Stay with us. with us. This was a big deal. Officers are rarely arrested from his conduct. And in this case, it started to cause this ripple effect. That was bigger than Ali, and bigger even than Rodriguez himself. Okay. Thank you all for being here. I appreciate those of you who are staying for this briefing that you take a seat, and that you turn off your cell phone, because we're going. In the wake of the Rodriguez case, state lawmakers called a special hearing. The incidence of sexual assault in our California women's prisons. It is prevalent. It's prevalent. And it has to stop. So it has a zero tolerance policy on that issue. There was a bill enacted in 2011. There's something called the Prison Rape Elimination Act, aimed at preventing and responding to sexual abuse in prison. But what happened with Rodriguez showed it wasn't really working. Annomaly. However, Rodriguez's violence is not an anomaly. It exemplifies a pattern in which prison staff assault many, many people, because they are helped by many, many people. In his case, there was at least a ten. So they called in the warden of Chauchilla. She got up in front of the lawmakers and survivors to answer for the prison. We take swift and appropriate disciplinary actions. Equally critical is a support and care we provide to the victims. I cannot overstate the urgency of our response to these issues. Prison officials told the lawmakers they were taking actions. But anyway, thank you all again and thank staff for putting this all together. You did an excellent job. Inside the prison, pretty unheard of things were happening, too. The incarcerated women held these town hall meetings, led by a nonprofit group, where those who wanted to, could start talking about the things they'd been keeping a secret. In the 30 years that I had been there, never had the prison allowed such a large group of us to gather inside there with guests and without one staff prison. This is Elizabeth Luzano, who was in prison at Chauchilla, and was there. She says a woman from the nonprofit stood posted at each door of the prison gym to make sure no correctional officers came in. Everyone else sat together on chairs, arranged in a circle. I had the times where I said no, and when I said no, being still groped from my breast and my hand put on someone's penis, and I never reported that. And how did I feel when that happened to me? I felt like I was raped even though there might have not been no penetration, but I felt how I felt when I was raped as a teenager. There's things that happen where it's out of your control, truly honesty out of your control. Person after person spoke. These conversations were difficult, but it felt like something hard and immovable and secret was starting to shift. Internal reports of sexual assault, those PREA reports, went through the roof, and lawsuits were getting filed left and right. More than 134 more female inmates claimed they were sexually abused by prison staff at the California Institute for Women in Chino. And while there was no formal acknowledgement of wrongdoing, the state also began to settle some of the lawsuits filed by Rodriguez's victims, including alleys. Her lawyer told her this was significant. I just remember sitting on my bathroom floor, and him talking to me, and he's always been really encouraging. He's like, "Ali, you have no idea the magnitude of this case and what you've done." But alle had one more choice she had to make, whether or not to testify. If Rodriguez was going to do time, like actually get convicted, it was going to take a lot, it misses, willing to come forward, physical evidence, and a jury, being willing to listen to women like alle, women who've been in prison. Nobody in my family wanted me to pursue this. They told me the correctional officer is getting this dangerous. The magnitude of this case is so big, I feel like I'm balancing the world on my shoulders. I had people beg me not to take the stand, beg me not to pursue this on a criminal matter. I was going to see justice grill and testify, regardless of whatever was coming my way. It was late summer 2024, when Madera County prosecutors were taking the final steps to bring Rodriguez to trial. Allie was gearing up to testify when she got a call from the prison. It was her former cellmate, Katrina Cameron. It was August 2nd, and she would remember that date. I called Allie and I was in so much distress, all I could tell her is that we had just gone assaulted in the childhood. I was scared. I didn't know. I just needed help. That's all I could say is that I needed help. She told me what had happened. She told me she couldn't see out of one eye that Christina, our other cellmate, had gotten beat up by correctional staff. That Christina was trying to protect her, that they were trying to beat up her, but she has a pacemaker. I didn't know what they were doing to us or why, but I needed help and I need somebody out there to know. I think me speaking out has held a lot of nasty bad people accountable for a lot of bad things. I think August 2nd was the boiling point. Coming up next, what happened on August 2nd? Just a quick note, we are largely talking about the experience of women in this series, but there are also some people who identify as men or non-binary at the Central California Women's Prison, and sexual assault in prison is an issue that cuts across gender. To hear the rest of the series, we are Jane Doe. You can follow the link in our show notes or search for Snap Judgment wherever you get your podcast. The producers of We Are Jane Doe are Maddie Balanios and Assessment and Suki Lewis. It's edited by Nancy Lopez, Mark Ristich and Suki Lewis. It was executive produced by Glenn Washington and Mark Ristich. Fact checked by Mark Betancourt, the original music and engineering was by Dirk Schwartzoff, production support from Marissa Dodge, Jeremy Roo from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism was the data editor, special thanks to Amika Mota and all the women still inside the Central California Women's Facility, brave enough to share their stories. This reporting was made possible in part by funding from the Pointer Institute. The Sunday Story Team includes Andrew Mambo, Sharon Machihi, Jenny Schmidt and Justine Yann. Our intern is Maddie Baron, our supervising senior producer is Leana Simstrom and our executive producer is Irene Naguchi. I'm Aisha Roscoe and up first will be back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week, until then have a great rest of your weekend.