SAN DIEGO, Calif. — A tear runs down Dinhora’s face as she shakes recounting the abuse she faced while in prison.
“I'm broken, trying to fix myself, trying to love myself again,” Dinhora, 38, said.
The former San Diegan has been awarded $1.4 million dollars to settle a lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons for the sexual abuse she faced from 2018 – 2022 at FCI Dublin.
“I was molested, forced to do things I didn't want to.”
The prison in Dublin was called “the rape club” by corrections staff who took advantage of female prisoners for years.
Dinhora, who asked we not use her last name, said in court documents the prison’s warden Ray Garcia coerced her to perform oral sex on him.
When Garcia, who is now serving a prison sentence for sexually abusing inmates, did his rounds, he required her to dance naked, the now-settled lawsuit said.
Chaplain, warden abused inmates
“It was an everyday thing. Dancing, stripping, being scared of going to the shower because they're going to come and look at you naked,” Dinhora said.
When it wasn’t the warden, it was prison guards with sexual demands for Dinhora.
Since 2021, at least eight FCI Dublin employees including Garcia and the prison’s former chaplain have been charged with sexually abusing inmates.
The mother of three, who was doing time for running drugs over the border, said female guards watched the abuse and didn’t intervene.
“You couldn't say anything. Imagine getting threatened every day. You want to see your kids? You want your phone calls? You want your visit? Or you want to go to the shoe (solitary confinement)?”
The abuse was so rampant at Dublin, last year the federal government shut the prison down permanently.
Last December, the federal government agreed to pay nearly $116 million to settle lawsuits from over 100 women who sued alleging they were abused at the prison.
“This case was historic in the sense that there has never been a case involving the exposure of such widespread long-lasting and frequent abuse in a prison institution,” said San Diego civil rights attorney Gene Iredale who represented Dinhora.
The mother is now trying to heal and is learning to love herself again.
“I was broken when I went in there, but I was more broken when I got out.”
