Rodriguez sentenced
CCWF Paper Trail analyzes root causes and possible solutions to sexual abuse in prison
One of the biggest sexual assault cases in the history of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) came to a close on Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025, when Judge Katherine Rigby sentenced former corrections officer Gregory Rodriguez to 224 years in prison.
The sentence follows his conviction of 62 felonies and two misdemeanors on Jan. 14, 2025. The charges include rape, attempted sodomy, and rape under color of authority. Rodriguez had been under investigation for part of the approximately nine years he worked at Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF). After leaving the institution in 2022, he was arrested by Madera County officials on May 24, 2023.
While the allegations against Rodriguez have received the most publicity, he is not the only CCWF employee to face scrutiny. In the prison’s 30-plus years of operation, incarcerated individuals have made many allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct by correctional staff, medical personnel, and ancillary staff, as witnessed by those of us who lived here during those years.
How did Rodriguez manage to assault so many women? And why has this problem been so long-standing at CCWF and other women’s prisons across the country?
In order to understand the problem and point out possible solutions, I read through dozens of research articles on the topic from the fields of law and criminology. I also talked to several CCWF residents and other stakeholders. Many spoke on condition of anonymity in order to give information as to how Rodriguez operated. Two long-term CCWF residents were willing to go on the record to share their perspectives.
When invited to provide a comment for this story, the CDCR Office of Public and Employee Communications said, “The sentencing of Gregory Rodriguez reaffirms CDCR’s own internal investigation and referral to the Madera County District Attorney’s Office in 2022. The department resolutely condemns any staff member — especially a peace officer who is entrusted to enforce the law — who violates their oath and shatters public trust.”
THE (UNIVERSAL) PROBLEM OF SEXUAL ABUSE
Mainstream media outlets, including The Los Angeles Times, The Associated Press, and The Guardian, reported that 22 incarcerated individuals were identified as victims of Rodriguez. CCWF residents know that many more women were approached by the officer during his tenure at the institution.
For this piece, I spoke to many people who were at CCWF at the same time as Rodriguez. Some referred to Rodriguez as a “trick” (a man who will pay for sex) while others avoided him altogether. Some residents tried to politely interact with him, unsure of the best way to avoid conflict or the potential for a physical interaction. Yet other residents chose to entertain his advances to ascertain what benefits they could receive, generally in the form of contraband brought into the institution or an unmonitored phone call made from his office in the Board of Parole Hearings area, where he worked.
“People are vulnerable, broken. People want attention. A lot of times, abuse starts with jokes and innocent banter but there’s manipulation behind it,” said Mimi Le, an incarcerated resident who has been in prison for more than 20 years and currently serves as CCWF Inmate Advisory Council Secretary.
Carmel Murphy, a CCWF resident of more than 15 years, echoed those sentiments, adding, “We’re easy prey. We’re lonely, traumatized. People may not be in contact with their families. They’re looking for some type of intimacy.”
Research backs up Le’s and Murphy’s observations. Incarcerated women tend to have histories of abuse that predate their incarceration. The Council on Criminal Justice reports that 90% of women with criminal justice involvement have experienced some form of childhood trauma; between half and three-quarters of women surveyed report experiences of sexual violence. And according to the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, the likelihood of an incarcerated person being subject to sexual abuse is about 30 times higher than that of a non-incarcerated person.
Although some residents may have entertained Rodriguez’s advances, it is important to understand that sexual contact between a staff member and an incarcerated individual is always considered abuse. That’s true in all 50 states and in the federal system, “regardless of consent,” according to ACLU attorney Tasha Hill, whose research has focused on sexual abuse in California prisons.
It’s also important to understand that while Rodriguez has been the most publicized abuser from CCWF, he is not alone. Multiple staff members have been terminated from CCWF — “walked off” in the common parlance — based on allegations of sexual misconduct. Over the 27 years that I have been incarcerated at CCWF, I have personally observed staff members being escorted off the grounds due to allegations of sexual assault. But, until Rodriguez, no staff member has ever been convicted of sexual misconduct.
This is not just a CCWF problem. Even though Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in 2003, acknowledging the wide scope of assault and setting a “zero-tolerance standard” for prison rape prosecution is not common. For the 2013 book “Prison Rape: An American Institution?” legal scholar Michael Singer found that out of more than 150,000 estimated assaults, only a few thousand are prosecuted annually.
REPORTING ASSAULT, THE PROBLEM, AND POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS
Research from the University of South Dakota and others has found that sexual misconduct is prevalent in prisons but highly underreported.
One reason is that it’s common practice to allow staff members to retire or resign before an investigation closes. According to attorney Emma L. Bruder, as many as a third are given this option, “meaning there [is] no public record of what exactly transpired and nothing preventing them from getting another similar job at another facility.”
Another reason, as legal scholar Kim Shayo Buchanan explains, is that incarcerated women have real concerns their reports will not remain confidential and that they will “be at the mercy of their abusers, with no opportunity for escape.”
Retaliation can take many forms. “It could be physical, it could be a room search,” Le said. Another common tactic is the threat of transfer. “For some minor infraction that’s usually overlooked, a Rules Violation Report could be generated,’ Le elaborated, “and if that person was in an honor dorm, they’re now moved from their housing unit.
Individuals at CCWF expressed these concerns and more — such as not being believed, feeling isolated, and being blamed by their peers. Many are influenced by the code of silence that has long existed, or don’t understand the reporting process.
Le and Murphy shared some concrete changes CCWF and other prisons can implement to make the reporting process easier.
For incarcerated individuals debating whether to report an assault, counselors should be able to advise them about what reporting can entail. This should include the fact that victims have to speak to investigators, and there is a possibility they will have to testify in court.
Importantly, these counselors should not be mandated reporters, as a victim has to be the one to decide when — or whether — to report an assault. To make the process safer and more confidential, Murphy suggests that “the person receiving the report shouldn’t be intertwined with CDCR. They should be an outside entity that’s trusted and not biased.”
In addition to anonymity, Le mentioned that people need to be able to recognize what grooming looks like. “Perpetrators thrive when they can isolate individuals,” she said, “so if women here know the signs, they can recognize what’s going on.”
When investigating claims of sexual assault, residents I spoke to agree that victims brave enough to come forward should be believed instead of doubted. Perspective is incredibly important in framing an investigation. Eliminating confirmation bias towards staff will help investigations proceed fairly. Given that only one officer has been found guilty in a court of law may speak to how investigations were conducted in the past.
Sexual harassment is difficult for incarcerated individuals to substantiate. Although CCWF has hundreds of cameras throughout the institution as part of the Audio Visual Surveillance System (AVSS) and officers are required to wear Body Worn Cameras (BWCs), these measures cannot capture all aspects of sexual harassment.
For example, an officer looking at an incarcerated person inappropriately, such as staring at her breasts, cannot be recorded due to the placement of BWCs and the AVSS. If an officer turns off their BWC, any sexually harassing remark will not be preserved.
“Even with the cameras, BWCs are turned off frequently. AVSS isn’t monitored unless a ‘triggering event’ occurs,” said Le. She also pointed out that “cameras can be open to interpretation. For example, if I touch your arm, a person can say I pushed them but I can say I was moving them out of the way.”
Le added that abuse becomes normalized when both the incarcerated and the staff see the problem but don’t say anything.
Even with all the work that needs to be done to improve upon the current system, progress has been made over the years.
For example, if an incarcerated individual was accused of being “overfamiliar” with a staff member 20 years ago, that person was rehoused in Administrative Segregation pending an investigation, the result of which was more often than not a prison transfer. That type of conduct no longer occurs, which is a major improvement.
Incarcerated individuals can call rape crisis hotlines as well as the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to request assistance or report what has happened to them. Posters with information, including phone numbers for rape crisis hotlines and the OIG are located in housing unit dayrooms. Incarcerated individuals can also file anonymous administrative grievances so staff misconduct can be reported without fear of retaliation. Though the individual filing the grievance will not be informed of the outcome of the investigation, the information will be investigated nonetheless.
ACKNOWLEDGING RESILIENCE
At CCWF, the majority of those incarcerated try to find meaning in the things that happen. We search for a silver lining, however elusive it may be.
Rodriguez harmed countless individuals, traumatizing and re-traumatizing those he victimized and those who witnessed his actions. But individuals at CCWF are resilient. We are not defined by the things that have happened to us. We look for opportunities to tell our stories and share our lived experience.
We appreciate the fact that the California Legislative Women’s Caucus visited CCWF in January 2024, in large part because of the publicity Rodriguez’s case garnered.
We acknowledge the sexual assault working group that was commissioned by the California Senate and facilitated by multiple prisoners’ rights groups, and the report it generated to propose solutions about how to deal with sexual abuse in California prisons.
One push from the outside has been Senate Bill 898, introduced by Sen. Nancy Skinner on June 10, 2024. The bill attempts to codify a mechanism for resentencing incarcerated individuals who have been the victims of staff sexual assault in jail or prison. However, after several amendments by the California legislature, the bill missed the deadline for consideration during the 2024 legislative session. Passing this bill will be a meaningful way for survivors of staff sexual assault to receive some measure of justice.
We await the investigation into CCWF and the California Institution for Women by the United States Department of Justice, announced Sept. 4, 2024, spurred by Rodriguez’s case, lawsuits that have been filed, state audits, and advocates’ efforts.
And we recognize that, although it must be incredibly difficult for CCWF administration to hear reports of things that have happened over the last 30-plus years, those of us incarcerated at CCWF are empowered to share our stories with anyone brave enough to read them.
For more information about CDCR’s internal investigation and actions to prevent sexual misconduct, harassment, and violence online readers can visit: https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/news/2022/12/28/cdcr-refers-internal-investigation-into-former-correctional-officer-to-district-attorney-for-charges-of-sexual-misconduct-of-incarcerated-women/
