‘Rape club’ prison warden sentenced to 70 months for sexual abuse of female prisoners

A California prison warden who was part of a “rape club” at a federal lock-up in the Bay Area was sentenced Wednesday to 70 months in prison.

Ray Garcia, 70, was chastised by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers before she handed down the more than five-year sentence, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

“I sentence hundreds of people; I expect and they should be able to expect that when they go into federal custody, they won’t be abused,” Rogers said to Garcia. “You abused them. And there was no one watching you — you were the warden.”

Garcia faced a maximum of 15 years in prison after he was convicted in December 2022 of sexually abusing women imprisoned at FCI Dublin about 30 miles east of San Francisco.

Garcia was one of five men who formed a “rape club” at FCI Dublin, according to authorities. The men groped and molested women and forced them to pose naked in their cells. At trial, one victim described how Garcia knew which parts of the prison went unseen by security cameras.

“I was not seen as a name or number by the federal government, but seen as a sexual play toy,” another victim said at trial. “My sentence did not come with a clause to be sexually abused by prison staff.”

Three of the other “rape club” members have pleaded guilty, and one was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Though Judge Rogers ripped Garcia at Wednesday’s hearing, she imposed his sentences concurrently rather than consecutively, the Mercury News reported. He could have spent 13 years behind bars under a consecutive sentence.

“It’s ridiculous, the time he got,” whistleblower Tess Korth told the Mercury News. “That’s like a slap on the wrist.”

With News Wire Services

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