

Trevino was investigated after an inmate complained about the groping to her prison social worker, who reported the allegation.

Prison officials fired Trevino in 2018 for sexual misconduct. He had worked at the women’s prison for over a decade and had been formally warned for making sexually harassing comments to inmates, according to records from the Office of the Inspector General for California prisons.

Attempts to reach Trevino for comment were unsuccessful.

Prison system spokeswoman Dana Simas responded in a written statement that officials moved to protect incarcerated women when the 2017 allegations surfaced.

“Trevino was barred from entering the secured perimeter of the prison to prevent further inmate contact during the pendency of the investigation,” Simas wrote.

The department fired at least six male correctional officers for sexually abusing women in their custody between 2014 and 2018, according to internal records released to KQED under a new state transparency law and court filings.

Some groped the inmates, while others engaged in oral sex or intercourse. The disciplinary records, which are still incomplete, provide a first-ever glimpse into how the prison system deals with sexual exploitation by its officers.

The names of the women involved are redacted in the records, and two named witnesses did not respond to requests for interviews.

While the number of dismissals for sexual misconduct is extremely rare among the roughly 26,000 correctional officers who work at California prisons, inmate advocates say sexual abuse by staff is more rampant than the records show because few officers get reported or investigated.

Amika Mota is trying to change that. She spent most of a nine-year prison sentence for vehicular manslaughter at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, north of Fresno in the Central Valley. She said she and other incarcerated women put up with sexual advances because they depended on correctional officers for access to clean laundry, phone calls, tampons, time out of their cell and other basic needs.

“There’s not a bone in my body that ever felt attracted to any of these officers or felt like any of the words we spoke were true,” Mota said. “It was just this survival technique to play along.”

Officers can also write up inmates, which can result in extending a prison sentence.

One officer in her housing unit, who Mota declined to name, demanded that she write sexually explicit letters to him. She also described an officer who expected to see women without their clothes on.

“He would be really appreciative if during count we were in our bras,” she said.

Mota said she never reported any harassment, fearing retaliation.

She joined the Bay Area-based Young Women’s Freedom Center after she was released in 2015. She’s now part of a new movement called Me Too Behind Bars, working to expose sexual abuse of people in prison and jail.

“What does it mean to feel constantly harassed, where they think it’s consensual and we think it’s not but we can’t ever say it?” Mota said.

The state’s inmate population includes nearly 5,000 women, about 4% of the 124,000 prisoners in the system.

State prison officials say they have been trying to improve conditions for female inmates in recent years, including enforcing a zero tolerance policy for sexual misconduct.

“All sexual violence, staff sexual misconduct, and sexual harassment is strictly prohibited,” prisons spokeswoman Simas wrote in an Oct. 11 email.

The state prison system also investigates and tracks all allegations of sexual assault and harassment by staff, including correctional officers, to comply with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act. In 2018, 337 staff-on-inmate incidents were reported in California prisons.

Investigations substantiated just three of those allegations.

Independent probes into the culture in women’s lockups have found that these formally reported allegations likely capture only a fraction of the abuse and harassment of incarcerated women by prison staff.

The Prison Law Office, which monitors conditions for inmates as part of a settlement in a decades-old federal class action lawsuit, has interviewed hundreds of women at the Central Valley prison and documented their complaints for the court.

The firm reported in 2016 that out of a random sample of 80 women, nearly all had experienced sexual abuse or harassment while incarcerated. A second round of interviews turned up similar complaints, often at the hands of the same officers. The firm faulted a culture of bigotry and sexism at the prison.

“It was a constant stream of verbal sexual harassment or misogynist statements,” attorney Corene Kendrick said, “kind of cat-calling at its highest level.”

A lot of women complained the prison officers constantly addressed them as “bitches” or “hos,” Kendrick said. “When they'd make the announcements on the PA system, you know, it'd be ‘Hey bitches, time to go to lunch.' "

Sexual abuse of female prisoners isn’t confined to a single facility, records obtained by KQED revealed. Four correctional officers in the state’s other major women’s prison — in Southern California — were also fired in recent years for sexual misconduct.

In 2017 alone, three officers at the California Institution for Women in San Bernardino County had sexual contact with inmates in or near their housing units.

Officer Robert Darrow was working an overtime shift in a housing unit on May 12, 2017, when he pulled one of the women responsible for cleaning and mopping the dorm into a broom closet, according to a transcript of a preliminary hearing in a criminal case against him.

“She said that he entered in behind her,” an investigator testified. “She was facing away from him. He closed the door. And then he bent her over, pulled her sweatpants down — she didn’t have any underwear — and then he moved his head down and orally copulated her.”

The encounter lasted only three minutes, according to the testimony, because Darrow heard a noise outside the closet and stopped.

In that same month, Officer Tony Garcia sent all the women in a housing unit to breakfast, but one. The woman performed oral sex on him in her cell. He ejaculated on her nightgown, which the woman hid and later turned over to internal affairs. Investigators tested the semen on the nightgown and confirmed it belonged to Garcia.

A third case involved Officer Stephen Merrill entering the cell of two female inmates at 3:30 a.m. on Oct. 30, 2017, and groping them.

An investigation found, “As inmate [REDACTED] stood by the door facing the inside of the cell, she bent over and you inserted your right hand from behind her into her underwear. You grabbed her buttocks. After removing your hand from her underwear, you tasted your fingers by placing them into your mouth.”

Correctional Officers Fired for Sexual Misconduct 2015-2018

Click links to read source records. Michael Ewell

Terminated in 2015 for having a sexual relationship with an inmate

No criminal charges

Tony Garcia

Terminated in 2018 for engaging in oral sex with an inmate

Pleaded no contest to felony charge for sex with a consenting inmate

Sergio Rios

Terminated in 2017 for having a sexual relationship with an inmate

Criminal charges were dropped

Robert Darrow

Terminated in 2017 for having oral sex with an inmate

Criminal charges were dropped

Stephen Merrill

Terminated in 2018 for groping two inmates

Pleaded no contest to felony charge for sex with a consenting inmate

Israel Trevino

Terminated in 2018 for groping and harassing inmates

No criminal charges

The other inmate then faced the inside of the cell and bent over. Merrill reportedly also groped her from behind.

The disciplinary decision released by prison officials doesn’t provide further details about the incident.

Under state and federal statutes, inmates cannot consent to sex with prison guards. Sustained findings of sexual misconduct by a correctional officer will result in dismissal, according to prison policies, and can be grounds for criminal prosecution. All three correctional officers at the Southern California women’s prison were fired and charged with felony sex crimes. Attorneys representing them did not return requests for comment.

Merrill and Garcia took plea deals, according to court records. Garcia served two days in jail and was placed on probation. Merrill’s two-year prison sentence was suspended as he completes three years of probation. He was also sentenced to less than a year of county jail time, eligible for work and weekend release.

Prosecutors in the case against Darrow argued he had “a history of being investigated for sexual activity with inmates,” according to a preliminary hearing transcript in the case. But the San Bernardino County district attorney suddenly dropped the charges against him in March of this year. Deputy DA Lisa Mann, who prosecuted the case, declined to answer any questions.

Some officers are never even charged, though.

In Israel Trevino’s case from the Central Valley prison, it took officials eight months to dismiss him for sexually abusing inmates. He was fired in April 2018.

Prison officials never referred Trevino for criminal charges — due to insufficient evidence, according to a spokeswoman. That’s despite investigators’ findings that he repeatedly groped women in his custody.

“The Central Region Criminal Investigation team, after a full review of the material, recommended the case instead be opened as an administrative investigation,” spokeswoman Simas wrote.

The Office of Inspector General for California prisons monitors all investigations of sexual assault and harassment by officers and issues public reports.