She said women who have made similar allegations face similar retaliation, as do those who were part of a class-action lawsuit that led to a landmark consent decree awarding women at Dublin special protections while they are incarcerated.
As part of one of two class-action suits that have been settled with the BOP, about 300 women who remained incarcerated after the closure and were moved to other federal facilities are supposed to receive special protections including monitoring surrounding their medical and mental health care and in instances when they are placed in solitary housing or report retaliation, among others.
But this week, a court-appointed “special master” tasked with tracking prisons’ compliance with those protections found that in April 2025, the first month since the consent decree went into effect, the BOP failed to comply or only partially complied with nearly all of the agreed-upon protections.
“It’s devastating,” Drysdale said. “This report, although not surprising, was really upsetting to know that nothing’s changed.”
The report from special master Wendy Still said that in the monthlong period, there were 13 complaints of sexual abuse and three of physical abuse that, in some cases, warranted no follow-up action from staff.
Seventeen women also reported retaliation by staff because of their status as part of the class-action suit, including during instances when they were placed in solitary housing, removed from specific programs or lacked responses to requests for remedies promised to class members.
In one case, Still wrote, a class member lost recreation time for 120 days after being charged with refusing to obey an order.
“Although this is a sanction available to the [unit disciplinary committee] … [it] is an extreme penalty in relation to the violation,” her report reads.
She said class members were also struggling to access medical and mental health care, in part due to systemic understaffing.
Drysdale believes the report “shows that they’re either unwilling or incapable or both of providing care and safety for our class members.”
“Clearly, oversight isn’t working,” she said. The California Coalition for Women Prisoners has called for all of the members of the class to be released.
The new charges against Wilson and Gacad come as Darrell Wayne Smith, the only other correctional officer charged in the probe who has not yet been sentenced, awaits a new trial. In April, his criminal trial on charges of abusive contact with five women ended in a mistrial after a jury was unable to agree on any of the 15 counts against him.
His defense argued that the women who accused him of assault used him as part of a scheme to gain the relief awarded to other victims, including early release from prison, settlement money, and, in some cases, legal status to remain in the U.S.
His new trial — which excludes one of the alleged victims from the first trial — is set for August.
Wilson and Gacad are scheduled for change of plea hearings on Aug. 7.
