Abuses at Women’s Prisons Under Renewed Scrutiny

Side by side, the two largest women’s prisons in the world rise out of the almond fields and light up the night sky for miles, an eerie shrine to crime and punishment now under scrutiny again.

For years, inmates at the Central California Women’s Facility have complained that medical care was so shoddy and inhumane that curable diseases sometimes became death sentences. After a class action prisoner lawsuit was filed in 1995, state corrections officials pledged reforms.

But despite improvements in medical staffing and day-to-day health care, inmates and prison watchdog groups continue to allege that serious medical problems persist and that a handful of guards and medical staffers are sexually assaulting inmates. The problems, they say, now have spread to Valley State Prison just across the road.

The state Department of Corrections has been investigating the charges in an attempt to determine if they are true, said Cal Terhune, the department’s director.

Terhune said the investigation, which is occurring at all four women’s prisons in California, focuses on whether staff engaged in improper sexual relations with inmates. He defended, however, the quality of medical care, saying that the department has taken considerable steps to improve care for inmates statewide.

But 13 inmates have died at the Central California Women’s Facility in the last year after enduring some form of medical neglect, according to a San Francisco legal group that negotiated the settlement of the 1995 lawsuit and monitors medical conditions. Long delays in cancer diagnosis, severe dehydration and inmates being forced to lie for hours in their excrement are a part of everyday life here, the group alleged.

At least one former inmate has told attorneys that her child was fathered behind bars by a prison staffer. Several other inmates say that they spent their sentences fending off sexual advances from guards and work crew supervisors.

One male nurse at the Central California Women’s Facility assigned to care for inmates with serious and terminal illnesses admitted in a deposition that he sexually abused three patients in 1996, said Ellen Barry, director of Legal Services for Prisoners With Children in San Francisco. At least one victim was so weak that she could not move enough to defend herself, Barry said.

Two weeks ago, the head medical officer at Valley State Prison was reassigned to a desk job in Sacramento after explaining to a network news program why his staff was giving pelvic exams to inmates complaining of headaches. He said the women enjoyed the procedure because “it’s the only male contact they get.”

“To be sure, medical care inside these prisons has improved,” Barry said. “But there are still serious deficiencies that are causing deaths and causing critically ill women to be without the kind of treatment they are entitled to both morally and under the law. . . . And we’re now hearing more stories from women about sexual abuse at the hands of staff.”

Terhune said some of the steps taken to improve medical care include hiring more doctors and nurses and increasing access to medications.

The biggest challenge, he said, is finding and keeping good doctors, nurses and mental health staff willing to work in penitentiaries.

“We’ve done a better job lately of recruiting medical staff, but I’m still not satisfied,” Terhune said.

As for the allegations of sexual abuse, Terhune said the department is in the midst of a months-long internal investigation. “I don’t know at this point if the problem is widespread or not. That’s what we’re in the process of trying to determine,” he said.

Corrections officials last month disclosed that five corrections employees had resigned and 40 more were under investigation for sexual misconduct with inmates at the California Institution for Women in Frontera, and other prisons.

In the meantime, confidential complaint boxes have been placed inside each of the four women’s prisons to gather any allegations of sexual and medical abuse. An ombudsman assigned to the four prisons has the only key, Terhune said.

The department is also reviewing paperwork on every pelvic examination done at Valley State Prison over the last few years to determine if there is a pattern of unnecessary exams.

Dr. Anthony DiDomenico, the medical director at Valley State since 1995, told ABC’s Ted Koppel in an Oct. 5 interview, “I’ve heard inmates tell me that they would deliberately like to be examined. It’s the only male contact they get.”

The 71-year-old doctor said it was not uncommon for women to visit him complaining of being ill when a pelvic exam “is what they want.”

A prison official, however, said that two-thirds of such exams are performed by female nurse practitioners.

The doctor’s comments will air during a six-part “Nightline” series on both Chowchilla prisons beginning today.

More than 7,000 inmates, from small-time felons to lifers on death row, are housed in this prison industrial complex in the heart of Madera County.

Barry’s small army of lawyers has conducted more than 300 interviews at the two prisons since 1995, and her group contends that some inmates are dying needlessly.

The group alleges that doctors at the Central California Women’s Facility failed to diagnose and treat severe pain in inmate Mia Doiron’s knee for six months. It turned out to be bone cancer and Doiron, a 26-year-old serving a one-year sentence for drug possession, watched her chances for survival plummet from 90% to 10% because of the delay, Barry said. She died this summer.

The group contends there also was a delay in diagnosing and treating the breast cancer of inmate Tina Balagno. A doctor at Valley State found a lump on Balagno’s breast in the summer of 1998. She was transferred across the street, but the medical finding apparently did not follow her, Barry said. It took three months for doctors at the Central California Women’s Facility to perform a mastectomy. By that time, the cancer had spread to her bones. Balagno died in February.

“God help the woman with a lump on her breast because it may be six months between finding that lump and getting a mastectomy,” said Catherine Campbell, a Fresno attorney who has interviewed hundreds of inmates at the two prisons as part of the lawsuit and follow-up monitoring. “By the time something is done, it’s gone from curable to incurable.”

Campbell agreed that corrections officials had made important strides in improving health care for inmates with chronic diseases such as diabetes. But she and other members of the legal team singled out the skilled nursing unit at the Central California Women’s Facility as a particular trouble spot. The unit is supposed to offer round-the-clock nursing care, but sick inmates say that they sit in fear of a transfer to the infirmary.

Gloria Johnson, a 45-year-old accountant who served three years for embezzlement, said she had advanced multiple sclerosis when she was transferred to the skilled nursing facility in 1996.

Even though Johnson could not use her arms or legs, she alleges, the nurses left her unattended for nine days. Had it not been for other ailing inmates coming to her rescue, she said she would have gone without food, water and diaper changes.

“I was treated like an animal,” said Johnson, who was paroled last year. “When I was finally returned to the main yard, no one recognized me. I hadn’t been given a shower in nine days.”

She said she wrote letters detailing the neglect to the warden, the governor, state senators and the mayor of San Diego, her hometown. But Johnson said the only response came from prison staff telling her that her complaints had landed her a new stint inside the infirmary. “It was harassment,” she said.

“I couldn’t understand why they were treating me this way. I wasn’t a troublemaker. I wasn’t asking for special treatment. I just wanted to be treated like a human.”

Throughout her prison term, Johnson was interviewed by Barry’s legal staff. Her experience is hardly uncommon, Barry said.

“The skilled nursing facility is a hellhole. Terminally ill patients are routinely left lying in their own excrement or unbathed for days at a time. The call buttons for nurses are routinely disconnected,” Barry said.

An independent assessor, assigned to determine if the correction department is complying with the reforms, is expected to file a final report on medical conditions at the Central California Women’s Facility in upcoming weeks.

This summer, the state Department of Health Services documented a number of medical deficiencies at the prison, including poor patient care and ineffective procedures to combat the spread of infectious diseases. A 1997 study by the New York-based group Human Rights Watch found that female inmates in California were frequent victims of sexual abuse. The group concluded that procedures to report and investigate abuse were flawed and biased in favor of correctional staff.