SPOKANE — Aron Laureano was on the right track when she headed to federal prison five years ago.
Before she was sentenced, the Spokane woman completed extensive drug treatment, earned union certifications in welding and carpentry, and accepted a position as a construction supervisor for a state-correctional construction program, according to court records. U.S. District Court Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson, who sentenced Laureano, called her a “superstar” for turning her life around.
She left the sentencing thankful for the judge’s support and hoped for a safe environment to continue on the right path.
Instead, Laureano faced repeated sexual misconduct from guards, staff and the warden the next two years at Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, according to a complaint filed Sept. 19 by Laureano against the United States, Darrell W. Smith and Ray J. Garcia.
“You can’t run from it; you’re stuck there,” she said in an interview of the routine abuse. “That’s the worst feeling in the world.”
Garcia was the warden and Smith was a guard at the prison in Dublin, about 35 miles east of San Francisco, while Laureano was imprisoned there from 2019 to 2021.
Garcia was sentenced last year to 70 months in federal prison for sexually abusive conduct against three women who were serving prison sentences and one count of making false statements to government agents, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Smith faces 15 counts of sexual abuse, including a civil rights violation, against five women after a federal grand jury indictment in July, according to the DOJ. The women were inmates under Smith’s custody at Dublin.
The low-security women’s prison was shuttered earlier this year after years of sexual abuse by guards.
“The facility was run by government-funded sex predators — guards, cooks, staff, even the warden and chaplain — who leveraged their absolute power to rape, molest and intimidate the women now trapped within Dublin’s walls,” the complaint alleges. “Sexual abuse was not only widespread at Dublin, but also out in the open.”
Laureano’s pleas for help while incarcerated went unanswered, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court — Northern District of California by Laureano’s representation, Connelly Law Offices. Instead, Laureano received threats for her allegations.
Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Scott Taylor said in an email the bureau does not comment on matters related to pending litigation, ongoing legal proceedings or ongoing investigations.
Laureano, now 46, was sentenced in February 2019 in Spokane to 6 1/2 years in prison for possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine.
The complaint says Laureano was repeatedly sexually abused as a child, and the trauma led to addiction and the crimes that come with it.
Judge Peterson agreed, saying Laureano’s criminal history stemmed from abuse.
“I’m confident you’re not going to let the past defeat you,” Peterson said during sentencing.
Laureano was sent to FCI Dublin, where prison staff used their power to abuse her, just as they had done to dozens of other women, the complaint says. The alleged sexual predation comprised of guards peering at her in the shower and on the toilet, catcalling, groping and threats.
The complaint alleges one of the guards, Smith, pinned her to a concrete cell wall and sexually assaulted her, which Laureano called “one of the worst things that ever happened to me.”
Prior to Smith’s alleged assault, he repeatedly opened the bathroom door to watch Laureano use the bathroom and opened the curtain to watch her shower from late 2019 and early 2020, the complaint says. He made sexual remarks while watching her.
Laureano said she knew Smith’s behavior would escalate to sexual assault.
She reported Smith’s attack to Garcia, who didn’t investigate or report the attack, according to the complaint. Instead, Garcia offered to “protect” her from Smith by allowing her to work on construction projects in his office away from Smith. During that work, Garcia groped her and made sexually harassing comments, the complaint says. The behavior allegedly happened nearly every day for months.
Laureano also tried to report other sexual misconduct she experienced by writing formal grievances, verbally telling staff and writing to the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General. Her reports went nowhere, the complaint says.
Guards who learned about Laureano’s reports told her they would make life “difficult” if she continued to complain, according to the complaint. Her unit manager threatened solitary confinement, while one guard punished Laureano by forcing her to kill baby goslings hatching in the prison yard.
Laureano turned to family to report the abuse when she was unable to report through the Bureau of Prisons’ grievance process.
After telling a family member during a call about the abuse, a guard went to Laureano’s cell and ordered her to stop talking about the guards’ misconduct on the phone, the complaint alleges. More than one video call with her family “cut off” moments after she mentioned the sexual misconduct.
“From the moment she arrived, the sexual abuse was constant, a routine fact of everyday life so pervasive at FCI Dublin that prison employees dubbed the facility ‘The Rape Club,’ “ according to the complaint.
Laureano told The Spokesman-Review other inmates warned her about certain staff’s inappropriate behavior when she arrived at the prison in the early summer of 2019. When she walked into the kitchen to get food, staff made sexual comments toward her.
“I was floored,” she said. “I couldn’t even believe what I was seeing or hearing, because I have been in other institutions in my life and nobody ever, especially staff, conducted themselves in that type of manner.”
She said sometimes officers wouldn’t give her and other inmates their sack lunches unless they showed them their private parts.
“After a while, it really started getting under my skin, so I started having a voice,” she said.
She said officers and staff took her property, including her undergarments, for voicing her allegations. She recalled the warden and other officers saying, “Laureano, quit kicking up dust. This is just the way it is here. You’ll get used to it.”
“At first, I was really angry, and then I started to feel defeated because I felt like anytime that anybody said anything, nobody believed us and we always got punished for it,” Laureano said. “I have to let people abuse me to be able to get along here.”
Laureano said many inmates used drugs, like synthetic marijuana, and drank hand sanitizer to drown out the mental and emotional pain they experienced at the hands of prison staff.
“This was the life there, and it was just horrible,” she said. “Everybody, every day was trying to find a way to self-medicate.”
Laureano said she lived every day in fear because she didn’t know whether an officer would take her property from her cell, she’d lose her job or be subjected to more sexual trauma.
“That was the part that just made me sick to my stomach all the time,” she said. “And I would always look out the window to see what officer was working, because it went to certain levels of abuse depending on who the officer was.”
Laureano was transferred to Federal Correctional Institution in Waseca, Minnesota, in 2021. The complaint says Laureano understood her unit manager had her transferred because of her continued complaints of sexual abuse at Dublin.
She tried reporting the abuse to guards at Waseca and the Office of the Inspector General, but they also did nothing, the complaint says.
Fearing more retaliation, Laureano was forced to wait until she was released from prison to report the crimes.
The complaint alleges none of Laureano’s complaints was investigated and that the Bureau of Prisons “simply ignored the law.” Ignoring sexual assault reports by prisoners, like Laureano, violated the bureau’s policies but was its “usual practice,” according to the court record.
The Bureau of Prisons published a report in 2021 saying it found no incidents of staff-on-inmate sexual harassment despite millions of dollars in sexual abuse settlements and other examples of sexual misconduct throughout the country at federal prisons, the complaint says.
“The mere fact that BOP found not a single incident in 2021 should have put the agency on notice that its reporting and discipline procedures were not just broken, but nonexistent,” the complaint says. “BOP has tolerated sexual abuse for years and refused to adopt policies that would have prevented (Laureano’s) abuse, as well as the abuse of other women at FCI Dublin.”
Laureano was released from incarceration this spring and is living in an Oxford house in north Spokane. Oxford Houses of Washington State provide housing for people recovering from addiction.
Laureano, who is president of her Oxford house, works at Pioneer Human Services, where she helps people battle drug addictions. She said she loves her job.
“It makes me feel good to help people now,” Laureano said. “It makes me feel good to have a voice and to be able to talk to people that have been through it because I’ve been there.”
Still, she battles depression and anxiety from her stay in Dublin.
“I just put one foot forward, and I kept telling myself I’m not going to let this defeat me, because if it was the old me, I would have went back to using drugs right away,” Laureano said.
Laureano said the temptation to return to drugs previously entered her mind, but the fear of going back to prison keeps her in check. She attributes her job as a large reason for her sobriety.
“I always remind myself of what I went through on a daily basis in that place, and it kept me striving to be bigger and better,” she said.
She said the closing of Dublin and staff being criminally charged makes her feel like people finally listened to her and other inmates. She hopes the Bureau of Prisons makes changes to prevent the abuse, which she said still happens at prisons across the country.
“It’s still very serious and very prominent in federal facilities, and I hope to God that because of what happened in Dublin, that maybe it opens the eyes of other places, and they don’t allow that type of abuse to go on,” Laureano said.
Laureano seeks financial relief with an amount to be determined at trial, the complaint says.
