East Bay Prison Sex Abuse Trial Opens With Account of Guard’s ‘Ultimate Control’

As the final criminal trial against a former official at FCI Dublin began Monday, prosecutors described a culture of abuse, retaliation and cover-up that they said allowed him to sexually abuse women incarcerated at the now-shuttered East Bay prison for six years.

They said Darrell Wayne Smith — whose case stemmed from a larger investigation into the prison known by former workers and incarcerated women as the “rape club” — threatened, bribed and held power over the heads of five women he is accused of sexually abusing while working as a correctional officer.

“Defendant Darrell Smith liked power, and he abused that power,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sailaja Paidipaty said during her opening statement. “He abused his power when he fondled [one victim’s] breasts. He abused his power when he pinned her against a wall and shoved his fingers into her anus. … He used his power for many years to sexually abuse many women.”

Smith is one of eight former correctional officers and high-ranking officials who were criminally charged in the sprawling probe into FCI Dublin. The other seven, including the prison’s former warden, have all been sentenced.

Known as “Dirty Dick Smith” in court documents, he faces six counts of sexual abuse of a ward, seven counts of abusive sexual contact, one count of aggravated sexual abuse, and one count of deprivation of rights by bestowing cruel and unusual punishment. If convicted, he could face a lifetime sentence.

Women who were formerly incarcerated at FCI Dublin plan to testify that Smith made sexual comments toward them, forced them to lift up their tops in front of him, penetrated them with his fingers as they slept, and even forced them to have sex with him, Paidipaty said.

“All of Smith’s abuse happened in the housing units on that property,” where he was often the only guard, she told the jury. “This is where the women lived, where they slept at night, where they showered, where they did their laundry.

“For these units, Smith had ultimate control.”

His defense said that the picture of Smith’s time as a correctional officer would be incomplete, though.

“You will not see DNA evidence, you will not see any other forensic evidence, physical evidence of a sexual assault,” attorney Joanna Sheridan said in opening statements. “You will not see any surveillance video of Mr. Smith touching an inmate. You might want to pause and think about that, considering that this is a prison, a highly secured facility.”

Sheridan foreshadowed a strategy of attempting to discredit witness testimony — “These are women who … were there because they committed felony offenses,” she said — and pushed back against the prosecution’s depiction of the power hierarchy of the prison.

“Inmates figure out how to get what they want,” she told jurors. “They learn how to manipulate the system. They learn how to manipulate staff and [Bureau of Prison] management to benefit their interests.”

Since 2021, more than 100 women have come forward alleging sexual misconduct by officials at FCI Dublin. Last year, the Federal Bureau of Prisons acknowledged the damage done at the facility with a $116 million settlement split among 103 women.

Sixty-three civil suits have been filed against the prison and its officials since 2021, and FCI Dublin was abruptly closed last April, a month after an FBI raid and just weeks after a judge appointed the first-ever special master to the Bureau of Prisons to oversee changes at Dublin.

Special master Wendy Still’s report on the institution, unsealed in August, said that women could not easily obtain forms used to lodge complaints and that to “obtain any of the forms necessary to file a remedy at any level, the [woman] had to request the form from staff and justify the need for the form which had a chilling effect” and made women “fearful of retaliation.”

“Reporting an officer in prison is risky,” Paidipaty said during her opening statement for the prosecution. “You can face retaliation, and in fact, you’ll hear from some women about the consequences that they’ve faced when they tried to speak up.”

She said that in the coming days of the trial, more than a dozen women will likely take the stand to testify about the abuse they faced from Smith or to corroborate the reports of those who were harmed around them.

“Within the walls of that prison, those women felt powerless,” she said. “Smith did what he wanted, and when he wanted, for years.”

KQED’s Sara Hossaini contributed to this report.