While January 6 defendants receive presidential pardons after attacking law enforcement, the sexually abused women of FCI Dublin remain behind bars despite winning a historic settlement against their government captors. On a crisp morning in December, headlines announced a landmark $116 million settlement for 103 women who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of federal corrections officers at FCI Dublin.
That same week, social media erupted with celebration videos of January 6 defendants receiving presidential pardons, many raising glasses to commemorate their freedom after assaulting Capitol police. The juxtaposition could not be more stark: those who attacked law enforcement walk free, while those attacked by law enforcement remain incarcerated. More than fifty women at Dublin came forward with horrifying familiar accounts of systematic sexual abuse by the very officers tasked with their protection. Their abusers wore badges. Their attackers carried keys.
FCI Dublin, nicknamed the “Rape Club” by its victims, operated as a sexual hunting ground where male officers preyed on vulnerable women with impunity. The investigation revealed security staff would select victims, isolate them, and sexually assault them in areas without camera coverage. When women reported these crimes they faced retaliation, solitary confinement, loss of privileges, transfers to harsher facilities, and threats to extend their sentences.
The Justice Department’s investigation led to charges against eight officers, including the Warden and Chaplain. Seven have been convicted and sentenced.
The $116 million settlement acknowledged the government’s failure to protect women in its custody. Yet today, many of these women remain behind bars serving sentences in the very system that violated them. Some share facilities with guards who participated in the culture of abuse but escaped prosecution. Each day they wake up in custody is another day their government fails them twice: first as victims, then as continued captives. I know this reality intimately.
During my seventeen years of incarceration, I’ve experienced and witnessed the predatory patterns that plague facilities housing women. Officers “groom” certain individuals, starting with small favors before escalating to sexual demands. Those who resist face fabricated disciplinary charges. Those who report face worse. This isn’t isolated to adult facilities. Youth detention centers suffer from the same plague. In Texas, where I’m incarcerated, dozens of juvenile corrections officers have been arrested for having sex with “youth offenders” in their care. The power imbalance creates perfect conditions for predation, regardless of the victim’s age.
Presidential pardons were designed as a constitutional safeguard against injustice, a mechanism to correct wrongs the courts couldn’t or wouldn’t address. Historically, pardons have been used to heal national wounds and recognize our legal system’s failures to deliver justice. But today’s pardons follow a different pattern. President Trump’s recent clemency for January 6 convictions signals that attacking law enforcement officers is forgivable under the right political circumstances. This comes after his first-term pardons for law enforcement officers convicted of excessive force and rights violations. Meanwhile, countless women who suffered at the hands of government officers receive no such mercy. The gendered dynamic is impossible to ignore. Who deserves forgiveness and who remains punished often breaks along lines of gender and power.
Consider Pam Hemphill, a J-6 defendant from Idaho who served sixty days at Dublin. When offered Trump’s pardon, she declined, stating: “If I took a pardon, then what I did that day was OK. It wasn’t.” Her principled stand highlights what’s missing in our clemency system: the recognition that some victims of injustice cannot refuse their continued punishment, while others can reject their offered freedom. For Hemphill, refusing a pardon was a moral choice with minimal consequences.
For the women of Dublin, denying them pardons and continuing their confinement in the very system that abused them compounds their trauma daily. The statistics on prosecutions for law enforcement sexual misconduct tell their own story. While the Dublin case represents a rare instance of multiple prosecutions, most reports of custodial sexual abuse never result in charges. From 2000–2014, Texas prosecutors failed to pursue almost half of the nearly four hundred cases that the prison system’s inspector general referred to them. Of the 126 workers convicted of sexual misconduct or assault during this period, only 9 were sentenced to time in jail. Most received a type of probation that allowed them to clear their record after meeting the requirements of the court.
Compare this to the aggressive prosecution of J-6 defendants, where the Justice Department secured 100 percent of convictions with substantial sentences until those convictions were undone with the stroke of a presidential pen. This disparity forces us to confront uncomfortable questions about who deserves mercy in our justice system. Why are those who attacked law enforcement officers worthy of pardons, while women attacked by law enforcement officers remain behind bars?
There is precedent for group clemency in cases of systemic abuse. President Obama commuted sentences for 1,715 individuals serving disproportionate sentences under outdated crack cocaine laws, recognizing that an unjust system warranted broad remedy. The Dublin settlement acknowledges systemic failure but without accompanying clemency. It offers only financial compensation for continued confinement.
If you find yourself outraged by the juxtaposition of J-6 pardons alongside the continued incarceration of sexually abused women, there are clear actions to take. Call your congressional representatives. Demand clemency for the Dublin victims. Write to the White House clemency office. Public pressure can transform individual cases of injustice into movements. The Trump administration has an opportunity to demonstrate that justice applies equally—that those victimized by government officials deserve at least the same mercy as those who victimized government officials. The question remains painfully simple: If those who attacked law enforcement deserve mercy, what do those attacked by law enforcement deserve?