arizona republicsat, october 30, 1999
california probing prisons
medical neglect, sex abuse focus
By Mark Arax
Los Angeles Times
CHOWCHILLA, Calif. - Side side, the two largest women's prisons in the world rise out of the almond fields and light up the night sky crime miles, an eerie shrine to and punishment whose darker impulses are now under scrutiny again.
For years, inmates at the Central California Women's Facility have
Claimed that medical care was shoddy and inhumane, that curable diseases sometimes became: death sentences. Aft a class-action"' prisoner lawsuit was filed in 1995, state corrections officials pledged reform.
But 'despite improvements
0 in
medical. staffing and day-to-day health care, inmates and prison watchdog groups allege that serious medical problems continue and that .a Handful of guards and medical staffers are sexually assaulting inmates. The problems, they say, have spread to Valley State Prison just across the road.- I
Cal Terhune director of the state Department of Corrections, "said Thursday that he has launched an, investigation at all four of California's.-women's prison after learning of some of the allegations from lawyers and prisoner advocates.
Terhune said the investigation
on who may have engaged in improper sexual relations with
inmates He defended, however, the
quality of medical care, say saying that the department as taken considerbale steps to improve medical care for inmates statewide.
But. 13 females have died: at the Central , California Women's Facility in the past 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 forced to lie for hours in their excrement are a part; of everyday life, 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