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Aliksandria Prout was at home the evening of Aug. 2, 2024, when her phone rang. It was her former cellmate at the Central California Women’s Facility. Catrina Cameron was nearly incoherent over the prison phone line.
“She told me she couldn’t see outta one eye,” Prout recalled. Cameron told Prout that correctional officers had sprayed her and dozens of other women with tear gas and pepper spray. “Our other cellmate had gotten beat up by correctional staff.”
Prout could barely grasp the enormity of the incident. As the public would later learn, correctional officers had removed 159 women from a prison housing unit, confined them for more than four hours in a dining hall without food, water or medication, and then unleashed streams of pepper spray and chemical blast grenades on them when tensions escalated.
Later, as the prisoners sat outside on the hot, dusty yard with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, officers again used tear gas and pepper grenades on them.
A retired prison administrator who reviewed footage of the incident told KQED: “It looks like they’re lining ’em up for the firing squad.”
Women suffered injuries including stroke, blindness and seizures. “I didn’t know what they were doing to us or why, but I needed help, and I need somebody out there to know,” Cameron later recalled.
On the phone with her friend, Prout felt sick. The 33-year-old nursing student and mother of three had been out of prison for nearly two years, but she hadn’t been able to leave it behind.
In just a couple of months, Prout was set to testify against the now-infamous former correctional officer, Gregory Rodriguez, who’d been charged with sexually assaulting more than a dozen women at the facility in Chowchilla, about 35 miles from Fresno.
And now, her close friend and former cellmate had been attacked by officers in the chow hall. She couldn’t help but think her efforts to expose Rodriguez were connected to what had just happened to Cameron and more than 150 women in her old unit.
Prout’s concerns were well-founded, according to a two-year KQED investigation into “Operation Breakdown,” as the incident was called in internal documents.
Interviews with more than a dozen women, a KQED analysis of six years’ worth of sexual assault complaints, trial transcripts, court filings, leaked internal affairs interviews and hundreds of disciplinary documents revealed a pattern of retaliation against incarcerated women who reported assault, failure to investigate those assaults and the dysfunctional accountability system that allowed staff sexual exploitation of women to flourish.
A recent U.S. Department of Justice investigation reached a similar conclusion, finding an “unbroken pattern” of sexual abuse and retaliation in California’s women’s prisons dating back more than two decades. Central California Women’s Facility is one of just two women’s penitentiaries in the state and is one of the largest women’s prisons in the world, with a population of more than 2,000 women, nonbinary and trans people held inside.
In the wake of the Justice Department report, and as KQED neared publication of this investigation, the warden at the women’s prison, Anissa De La Cruz, was demoted and transferred, and multiple officers were put under investigation for sexual abuse. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) said the agency cannot comment on personnel decisions or the ongoing investigation. It said the agency is “fully committed to protecting victims of sexual assault.”
Corrections department Press Secretary Terri Hardy said in an email that the department conducted its own investigation into the events of Aug. 2, investigating 95 employees and disciplining 34 for their conduct, including firing three for excessive force and dishonesty. Initially, the department moved to discipline 41 staff members, but that number dropped as correctional officers filed appeals, some of which are still pending.
The corrections department said the case was the largest corrective action stemming from a single incident in its history. Yet, key questions about the operation’s connection to a rising tide of sexual assault complaints remain unanswered.
A KQED analysis of six years of Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) data obtained from the corrections department showed that the rate of sexual misconduct complaints against staff at Central California Women’s Facility increased by about 1,800% from 2022 to 2023. The department did not answer questions about this data.
Prout’s experience illuminates a pervasive culture of sexual abuse at Central California Women’s Facility, helps explain why women suddenly started coming forward in 2023, and reveals what the officers charged with keeping people safe in custody did in response.
Ali’s story
In May 2022, Prout had been at the women’s prison for just a few days when correctional officer Gregory Rodriguez stopped her as she walked to a medical appointment. He asked her to pull down her N95 mask so he could verify her identity.
“He said, ‘You have beautiful lips and beautiful eyes,’” Prout told KQED.
Three days later, an officer gave Prout a paper pass, known as a ducat, allowing her to move through the prison.
“They told me I had an attorney visit,” she said. An officer escorted her to the Board of Parole Hearings room, where such visits are usually held.
But there was no attorney visit. Instead, she saw Rodriguez. This is the first time she has spoken to the media about what happened in that room.
Rodriguez came close and tried to kiss her. He lifted her shirt and then turned her around on a chair beneath a window. Prout remembers staring at the officer’s boot, propped against the left side of the green upholstered chair.
“What really upset me was he didn’t use protection,” she said.
When it was over, Prout said, Rodriguez warned her that if she told anyone, she could face disciplinary action, which could mean more time in prison.
KQED heard similar stories from other women at the prison. Eight women said they feared disciplinary write-ups, repeated cell searches and other retaliation if they reported sexual assault by staff. In a statement, the corrections department said it is committed to protecting victims of sexual assault and that “sexual abuse, harassment and retaliation against incarcerated people is unacceptable.”
At the time, Prout stayed silent, but she made sure to keep track of the multiple times Rodriguez called her back to that room. When she was paroled after just a few months in prison, Prout began contacting attorneys.
She found out that the corrections department’s Office of Internal Affairs was already investigating Rodriguez. They ultimately identified 22 potential victims, including Prout, and worked with the Madera County District Attorney’s Office to arrest the former officer in May of 2023. The case, in which Prout testified as a Jane Doe, attracted national attention. Rodriguez was convicted on 64 counts of sexual abuse, including rape and sexual battery. He was sentenced to 224 years in prison.
In an email to KQED, a prison spokesperson wrote that Rodriguez’s sentence “reaffirms CDCR’s own internal investigation” and that the department “condemns any staff member — especially a peace officer who is entrusted to enforce the law — who violates their oath and public trust.”
The department also said that then-Warden Michael Pallares was transferred to Pleasant Valley State Prison, where he was made associate warden.
However, documents recently obtained by KQED reveal troubling new details about that investigation. The internal affairs report showed there was a six-month window in which investigators and CDCR leadership were notified of Rodriguez’s misconduct and failed to act. During that period, he assaulted at least six women, including Prout, numerous times.
Before Prout even arrived in the Chowchilla prison, a woman had already told investigators that Rodriguez summoned her to the Board of Parole Hearings room for fake attorney visits and sexually assaulted her on three occasions.
Still, Rodriguez remained at his job until Aug. 17, 2022, when he was finally reassigned to the mailroom. He retired shortly after that. The corrections department did not answer questions about why it took so long to stop Rodriguez’s abuse.
Rodriguez had been flagged before. All the way back in 2014, someone had reported potential relations between Rodriguez and a young woman identified in the trial transcripts as Nicole Doe. An investigation was done at the time, but the allegations against Rodriguez were dismissed.
Nicole Doe was sent to solitary confinement for more than six months and then transferred to another prison.
“I was treated like I was the problem,” Nicole Doe said at trial.
In 2019, a female co-worker reported Rodriguez for sexual harassment. Rodriguez tried to kiss her and get her to go into the staff restroom at work, this woman told investigators.
“I’ll be quick, I’ll be quick,” she recalled Rodriguez saying, according to internal documents.
Rodriguez was reprimanded and told not to do it again, according to trial testimony.
The internal affairs report appeared to show that no other officers were disciplined in connection with Rodriguez’s years of criminal abuse.
Prout said other officers must have known. They were often responsible for issuing ducats like the ones she received. The police of the prison, Investigative Services Unit officers, had an office right across the hall from the room where Rodriguez repeatedly called women in order to assault them. Prout, concerned she might be pregnant, had also gone to the prison clinic after that first assault.
“They told me that if I wanted a pregnancy or STD test,” Prout testified at trial, “I had to admit to engaging in risky behavior, and that if I did that, it would add more time onto my sentence.”
Ripple effects
Rodriguez’s 2023 arrest also drew the attention of state lawmakers, who convened a special hearing on sexual abuse inside California’s women’s prisons.
While allegations of sexual abuse by officers have persisted for years, the Rodriguez case, along with the wide-ranging scandal of abuse at the federal prison in Dublin brought renewed urgency to the issue.
“It was a real pivotal moment,” said Amika Mota, executive director of the prison advocacy nonprofit Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition, who spoke at that hearing. “I feel like it’s kind of when Pandora’s Box opened.”
The Legislature allocated funds to create a sexual-abuse response and prevention working group. As part of that, Central California Women’s Facility began allowing incarcerated people to gather inside the prison gym for town halls organized by Sister Warriors and other advocacy groups.
Advocates stood watch at the doors of the gym to ensure correctional officers did not enter.
“ In the 30 years that I had been there, never had the prison allowed such a large group of us to gather with guests and without staff present,” said Elizabeth Lozano, one of the incarcerated women who was there.
For the first time, Lozano spoke about the terror and violation she felt when being groped by a correctional officer. “There’s things that happen where it’s out of your control,” she told KQED.
In October of 2023, the state agreed to pay Prout $1.2 million to settle a civil suit she’d filed. Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed against the corrections department since Rodriguez’s arrest, alleging sexual abuse by him and dozens of officers. The cases became so numerous they were consolidated into a single coordinated proceeding that is still moving through the Sacramento Superior Court.
As civil claims and Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) complaints began to rise, five women, including Antoinette Yancey, who served on the prison’s inmate advisory council, said in interviews with KQED or in legal filings that they were warned that the complaints needed to stop.
During a smaller search about a month before Operation Breakdown, Yancey said that Sgt. Isidro Arroyo confronted her, saying, “The PREA, the staff assaults, the complaints and all the 602s [prison grievances] all of that stuff needs to stop.
“If the complaints do not stop, then I’m going to lock you guys down, take all your privileges, and this is gonna continue until the complaints stop,” Yancey recalled Arroyo saying.
Yancey said she told him this was neither legal nor fair and refused to discourage women from filing sexual-abuse complaints. She also said she brought up this incident with Arroyo during a regular inmate advisory council meeting with leadership of the prison.
The corrections department declined to make Arroyo available for an interview and did not respond to questions about this incident.
‘These bitches needed to know’
In the days leading up to Operation Breakdown, then-Warden Anissa De La Cruz was not at the prison, so Chief Deputy Warden Cynthia Rojas was in charge.
On Aug. 1, 2024, acting Capt. Carlos Mendoza and Associate Warden Stephanie Torres came to Rojas about problems with prisoners smoking and being “disruptive” in a housing area called D Yard, according to internal affairs interviews that were leaked on YouTube and later taken down.
“We need to gain control of that f—— unit,” Rojas said, according to one of those leaked tapes.
Rojas and her staff planned a massive search-and-seizure operation to look for contraband and enforce prison property limits for the entire unit. Under state prison regulations, each incarcerated person’s state-issued and approved personal belongings must fit within 6 cubic feet of space — about the size of a mini-fridge.
Torres’ name was redacted in the investigation report, but KQED was able to identify her by comparing her statements to leaked internal affairs interviews and details about her role in the prison. She said the chief deputy warden gave her and Mendoza about a four-and-a-half-hour window to plan a search that would normally take days.
Torres and Mendoza later told internal affairs investigators that they “questioned the reasoning and urgency” for the search, according to the report. The two senior staff members said that Rojas told them, “these bitches need to know who’s in control,” and that De La Cruz had directed her to “do what I know how to do.”
Mendoza sent an email to De La Cruz, Rojas, Torres and other prison leaders late that Thursday afternoon, laying out the basics, including breaking the prisoners down to 6 cubic feet, using K-9 and searching the building.
Operation Breakdown was set for the next day.
‘Fun, fun, fun baby’
On Aug. 2, Torres described a “skeleton crew of managerial staff” on site. Prison officials had to bring in officers who were still in training, according to the report. Two trainees said it was their first day working inside a prison. And despite initiating and planning Operation Breakdown, Rojas was also not at work that day. But when the acting captain of D Yard called her around midday, she answered.
“Boss, we just went code three,” Mendoza said, according to Rojas’ leaked interview with internal affairs.
“What the f—? What do you mean we went code three?” Rojas replied.
The 159 incarcerated women on D Yard had been taken out of their cells and crowded into the dining hall first thing that morning. As the morning wore on, the scope of the search became apparent, according to a dozen women who were there that day.
They watched through the windows of the chow hall as their pillows, shoes, clothing, TVs and even some mattresses were taken or thrown away.
“People been here for 20 years,” said Wisdom Muhammad, who is out of prison now. “You throwing away they sentimental things that they have. You feel me? Like stuff that’s unreplaceable, and all that stuff is just hot trash.”
Around 12:20 p.m., one of the people being held in the dining hall had a seizure. An alarm sounded, and officers filed into the dining hall in a skirmish line carrying MK-46 pepper sprayers and chemical grenades, surveillance footage and internal records showed. Things quickly escalated.
After more than four hours in the sweltering Central Valley heat without food, water or medication, the people being held in the dining hall were frustrated, according to at least a dozen women who were there. They shouted at the officers. They banged on the tables and windows.
Yancey said she pointed to Arroyo and then to herself, trying to signal that she wanted to speak with him. He did not acknowledge her.
Mendoza handed Arroyo a chemical blast grenade and instructed him to “put ’em down with the gas,” according to internal disciplinary documents obtained by KQED.
Mendoza was recorded on body camera directing officers to “go gas” and placing chemical grenades in the hands of subordinates, according to disciplinary documents. He later told them he “took the initiative to be the response supervisor” at the dining hall.
The scrimmage line unleashed chemical blast grenades and pepper spray on the crowd of incarcerated people, sending them scrambling toward the back of the room, surveillance video reviewed by KQED showed.
According to a leaked internal affairs interview, correctional officer Jordan R. Chavira told another officer that he had entered the dining hall and “started dumping it, dude,” referring to chemical agents.
One by one, the women’s hands were zip-tied behind their backs and eventually were walked outside to the yard, surveillance footage showed.
Yancey assumed the officers were going to start letting them go back into their housing unit.
Instead, as the incarcerated people sat under the baking sun in 90-degree weather, the officers formed a half circle around them, according to surveillance footage.
One woman, hands zip-tied behind her back, got up and took four steps to sit by another woman. Just then, the officers started throwing grenades filled with tear gas or pepper spray at the entire group. At least 15 blast grenades were deployed, according to KQED’s analysis of the disciplinary documents.
As the assault died down, multiple women were carried off the field on stretchers. According to leaked internal affairs tapes, Chavira was captured on his body-worn camera approaching another officer and saying, “Fun, fun, fun, baby.”
Chavira told investigators he made those remarks in “the heat of the moment” and that he was being sarcastic.
Mendoza and Chavira were charged with inexcusable neglect of duty, dishonesty, willful disobedience and excessive force; both were fired. Arroyo received a 10% salary reduction for seven pay periods and has returned to work at the prison.
KQED was unable to reach Mendoza. Multiple attempts to reach Chavira were unsuccessful.
“To me, if you can openly spray people as if they’re rats or roaches, like they’re not human, you completely disregard their humanity,” said Lozano, who was there on Aug. 2. “You’re sadistic. You’re an abuser.”
Two investigations, different questions
Thirteen women, including Catrina Cameron and Antionette Yancey, filed a suit against the state for their injuries during the Aug. 2 incident, alleging the incident was tied to reports of sexual assault. The corrections department admitted no fault, but paid the group $1.9 million to settle the case. A separate class action lawsuit is still pending.
The corrections department’s internal investigation focused on the conduct of individual employees during the operation: who gave orders, who followed them and whether the force they used complied with department policy.
But newly disclosed documents obtained by KQED reveal that the operation was plagued by staffing shortages, lack of planning and oversight failures. Vital questions about why this operation was rushed out were never answered.
“I still don’t understand that,” Torres told internal affairs. “I wish to understand it, and in some ways, I don’t wish to understand it. It doesn’t make sense.”
Corrections department Administrator Angela Kent is retired now, but at the time she served as the associate director of Female Offender Programs and Services. In her 27 years in law enforcement, she had never seen anything like the use of force on Aug. 2, she told KQED.
“I absolutely felt that every officer, supervisor and manager involved should be fired,” Kent said. At the time, she urged the department to release the body-worn camera footage along with a statement, “immediately, in line with the industry standard.” As of publication, the corrections department still has not released the body-worn camera footage.
Chief Deputy Warden Rojas, who’d approved the operation but wasn’t there to oversee it, was not disciplined, according to documents obtained by KQED. In a leaked interview, she was questioned about the statement that Torres and Mendoza told investigators about.
“Did you make the statement, ‘These bitches need to be reminded who’s in charge,’ or words to that effect?” the investigator asked.
“Not that I recall,” she said.
Rojas was later promoted and is now acting warden at the second-largest men’s prison in the state, the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, which currently holds about 4,000 people in custody, according to corrections department’s website. The department declined to make Rojas available for an interview.
In the documents obtained by KQED and the leaked internal affairs tapes, the department did not determine why the operation was launched or whether it was connected to the growing number of sexual-abuse complaints.
“There is no doubt in my mind that if you start to empower women that are incarcerated and you start to give credibility to their voice that there’s gonna be tremendous resistance,” Kent said.
A month after the Aug. 2 incident, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a broad civil rights investigation into sexual abuse and retaliation at California’s women’s prisons.
Federal investigators examined the incident within the context of rising reports of sexual misconduct, allegations that staff punished women for speaking up and what the department described as longstanding failures to protect them. The department released its findings last month.
“Women were not being protected,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexandra Young told KQED. “It was the cycle that’s continuing to happen.”
In response, the corrections department said it takes every allegation seriously and remains committed to accountability and safety. The agency pointed to federal Prison Rape Elimination Act audits that found both women’s prisons met all 45 standards evaluated.
Those audits measure whether a facility has policies and practices designed to comply with the law; they do not determine whether abuse occurred in every reported case.
KQED’s analysis of Prison Rape Elimination Act complaint data obtained from the corrections department showed that in 2025, the year following the Aug. 2 incident, the rate of complaints being filed against staff at Central California Women’s Facility fell by about 75%. The department did not answer questions about this data. There are likely many reasons for this sudden decline, but multiple people at the prison said they no longer felt safe to file complaints.
One incarcerated woman, who was a victim of Rodriguez’s and spoke to KQED on the condition of anonymity because she is afraid for her safety, said if she had to do it over again, she would not report Rodriguez.
KQED’s analysis of Prison Rape Elimination Act complaints found another trend: As complaints rose in 2023 and 2024, the department appeared unable to keep up. As of the most recent data, more than 2,000 complaints across California’s state prisons had not been adjudicated. The corrections department did not answer questions about this data.
For many of the women who remain incarcerated at Central California Women’s Facility, Operation Breakdown has left lasting scars. Cameron said she has not set foot in the dining hall since Aug. 2 and that she still has not regained sight in one of her eyes.
Yancey said she still sees officers who were involved in the operation regularly. “They work in this building. They’re still antagonistic towards us.”
When asked whether the operation had succeeded in frightening women into silence, Cameron said it may have deterred many, but not everyone.
“Hopefully, the more of us who start to speak, the more will follow,” she said. “What happens in the dark always comes to light.”
Anna Sussman contributed reporting to this story.
Jeremy Sanchez Rue, Associate Professor of Practice for UC Berkeley Journalism School, was the data editor for this series. A.I. tools were used to assist with the data analysis for this story.
This story was produced with support from The California Newsroom, a collaboration of public media outlets throughout the state, with NPR as its national partner.
