The first time Amika Mota witnessed a sexual assault by a corrections officer, it was happening to her 18-year-old bunkmate, who was serving a year-long sentence in the Orange County Jail for stealing a purse.

“I know everybody has judgments about different types of women that are in (jail) … but, you know, this is one story I tell a lot,” Mota said. “I cannot imagine that the public associates sentencing and convicting a young woman for a crime of this type (foresaw this) repercussion.”

Today, Mota is the Executive Director of Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition, an Oakland-based nonprofit coalition of more than 5,000 formerly and currently incarcerated people of every gender. They are working to shed light on injustices faced by women and transgender people within state jails and prisons, foster care, the child welfare system, immigration and social services.

“I don’t know anybody in prison that has not been affected by witnessed sexual assault by staff, and unfortunately, it’s just one of those things that I don’t think the majority of the public like thinks about … when a woman is being sentenced to prison.” Mota said.

Senate Bill 898, by Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), now in front of the legislature, would extend the statute of limitations for incarcerated sexual assault victims and would ensure that correctional employees are fired from their jobs if an investigation found they sexually abused an inmate.

“No person, no matter what they did to be sentenced to prison or jail, should be forced to endure the brutal crime of rape or sexual assault — and then be punished for reporting it,” Sen. Skinner said.

“SB 898 will provide whistleblower protections for survivors who have the courage to come forward, and will allow for a reduction in prison time for incarcerated individuals who were proven to have suffered from such assaults.”

The initiative is spurred in part by the events of last year, when former prison guard Greg Rodriguez of the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla was accused of 96 felony charges of rape, sodomy and sexual battery on at least 22 women incarcerated inside the prison where he worked. Rodriguez allegedly lured inmates into a parole board hearing room where there were no cameras in order to sexually assault them.

More than 130 women formerly incarcerated at the Chowchilla and Chino state prisons have alleged widespread sexual assault and harassment by prison staff. In October of 2023, six of those former inmates agreed to settle their lawsuits against Rodriguez and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for $3.7 million.

And in April of this year, the federal government abruptly decided to close a prison in Dublin, commonly known as “the rape club” due to the rampant number of sexual assaults known to happen there; preferring instead to transfer hundreds of inmates across the country and away from their families, rather than address the institutional problems that plague the facility. (Current and former inmates also allege there are serious issues with mold, asbestos and access to healthcare at the Dublin prison.)

“It’s not one bad apple case,” Mota said. “Let me tell you how many more are still inside, still doing the same thing, with the same kind of culture that has supported it for so many years,”

Mota said she spent seven years inside California’s women’s prisons, where she experienced sexual harassment, assault and a “normalized culture of the degradation of women.” She saw prison staff regularly call the women inmates slurs to humiliate and demean them.

“It’s just kind of this normal thing, the way they talk to us,” she said.

According to the National Institute for Health in 2023, an average of 21% of female inmates reported experiencing some form of sexual victimization by other inmates, while just 7.6% reported experiencing that behavior by staff.

However, the real numbers are likely much higher due to fear of retaliation by prison staff, Mota said.

“It is really tough to speak up on sexual harassment or assault when you’re on the inside, because the retaliation is real and most people do not report,” she said. “Officers on the inside, (they) make decisions for everything we do … they decide whether or not we access a phone call, whether or not we get to do our laundry, whether or not we get to have a visit with our family, or buy a commissary or have a bed move. They control every aspect of our life in there.”

Regardless of what an incarcerated person has done, allowing inmates to be sexually assaulted by the people in charge of them is akin to state sanctioned violence.

Prisoners in this country are sentenced to serve time. They are not sentenced to repeated rape and abuse.

Robin Epley is an opinion writer for The Sacramento Bee, with a focus on Sacramento County politics. She was born and raised in Sacramento, was a member of the Chico Enterprise-Record’s Pulitzer Prize-finalist team for coverage of the Camp Fire, and is a graduate of Chico State.