Christina Cardenas hadn’t seen her husband in more than a year when, after a four-hour drive in September 2019, she finally reached the state prison in Tehachapi, Calif., where he was being held.
But instead of a visit, she said, she would face an ordeal.
That day, prison officials, acting on a search warrant, forced Ms. Cardenas to strip down and submit to a battery of searches, her lawyers said, culminating in a cavity search at a hospital — even though an X-ray and scan showed there was nothing in her body.
“It left me traumatized,” Ms. Cardenas, 45, said in a video interview on Tuesday.
This week, Ms. Cardenas’s lawyers announced that she would receive $5.6 million under a settlement in a lawsuit that she had brought against the prison system and the hospital that supervised the search.
The lawsuit, which was filed in 2020 Kern County Superior Court, named as defendants the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the Adventist Health Tehachapi Valley Hospital, two correctional officers and a doctor.
Of the $5.6 million, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will pay $3.6 million. The remainder will be paid by the other defendants.
In the settlement agreement, all the defendants denied any wrongdoing.
Colin Shaff, the lead lawyer for the defendants, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
Ms. Cardenas was represented by Gloria Allred, the women’s rights lawyer who has represented accusers of Bill Cosby and R. Kelly. Ms. Allred called the case “compelling.” After hearing what happened to Ms. Cardenas, Ms. Allred said in an interview, “I just immediately wanted to help her.”
California Correctional Institution is a “Supermax” prison around 45 miles north of Los Angeles and was housing around 1,700 inmates earlier this year. Ms. Cardenas said that prison officials had obtained a warrant to search anyone planning to see her husband, Carlos Cardenas, who was convicted of armed robbery and has been in prison since 2001.
“They were under the impression that Carlos would be receiving some paraphernalia via a visit,” Ms. Cardenas said.
However, according to the lawsuit, the warrant stipulated that a strip search could be conducted only if an X-ray were to detect foreign objects inside the visitor’s body, an indication of smuggled contraband.
Although there was no evidence of any contraband in Ms. Cardenas’s body, she was searched anyway, Ms. Allred said.
“They acted in violation of the limited terms of the search warrant,” she said. “The search authorized an X-ray. But if no contraband was found, nothing more could be done in terms of the search of her. They then proceeded to ignore or violate the search warrant.”
Not only was Ms. Cardenas subjected to a cavity search, a doctor conducting it sexually violated her during the process, forcefully penetrating her vagina and anus with his hand, Ms. Allred said.
Ms. Cardenas said in the interview, “I was very clear and vocal when they told me that they were going to do the search, that I was not OK with the male probing my body.”
Before Ms. Cardenas was taken to the hospital, she said, she was also made to strip and squat over a mirror at the prison — a type of search usually reserved for inmates, not visitors, Ms. Allred said.
Ms. Cardenas was also made to take a drug test and a pregnancy test and was kept in handcuffs, as she was moved between prison and hospital, the lawsuit said.
In the end, Ms. Cardenas was not allowed to visit her husband that day.
After she returned home, she received bills from the hospital for more than $5,000, according to the lawsuit.
Ms. Cardenas met her husband when the two were teenagers growing up in San Diego, she said. Their paths forked — and she went on to pursue a career in musical theater and later in sales.
Her growing interest in Buddhism and social justice led her to be open to reconnecting when he got in touch from behind bars, she said.
Friendship turned into romance, and the two got married in 2016. That day, too, Ms. Cardenas said, she had to go through a strip search at the state prison before she could enter.
Ms. Cardenas said she hoped that the settlement would remind the loved ones of people who are incarcerated that they do not have to “endure abuse” to visit a family member or friend.
The settlement also requires the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to distribute material to employees to ensure that prison visitors receive copies of search warrants and that the limits of search warrants are not violated.
That part of the settlement could have far-reaching effects. “It’s actually broader than we even were seeking at first because it covers all visitors, not just spousal visitors,” Ms. Allred said. It also requires that non-English speakers receive information about the warrants in their own language.
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