Both women say it happened in a blind spot in a dark stairwell.
There — out of view of Century Regional Detention Facility’s many security cameras — they claim a jailer sexually assaulted them while they were handcuffed.
The two women, whose names are being withheld because The Times generally does not identify victims of alleged sexual assault, spoke in phone calls from the jail in Lynwood, where they remain incarcerated. They claim male jail staffers forced them to engage in oral sex, groped and ogled them and offered clean water and other basic supplies in exchange for sexual acts.
When the women came forward and filed reports, they say, they were met with retaliation, including long stretches of solitary confinement in an area known as “the hole.”
In response to questions about the allegations, the L.A County Sheriff’s Department issued a statement to The Times listing a wide range of efforts it said it has undertaken to prevent sexual misconduct by employees and probe inmate complaints.
“The Department takes all allegations of sexual misconduct, abuse of authority, and violations of Department policy extremely seriously and they are investigated thoroughly and objectively,” the statement said. “The Department maintains a zero-tolerance policy toward any form of sexual abuse or harassment within its facilities.”
The women are among 38 plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed in October that echoes several claims they made to The Times. The complaint described sexual abuse by guards in the hole, including allegations that male deputies would watch women shower and “intentionally fondle” their bodies.
On Thursday, Brian Dunn, managing partner and lead civil rights attorney with the Cochran Firm, which brought the lawsuit, filed an amended complaint that included 16 additional inmate plaintiffs. Dunn asked the judge to issue an injunction barring male guards from viewing women in the shower or transporting women to and from showers.
“These men should not be overseeing these women. It should be women,” Dunn said in an interview. “They have beat these women down so badly spiritually and emotionally that they … feel that they have to accept this.”
The Sheriff’s Department’s statement said making staffing decisions based strictly on gender would violate state law, though it acknowledged that “certain positions within custodial facilities are lawfully restricted to female personnel due to the specific and sensitive nature” of the jobs.
The Sheriff’s Department said last month that two deputies named in the October lawsuit still were “actively working,” with one now at Men’s Central Jail and another still on duty at the women’s facility. The deputy who at Men’s Central Jail still was “actively working” as of Friday, the department said, and the other deputy has since been relieved of duty.
The two inmates who spoke with The Times offered similar but independent accounts of incidents they said happened while they were being transported out of the jail.
One woman, 33, said that in or around June, a jailer stopped in a dark stairwell as he was escorting her in handcuffs to a transport bus for a court appearance.
“He pulled out his penis and stuck his penis in my mouth. And it was the most disgusting thing ever,” she said. “Instantly, I was thinking, like, should I bite it? … But I’m thinking he’s a cop, like what can I really do? I’m handcuffed and if I do anything like that he can push me down the rest of the flight of stairs.”
A second inmate shared allegations against the same jailer. The 34-year-old mother of two said he sexually abused her in a “blind spot” in the stairwell while she was handcuffed.
“He would rub his private area against my hands,” she said. “He would kind of choke me a little bit. He’d aggressively grab on my breasts a lot. He tried to kiss me but his breath was so bad I did not let him.”
The staffer told her “you put up a lot of fight, worse than the other ones,” she said.
The inmate alleges she was assaulted in the stairwell eight or nine times during the six months she was housed in a unit known as “High Power,” where she was locked down for 23 hours a day. Each time, she alleges, she faced retaliation if she spoke up, including threats to prevent her from showering or making phone calls.
“Sometimes on the way back from court, I would deal with the same thing. He was relentless,” she said.
The Sheriff’s Department said in its statement that it investigates “every allegation we are aware of.” It added that “The Department follows a structured, multi-step investigative process to ensure every allegation is handled thoroughly and professionally.”
Haley Broder, chair of the Sybil Brand Commission, which provides civilian oversight of L.A. County jails, said during the commission’s Thursday meeting that she and her colleagues heard “really graphic and horrific stories” of sexual abuse and retaliation from inmates during unannounced visits to Century Regional Detention Facility.
“This is not a problem with one deputy. It’s multiple deputies,” she said, and added, “We’re hearing about cases where these women are reporting sexual assault and then are put into solitary confinement and are experiencing even worse conditions after reporting.”
The commission documented past allegations of sexual assault and abuse by deputies at the Lynwood jail. An August inspection report detailed an inmate’s claim that after she complained about an alleged assault by a deputy last spring, she was retaliated against by an unnamed sergeant and “denied meals after previously receiving a special diet.”
Dunn, the lawyer in the lawsuit filed on behalf of the inmates, described the jail as “an environment in there where none of these women believe anything is going to happen” if they file a complaint.
The Sheriff’s Department’s statement said it “holds its personnel to highest standards and when there is evidence of criminal misconduct or violations of Department policy, individuals are held accountable.”
The 34-year-old inmate alleged that the same guard who she said assaulted her in the stairwell also forced her to submit to unwanted sexual touching in exchange for bottles of water. Whenever the power went out, she said, the tap water in the “High Power” unit would turn a “disgusting” brown color, so the inmates were supposed to be provided with six water bottles daily.
Instead of simply handing the water over to her and other inmates she said she spoke with, the jailer “would not give us our water unless, when he gave it to us, we would let him slip his fingers in our panties.”
“Just to talk about it now makes me feel gross, but I was so thirsty,” she said.
The 33-year-old inmate said she told her family about her own alleged assault in the stairwell, and that her mother advised her to seek medical attention.
The woman said she underwent an exam with a nurse, which led to a complaint under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA, a federal law that requires mandatory reporting of alleged sexual abuse. The inmate said the process led to a meeting with two male sergeants, one who was PREA compliance manager at the time; the other would later hold that role.
She said she told them about the stairwell incident and other allegations of abuse. One deputy, she claimed, took advantage of her in multiple ways while she was in the “High Power” unit, including by watching her in the shower and forcing her to expose herself to get basic supplies, such as a sharpened pencil for writing.
“He would ask me to show my ass for mail,” she said.
She said she was “shocked” when one of the sergeants conducting the interview began making uncomfortable remarks.
She claimed that the PREA compliance manager asked, “Well, why did you show your body parts?” before telling her “I get it” and explaining that he would comply if “a hot chick” told him to expose himself. The Sheriff’s Department did not address the alleged exchange in its response to an inquiry from The Times.
The 34-year-old said the same deputy who allegedly threatened to withhold the other prisoner’s mail privileges repeatedly watched her shower and told her she would be put on lockdown if she didn’t allow him to view her nude body.
“He would look at me and give me a once over, bite his lip, and then walk away,” the older inmate said.
The Sheriff’s Department’s statement said the deputy “was relieved of duty on January 5, 2026, pending the outcome of an internal administrative investigation.”
Although L.A. County inmates have filed more than 590 claims of sexual abuse and harassment against deputies since 2021, none were deemed “substantiated” by Sheriff’s Department investigators and zero were referred to the L.A. County district attorney’s office for prosecution, the Times reported last month.
The Sheriff’s Department said in its statement this week that “there have been nine PREA cases sent to” internal bureaus where they are “still being actively investigated.”
The department said it previously “failed to mention” that it sent one case, from July 2021, to the district attorney’s office, which declined to filed charges. The agency said it conducted an internal investigation and “ultimately two employees separated from the Department” last year.
The 34-year-old said she remains housed in a disciplinary unit at the jail where she is confined to a cell 23 hours a day. She said shame and histories of trauma have kept more women from speaking out.
“We’re all broken. We’ve been abused in other ways before we even got to this facility,” she said.
“It’s sad to say,” she added, “but you get used to it, and then you feel like you deserve it sometimes, because you feel guilty about what you’ve done. So you’re like, ‘I deserve the punishment,’ but at the end of the day, it’s not OK.”
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