The women-only Texas prison that disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes will call home for the following decade, used male guards to conduct “shower checks” and faced half a dozen allegations of sexual misconduct last 12 months, in line with a former inmate minimum security federal custody and official records.
Lynn Espejo, who spent nearly two years at Bryan Federal Prison Camp from 2018 to early 2020, made shocking allegations to The Post that male guards checked inmates within the showers – and claimed a few of them “had sex with female prisoners.” .
“You are within the shower and the guard [could] get in there to see what you are as much as,” Espejo told The Post.
Holmes arrived at a Texas prison on Tuesday to serve greater than 11 years after being convicted of 4 counts of electronic fraud. The 39-year-old former Silicon Valley darling has two young children together with her boyfriend Billy Evans.
Espejo – who she documented her imprisonment in Bryan on a blog with posts she secretly sent to a friend – she claimed that male guards were deployed to enter women’s showers as a part of a jail technique to crack down on consensual sexual encounters amongst inmates.
Espejo also claimed in The Post that the prison didn’t follow federal guidelines that require the employment of enough female guards to conduct strip searches.
Federal regulations and Bureau of Prisons policy mandate that strip searches be conducted by a staff member of the identical sex because the inmate being searched, in line with a memo from the Department of Justice.
In a blog post on February 23, 2020, Espejo wrote, “Many of us are very upset by FPC Bryan’s decision to have male staff perform shower checks on women.”
Another former prisoner, Bryan, who spoke to The Post on condition of anonymity, supported Espejo’s claims of “shower checks” and sexual contact between guards and inmates.
Espejo said Holmes shouldn’t should worry about male guards watching him while washing up, because the shower checks were “short-lived”.
“They began allowing men to do it and I booked them for violating the foundations because I saw women terrified,” Espejo told The Post, adding that she was transferred to a different federal prison after Bryan officials came upon about her blog.
In one other blog post, a 59-year-old Arkansas resident wrote: “Many of the ladies here have been raped, sexually abused or otherwise injured.”
“Just hearing a male voice in a toilet where they’re naked and vulnerable triggers these past traumas and places them in a state of high anxiety and fear.”
A BOP spokesman told The Post that the agency declined to “comment on anecdotal allegations”.
“The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and FPC Bryan take seriously our responsibility to guard those entrusted to us in custody and maintain the security of prison staff and the community as this stays one among the very best priorities for BOP,” the agency said.
Espejo claimed that prisoners at Bryan are sometimes “manipulated to have sex” with prison guards.
“This is an issue and it happens in Bryan,” she told The Post.
“The women selected to go this fashion for extra food or something from the skin, regardless of the guard brought them.”
According to documents sent by BOPIn 2022-2023, six sexual abuse investigations were conducted on the prison, five of them related to alleged incidents with inmates and one related to staff allegations against inmates.
Prison officials said five of those allegations, including an incident with staff on a prisoner, were unsubstantiated and one was unsubstantiated.
Larry Levine, a former prisoner who served time in prison and now owns a consulting firm that advises prospective inmates before putting them in prison, told The Post that Holmes could be a probable goal for other inmates hungry for some business.
“She’s a good-looking woman and bisexual lesbians will find her very attractive, I’m not kidding,” Levine told The Post.
Levine, who claims to keep up a correspondence with Bryan’s current and former inmates, said some prison guards at Bryan are known to have a wandering eye.
“They sincerely have a look at women, flirt with them, try to offer them special privileges [in exchange for sex],” he said.
Espejo – who was released in 2020 throughout the pandemic and had her sentence commuted the next 12 months – told The Post that Holmes almost definitely won’t should worry about male guards approaching her for sex.
“She would should need to be involved,” Espejo said.
Nor is Holmes prone to be coerced into anything by his fellow inmates, the previous inmate said.
“She’s very pretty,” Espejo, who maintains contacts with current prisoners at Bryan, told The Post.
“Maybe someone will pick her up.”
“But if she says, ‘No, it’s none of my business,’ they’ll leave her alone,” Espejo said.
“They won’t attempt to impose it on her.”
“Women are nice and if you happen to go in there and treat others with respect and be modest and nice, she is going to find friends there and the ladies will probably be nice to her,” says Espejo.
“She won’t be beaten. She won’t be threatened or anything like that.
Holmes’ incarceration is a shocking fall from grace for the once heralded entrepreneur.
BOP documents indicate that prison officers often investigate allegations of sexual abuse and harassment in minimum-security facilities where women are housed.
Recent reports documenting alleged violations of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) have revealed that 4 investigations were initiated between 2020 and 2021 at FPC Alderson, West Virginia.
Two of the allegations were found to be unsubstantiated and two were left “for reconsideration”, in line with the documents.
Four alleged incidents of inmate-on-inmate sexual abuse and one allegation of inmate-on-inmate sexual abuse have been reported to FCI Aliceville in 2020-2021.
Three of the allegations of sexual abuse by inmates against prisoners were baseless and one was baseless.
The allegation of sexual harassment was baseless.
