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Two women incarcerated in a California prison are calling for the prosecution of a staff cook who they say sexually assaulted them.
The women say Marcus Johnson, a former supervisory cook at the California Institution for Women (CIW), raped them in 2020 while they were working for him in kitchen jobs. The women, who were making under 40 cents an hour, said in federal civil complaints he threatened disciplinary action if they reported him.
Both women spoke out for the first time in recent interviews with the Guardian from CIW, a California department of corrections and rehabilitation (CDCR) prison in Chino, one hour east of Los Angeles. Both said they wanted to see Johnson criminally charged to prevent him from endangering women in other jobs.
For one woman identified as Jane Doe 1 in court, the prison deemed her claim against Johnson “substantiated”, meaning the assault was “determined to have occurred”, an extremely rare outcome. Investigators informed her of their conclusion in 2024, nearly four years after she first reported the allegations, records show.
For the second woman, Jane Doe 2, investigators found her claims “unsubstantiated”, meaning there was insufficient evidence to make a determination.
The district attorney of San Bernardino county, which includes Chino, said the CDCR referred Johnson’s case to his office in 2024 and prosecutors were still reviewing it for possible charges.
“I don’t want this to happen to anybody else,” Jane Doe 1 said in an interview. “It felt like because he worked for CDCR, it gave him the license to rape. The whole point of us doing an investigation was so he could get prosecuted and that still hasn’t happened. It’s devastating. There is no closure.”
Reached by phone, Johnson said the sexual assault allegations were false: “I fully deny those claims. I have never been aggressive towards a woman for anything and especially for a sexual reason.” He said he was placed on paid administrative leave in 2020 while the investigations were ongoing and later resigned.
The women have come forward at a time of growing reports of rampant sexual abuse within the CDCR. Hundreds of sexual misconduct and harassment claims are filed each year against staff across the prison system, one of the largest in the US. But out of more than 700 adjudicated staff sexual abuse claims across 2023 and 2024, internal investigators only deemed 17 substantiated, state data shows. And very few staff ultimately face criminal charges.
Last year, Gregory Rodriguez, a former guard at another CDCR women’s prison, was convicted of sexually abusing nine incarcerated women and sentenced to 224 years, with records revealing the prison had failed to act on an early report of his abuse.
‘He threatened criminal charges’
The Jane Doe claims were detailed in complaints filed in October 2025 against Johnson and several CDCR officials. The Guardian is referring to the women by the pseudonyms used in court to protect their identities.
In 2020, Jane Doe 1 was employed as a line worker in the CIW kitchen, serving food to other incarcerated people and paid 38 cents an hour, amounting to roughly $10 a month. Though meager, the wages helped her afford essentials from the commissary, such as hygiene supplies, she said.
During one shift in April, she grabbed some vegetables to take back to her cell, her lawsuit says. Food from the commissary was expensive and it was common for kitchen staff to allow workers to take a few items for themselves, she said.
This time, however, Johnson said he was going to issue a disciplinary violation for “stealing vegetables”, according to her lawsuit. She was terrified, she recounted, because a write-up could result in her transfer to a higher-level prison or denial of visitation with her children.
“I was like, please don’t write me up. Is there anything extra I can do, like cleaning? I apologized and said I didn’t mean any disrespect,” Jane Doe 1 recalled.
Johnson, her complaint alleged, then took her to a nearby bathroom where she thought she would be cleaning, but instead he forced her to give him oral sex, then “slammed her against the bathroom wall” and raped her.
“While he raped Jane Doe 1, Johnson threatened that if she reported him, no one would believe her, he would claim that she was the one who sexually assaulted him, and she would be subject to criminal charges,” the lawsuit said.
She did not initially report the assault due to his threats, but within days, she confided in an incarcerated friend, who in May of that year reported the assault to staff, the lawsuit said.
Jane Doe 1 was again sexually assaulted by Johnson in June, according to the suit. In that incident, she went to the cook’s office after injuring her hand, and there, her suit said, Johnson forced her to perform oral sex.
She told the same friend of the abuse, who again reported Johnson to staff, the lawsuit said.
Jane Doe 1 directly reported Johnson in September 2020 in a grievance, which is a formal complaint, according to case records, writing: “I feel like the incident has been swept under the rug.”
‘She screamed for help’
Jane Doe 2 was making 12 cents per hour working in the CIW kitchen in June 2020 when Johnson assaulted her, according to her lawsuit. After she asked him for a towel for cleaning, he brought her to the manager’s office where he became “aggressive and violent” and then raped her, the suit said.
“Jane Doe 2 screamed out for help but no one seemed to hear her,” her lawyer wrote.
After the alleged rape, Jane Doe 2 discovered she had symptoms of a sexually transmitted disease and a few weeks later was prescribed antibiotics, the lawsuit said. She initially did not report the assault to staff, including to medical staff, out of fear of retaliation, but eventually confided in a CIW therapist in October and filed a grievance in January 2021, the suit said.
Johnson was promoted after the prison received its first report about Jane Doe 1, the suit alleged. He was removed from CIW sometime in June 2020 and later resigned, though it’s unclear when he stepped down.
In August 2021, Jane Doe 2 was informed her claim was deemed “unsubstantiated” and the case was closed.
Records show Jane Doe 1’s abuse claim was ruled “substantiated” in January 2023, but she was only informed in March 2024. It’s unclear why the prison did not inform her of the outcome for more than a year.
Johnson does not have a lawyer listed as representing him in the civil cases and has not filed responses in court. In response to the Guardian’s detailed inquiries about the women’s claims, Johnson said by phone he briefly worked at CIW and had prior worked at another CDCR facility, but did not provide specifics about his job history.
He said women in the kitchen were allowed to take some food items “in moderation”, but could get in trouble if they took too much. He was a supervisor, he said, but had “no way of judging how much more time those ladies could get if they got in trouble”. He said he did not have physical contact with any woman in the prison: “I deny the rape allegations, the forcing, the threats, I deny all those allegations.”
Regarding the prison’s substantiated finding, Johnson said: “I haven’t seen the evidence.” About his resignation, he added: “It was too much back and forth and I didn’t like being kept in limbo. What is my career going to be at CDCR? What kind of label am I going to have after all is said is done? … I resigned from CDCR to continue on with my life and wellbeing.” He said he continues to work in food service.
‘I felt hopeless’
Both women say the assaults and subsequent investigations had lasting impacts.
Jane Doe 1 said her initial anxiety was compounded by fear that if officials found out, she would get in trouble and have her sentence extended: “All I would do was sit in my room and cry. I was so scared to tell anybody. They don’t believe us.”
She began struggling with suicidal thoughts, at which point her friend reported Johnson to staff, she recalled. When Jane Doe 1 was called into an interview with investigators, she initially hoped speaking up would help her process what happened.
“I felt relief until I got to the interview. It was interrogation after interrogation. They said things like, ‘What did I do for him to bring that on me?’ and, ‘He didn’t just do it for no reason – were you flirting?’,” she recalled. “I wanted to harm myself. I didn’t know any way out of it. I felt completely hopeless and helpless.”
She ended up in an emergency bed for people experiencing mental health crises, her suit said.
In Jane Doe 1’s September 2020 grievance, she said she had not seen any mental health specialist who could directly discuss the abuse with her, such as a rape counselor, as the CDCR has done in other cases, writing: “I am asking for some kind of therapy to help me process the rape. I’m having a hard time doing it alone.”
Jane Doe 2 said she felt “dirty” after Johnson’s alleged assault, which brought back memories of being sexually abused as a child and disbelieved by her family.
When she learned investigators deemed her allegations “unsubstantiated”, she said: “I felt cheated and very angry. They are basically calling me a liar. And that’s what happened to me with my own family.”
Her medical records show a prison clinician in October of 2020 reported that her mental health was deteriorating “from working in the kitchen”, recommending she be removed from that environment even though the job had given her a “sense of purpose”. She was also offered an in-person session with a victim’s advocate from a rape crisis center.
She transferred to an unpaid construction job, which was an improvement for her mental health, but meant she had less money to buy basic commissary items. “Every penny counts. It wasn’t much, but it did help,” she said of her kitchen salary.
Her memories of Johnson haunt her, she added. “I still have nightmares and they’ll probably never go away.”
Calls for prosecution
The suits accuse CDCR officials of negligence, alleging prison leaders failed to protect the women from abuse and saying there was a history of sexual misconduct in the CIW kitchen. The complaints allege that since 2017, at least four other supervising cooks were also reported for sexual abuse and claim that Johnson faced sexual abuse allegations from two other incarcerated kitchen workers in 2020, though the suits do not provide specifics about those allegations.
“When you get multiple sexual abuse complaints about the same work area, that should be a red flag,” said Jenny Huang, a civil rights lawyer representing both Jane Does. “Had the prison taken action, these rapes could have been prevented.”
The CDCR did not respond to inquiries about the lawsuits. Attorneys for the department have argued in filings that the claims against prison officials should be dismissed as the women had failed to “plausibly allege that there is a significant risk of continuing or future harm” since Johnson has already been removed. The state, which is not representing Johnson, also argued the women’s lawyers had not provided evidence about other claims of misconduct against Johnson and in the kitchen. The California justice department, which is representing the CDCR in the litigation, declined to comment.
Colby Lenz, of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), which supports CIW residents, argued there needed to be pathways for survivors of staff abuse to be granted release. “There is no escape from the abuse and retaliation. We should be prioritizing bringing these victims home where they can access services and heal from horrific state violence.”
Huang said she was concerned about the impact of the lack of prosecutions. Huang is also one of the lawyers representing six women who filed a suit last year accusing a CIW gynecologist, Scott Lee, of sexually abusing women under the guise of medical care. He has not faced charges.
“What kind of message does this send?” said Huang. “There is no criminal punishment, and staff can just resign. Staff often say to victims, ‘No one is going to believe you, you’re just an inmate.’ And they have proof of that.”
Susan Coleman, Lee’s attorney, said he “strongly denies ever sexually abusing any inmate” and that “to date, no allegations of sexual abuse have been sustained” by the CDCR. The San Bernardino DA’s office said it had not received a referral about Lee. The CDCR did not respond to inquiries about Lee.
Jason Anderson, the elected DA of San Bernardino, said in an interview that it was “very infrequent” for the CDCR to refer staff sexual misconduct cases to his office. A Guardian 2023 investigation uncovered three cases of alleged CIW staff abuse that were prosecuted by the DA from 2014 to 2023, with only one concluding with a conviction on his record.
Anderson said prison abuse cases were difficult to prosecute due to victims’ delays in reporting, the lag time in referrals, a lack of physical evidence and questions that can arise about incarcerated victims’ motives and credibility. Even when the CDCR deems claims substantiated, “it doesn’t weigh a whole lot because that standard is completely different than what we deal with in the criminal realm of proof beyond a reasonable doubt … We look at it from a lens of, are there independent ways to corroborate what somebody is saying?”
Anderson recalled a case where he found an incarcerated victim credible, but he had to decline charges since he didn’t believe he would win in court. He praised civil attorneys who have pursued cases and said: “We always want every victim to speak up regardless of the condition they find themselves in. Don’t delay. Be as specific as you can be. Assist the investigators if there’s the chance to corroborate what you’re saying … Don’t be discouraged that cases aren’t getting filed.”
The DA said it doesn’t typically take “years” for his office to investigate prison staff sexual abuse cases, but he did not offer specifics about the timeline for reviewing the Johnson case. After learning about it from the Guardian’s inquiry, he said: “I thought to myself, I need to follow up with my managers, and we need to make a decision one way or the other.”
Both Jane Does said they wanted Johnson prosecuted to ensure there wouldn’t be any future victims.
“I feel like I have to do my part to keep people away who are a danger to women,” said Jane Doe 2. “I’m doing this for all women. I want everybody to know that we matter.”
