We Are Jane Doe E1: Ali’s Story

Ali Prout had only been at the Central California Women’s Facility for a few days when an officer stopped her at a checkpoint. “You have beautiful lips and beautiful eyes,” he said. But he didn’t realize… this time he’d picked the wrong girl. Part 1 of 3. This episode contains violence against women, sexual assault, and strong language. Please take care while listening. "We Are Jane Doe" is a new 3-part series from KQED’s Snap Studios. Over three episodes, we trace Ali Prout's dramatic fight for justice and the stunning ripple effects that threaten to upend the system of power and control at one of the largest women’s prisons on earth. KQED reporters Anna Sussman and Madi Bolaños spent two years investigating this story. They spoke to more than a dozen women incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility, read through hundreds of pages of internal prison documents, obtained leaked audio, and painstakingly watched hours of video footage to reconstruct one of the most complex and devastating use-of-force incidents in state history. This series was made possible in part with support from The Poynter Institute https://www.poynter.org/. Produced by: Madi Bolaños, Anna Sussman & Sukey Lewis Featured Story Voices: Aliksandria Prout, Catrina Cameron, Christina Wind, Wisdom Mohammed, Elizabeth Lozano and Antoinette Yancey Editors: Sukey Lewis, Nancy Lopez & Mark Ristich Fact-checking: Mark Bettancourt Data Editor: Jeremy Sanchez Rue of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism Original Music & Engineering: Dirk Schwarzhoff Director of Production: Marisa Dodge Executive Producers: Glynn Washington and Mark Ristich Artwork: Teo Ducot Season 17 - Episode 43 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:07Speaker 00

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• 0:52Speaker 00

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• 1:16Glynn Washington?

  Now, we're bringing you a very, very special story. It started when a good friend of ours from across at the KQED newsroom, reporter Madi Bolaños, she got a tip that came from the side of the women's prison near where she'd grown up. Something big, very big, had gone down. So Madi started looking into it. That tip led her and SnapTaps its own and assessment to an incredible story about prison, about power, and about what happens when women start telling their secrets. Understand, this story does describe a sexual assault. So, sensitive listeners, please take care. We're calling it, "We Are Jane Doe."

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Okay, you introduce yourself. Yes, I'm Alexandria Proutt and I'm Jane Doe Number One. And I think referring to myself as Jane Doe Number One was part of the privacy with such a high-profile case.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  This is the first time Alexandria, who goes by Ally, has told her story publicly.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  I felt like I had no choice but to speak up. I knew I wasn't the only victim. I knew there was other victims. And I just felt like if I didn't speak up, this was going to continue. And by me speaking up, I was going to make a difference for other women.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Ally grew up in California, in the suburbs, outside of the state capital Sacramento. She was the firstborn daughter in an immigrant family, so she was responsible and high-achieving.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I had self-esteem, you know, and I'm educated. I was a varsity cheerleader. I was homecoming queen. Like, I, you know, I'm a good mom.

• 3:18Speaker 03

  After high school, she trained to work as a medical technician. She had three kids, but things with her ex went really bad. And in late 2021, she says she was in the midst of an ugly custody battle when the police showed up at her door.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  I'm holding my six-week-old daughter. They say, "Miss Proutt, we have two felony no-bail warrants for you. We need to take you into custody." So my mom's there. I remember just kissing and smelling my daughter, handing my daughter to my mom, and they cuffed me and took me into custody.

• 3:53Speaker 03

  She was charged with felony stalking in violation of a restraining order for sending threats over text in the heat of that custody battle. Her crime isn't what our story's about, so we're not going to spend a lot of time on it. But what you need to know is that-

• 4:08Speaker 02

  It was a nonviolent offense. I was sentenced to three years in prison. What do you remember about the process of going to prison? I remember the drive. We finally get there. We get off the bus. They unshackle us. They make you get naked and they put these big mu-mus on you, like these huge mu-mus gowns. And then they like check you. They make you go through a body scanner. And then they give you your oranges. And then they give you these black and white platform-looking shoes. They give you everything you're going to need for your cell. And you sit there for hours. And then finally, you line up against the wall and they march you out on the yard.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  The Central California Women's Prison, near Chowchilla, California, is this massive sprawling complex of housing units connected with interlocking hallways, checkpoint gates, and lifeless brown yards, surrounded by miles of barbed wire. About 2,000 people are locked inside, making it one of the largest women's prisons on earth. Ally was taken to a yard, which is for prisoners who've just arrived.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  I just remember we were freezing. We were hungry. I think I dropped 20 pounds on a yard.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  There were narrow metal bunk beds, a toilet, and a shower with up to eight women assigned to a cell.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  And I remember all we had in that cell was a Bible. And so we would take turns reading the Bible out loud to one another.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  She hadn't been there long when she first came across an officer named Gregory Rodriguez. Just a note, we reached out to Gregory Rodriguez for this story, but he did not get back to us.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  I was walking to a medical ducat and he was the officer at the post that had to verify your ducat.

• 6:12Speaker 03

  A ducat is like a hall pass. It's like this piece of paper that you need in order to move around the prison.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  And I had an N95 mask on because it was during the time of COVID. And so he asked me, "Can you please remove your N95 mask so I can identify you?" So I did. I removed my mask. I lowered it. And he said, "You have beautiful lips and beautiful eyes. You're so beautiful." And started making sexually objective comments towards me.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  She's used to getting looks from men. And her Russian-Ukrainian grandmother would warn her to kind of watch out.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  You know, my grandmother always told me, "You may have it harder in life because you're a very pretty girl and that has its blessings and downfalls at the same time."

• 7:01Speaker 03

  In prison, she did not want to attract that kind of attention.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Fast forward, three days later, I was in my cell. I was sitting on my bed and they called me over the loudspeaker. And they said, "Proutt, you have a ducat, which is a pass." They told me I had an attorney visit. And so I thought, "Okay, great. Maybe I'm getting out of here because my crime is just, doesn't fit to be here. Maybe there's a technical error. Something good's going to happen." And as soon as I got to the main yard gate, I had seen that it was the same officer that had made the sexually explicit comments. And like, my heart just sank. I was like, "Okay, this isn't going to be good."

• 7:42Speaker 03

  She was still so new to the prison and she kind of felt uneasy.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  Officer Rodriguez had been escorted me into the BPH room, which is the Board of Prison Hearings room. And he walked me in there. He said, "There's no cameras in this room." And then he showed me his office next door. He said, "There's also no cameras in this room."

• 8:08Speaker 02

  And I'm like, "Okay, well, where's my attorney visit? I never had an attorney visit."

• 8:14Speaker 03

  Officer Rodriguez came close to her and tried to kiss her.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  And so I'm just like, like a thousand things are going through my head. And I pushed him away. I'm like, "No, I don't want to do this. Like, what's going on? I don't want to get in trouble." He had told me if I tried to say that I was engaging in sexual misconduct with an officer, I would be written up for a 115 and I would be put in SHU, segregated housing.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  That's solitary confinement, basically a jail within a prison. And a write-up could also mean more time in prison and more time away from her little baby.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  And in that moment, in my head, I'm like, "I'm an inmate here. I'm a convicted felon. This is an officer who's been here for 10 years. He has seniority. I can do one of two things. Fight him and pray that his superiors and fellow correctional officers are going to believe me, a convicted felon. Or I can just compartmentalize."

• 9:26Speaker 02

  And like, all that mattered to me at that time was going home to my kids on my release date. I did not want to catch more time. I did not want to be there any longer than I had to be.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  And that's when he proceeded to kiss me.

• 9:42Speaker 03

  He lifted up her shirt.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  And he took me to a chair that was like up against the wall and began to sexually assault me.

• 9:54Speaker 03

  He first forced her head down in front of him and then turned her around on this chair. The chair had green upholstery.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  I remember just like looking down. I remember looking at his boot. He had his boot propped up on the left-hand side of me. And I remember just looking at his boot.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  And then it was over.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  And, you know, what really upset me was he didn't use protection. And I remember telling him, you know, like, "This isn't okay." I was like, "This is unbelievable."

• 10:30Speaker 02

  So after he told me, "Make sure you tell them you have an attorney visit when you get back to the housing unit. Don't say anything. Don't tell anybody. You know, they're not going to believe you anyways. You're an inmate."

• 10:44Speaker 03

  Rodriguez left her alone in the room and he went to go clean himself up in the bathroom.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  I remember crying. But then the fear and the like hurt and the sadness quickly motivated me.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  I remember walking up to my cell, walking up the stairs to my cell and just sitting in my cell for a minute. And I thought, "I still have the ducat."

• 11:13Speaker 03

  The little piece of paper that said that she'd been out of her cell that had the date and the time.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  I'm going to save it.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  And then the 20th of May, I get called up again for another attorney visit.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  Again, there was no attorney.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  Rodriguez repeatedly called her back to that room where there are no cameras. So she came to know what to expect. The same green chair, the same boots, the same disassociation.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  She didn't know what to do. She was surrounded by fences. She was state property. And so she turned to someone she trusted. A woman named Katrina Cameron.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Tell us about your friendship with Katrina. Like, how did it start? How did it develop? It started when I first came to her cell. Like, I needed a home and she welcomed me in her cell. And the first night there, she sewed a blanket together for me and sewed a pillow cover for me. She was so sweet and she was just like a big sister to me. I trusted her. I trusted her over anyone. And so I came to her one day. It was about 3:00 PM. We were in our cell. I went over to her bunk and I got real close with her because I wanted to keep it real low tone, secret. I said, sis, I need to tell you something.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  And she's like, do not tell anybody until you get out. Do not tell anyone. They do not tell anybody. She's like, you do what you have to do and be fake until you get out of here and then you tell somebody.

• 13:08Speaker 04

  And I remember her telling me when things started happening to her sexually.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  Katrina Cameron had been in prison for about 11 years when Ali showed up. And she's actually still there now.

• 13:26Speaker 04

  And I remember telling her that if she wanted to report something to wait until she went home, because there are, it's a very big chance that things could start happening to her in a retaliatory manner that I've seen before. And I didn't want that to happen to her.

• 13:49Glynn Washington?

  Ali's story continues after this short break. When We Are Jane Doe returns.

• 14:01Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back. You're listening to Snap Judgment, our We Are Jane Doe special. And again, a warning, this story is not for young or sensitive listeners. When last we left, Ali had just told her roommate her secret. And her roommate told her, don't tell anyone.

• 14:22Speaker 03

  It was becoming clear to Ali that this was not a safe place to speak up.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  I mean, from the moment I woke up, I was scanning for all correctional staff because there was a level of suspicion with everybody at that point.

• 14:38Speaker 03

  She would go to the chow hall, walk the yard. And then there was her job. She'd been assigned to work at a place called the watch office.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  We watch all the movement coming in and out of the prison. So we're on a computer and pretty much we can see every inmate in every cell, on every yard. And we can see who's leaving the prison and who's coming into the prison.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  And in the watch office, she would see a list of actual attorney visits for the day. And this is where things suddenly started to click for her. Dukets list a reason a prisoner is moving around the prison.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  And which would be in the system, you know? When you don't have an attorney visit, there's nothing there.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  There were cameras recording her movements and there was a paper trail of those supposed lawyer visits. But her ducket was blank.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  I was nervous, of course. I was like, okay, we're going to do this. Let's do this. I said, you want to issue me attorney visits and not have attorney visits? I'm going to save those dukets. So I saved those dukets.

• 15:53Speaker 03

  She was able to save two of the dukets. And she put them at first in her Bible and later to be extra safe.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Under the locker.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  I lifted the locker up and hid it.

• 16:09Speaker 03

  When she was taken to the board of parole hearings room, she took note of the cameras along the journey, like the one at the end of the hall.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  I drew diagrams with where cameras were placed, where they were angled at, and like put camera here, a camera there, a camera there, a camera there. Like, you really messed with the wrong girl here. Like, I'm taking you down.

• 16:33Speaker 03

  On August 9th, Rodriguez walked her past those cameras for what would be the last time. And then a little more than a week later, she heard her name called over the loudspeaker.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  So it was August 19th of 2022. I had just came off the yard. I was in basketball shorts, sports bra, a white tank top and my vans. And I went to go walk in my room and they said, Proust, come to the cop shop and pick up the phone. And I'm like, oh, shit.

• 17:09Speaker 03

  The cop shop is this little room where all the rows of cells meet D Yard. It's where all the correctional officers hang out.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  And I, so I asked Katrina, why do they want me to go to the cop shop and pick up the phone? She's like, just go, just go pick up the phone. So I'm like slowly going down the hallway. Like, I go to the cop shop. I'm like, what is this phone call about?

• 17:31Speaker 03

  There's this window that slides open for when prisoners come up with questions.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  And they're like, just pick the phone up. And it's a R and R, which is receiving, where you come in. And they're like, call somebody to come get you. You're paroling today.

• 17:48Speaker 03

  She'd been sentenced to three years, but she'd kept a clean record in prison. And she was being released early after less than a year in custody. We still don't know why.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  And I'm like, wait, can you repeat that? And they're like, today, you're paroling today. And I'm like, I still have two months left. They're like, nope, we're not doing any of that. You're paroling today. Call somebody right now.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  She walked back to her cell and started packing her things. Most of her stuff, she said, she gave away to her cellmate Katrina Cameron. Things like her makeup and her prison issued hair dryer. And when she saw the guards had passed on their rounds, she lifted up her locker.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  And so I'm like, okay. I grabbed the dukets. I put them in my bra. I didn't know if I, I just wanted them to be safe.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  I just wanted to get through the gates and really be free before, in case it wasn't real. Wasn't real until I got through the gates.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  A family member was waiting to give her a ride home. So she threw her stuff in the back and got in the car.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  I had everything with me. That's when I was like, that's when it kind of hit me like, okay, I'm carrying this like big secret. I knew my mission had just started.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  One of the first things she did when she got out was to meet with lawyers. And she was connected to a prisoner's rights attorney named Robert Chalfant.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  And I think that's how the domino effect started.

• 19:27Speaker 05

  I called CCWF. I called the sheriff of Madera County. And I said, there's an officer down there raping women. We need to stop it. I'll offer up my clients for an interview. Let's go. And so next thing you know, my clients were being interviewed by CCWF I A officers.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  He found out that even before Ali came forward, the prison had started investigating a couple of complaints about Officer Rodriguez. And then, when press coverage came out about Ali's lawsuit, Chalfant said his phone started ringing.

• 20:02Speaker 05

  At that point, victims were just coming out of the woodwork.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  My attorney, when I called him, he said, oh, my God, this case is bigger than you know.

• 20:12Speaker 05

  He was assaulting women all over the facility.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  When I found out there was over 20 women, I was like, okay, I did the right thing.

• 20:20Speaker 06

  A former correctional officer is accused of sexual misconduct against inmates at the Central California Women's Facility in Chauchilla. They eventually identified at least 22 potential victims.

• 20:31Speaker 03

  Eight months after Ali first spoke up, Officer Gregory Rodriguez was arrested.

• 20:38Speaker 07

  A former correctional officer now finds himself on the other side of the cell bars tonight. Good evening, I'm Liz Gonzalez.

• 20:45Speaker 05

  And I'm Monty Torres. We thank you for joining us tonight.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  I saw the picture of him being escorted into the van and arrested. And for me, I didn't believe it. I still thought it was like, it was surreal to me. Like, it didn't register for me.

• 20:59Glynn Washington?

  Stay with us. Ali's story is just getting started.

• 21:11Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the We Are Jane Doe Deep Dive. My name is Glenn Washington, and we rejoin Ally's story where the officer who assaulted her has just been arrested and the whole system is about to explode.

• 21:25Speaker 03

  This was a big deal. Officers are rarely arrested for misconduct. And in this case, it started to cause this ripple effect that was bigger than Ally and bigger even than Rodriguez himself.

• 21:41Speaker 08

  Okay. Thank you all for being here. Appreciate, for those of you who are staying for this briefing, that you take a seat and that you turn off your cellphone because we're going to--

• 21:55Speaker 03

  In the wake of the Rodriguez case, state lawmakers called a special hearing.

• 21:59Speaker 08

  --the incidence of sexual assault in our California women's prisons. It is prevalent. It's prevalent, and it has to stop. California has a zero-tolerance policy on that issue. There was a bill enacted in 2000--

• 22:14Speaker 03

  There's something called the Prison Rape Elimination Act, aimed at preventing and responding to sexual abuse in prison. But what happened with Rodriguez showed it wasn't really working.

• 22:27Speaker 09

  --anomaly. However, Rodriguez's violence is not an anomaly. It exemplifies a pattern in which prison staff assault many, many people because they are helped by many, many people. In his case, there was at least a 10-year--

• 22:39Speaker 03

  So they called in the warden of Tau Chilla. She got up in front of the lawmakers and survivors to answer for the prison.

• 22:48Speaker 10

  --violation substantiated, we take swift and appropriate disciplinary actions. Equally critical is the support and care we provide to the victims. I cannot overstate the urgency of our response to these issues. I want to emphasize that our commitment to the safety--

• 23:00Speaker 03

  Prison officials told the lawmakers they were taking action.

• 23:02Speaker 08

  --will do for a while. But anyway, thank you all again, and thanks, staff, for putting this all together. You did an excellent job.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  Inside the prison, pretty unheard-of things were happening, too. The incarcerated women held these town hall meetings led by a nonprofit group, where those who wanted to could start talking about the things they'd been keeping a secret.

• 23:24Speaker 11

  In the 30 years that I had been there, never had the prison allowed such a large a group of us to gather inside there, with guests and without one staff present.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  This is Elizabeth Lozano, who was in prison at Tau Chilla and was there. She says a woman from the nonprofit stood posted at each door of the prison gym to make sure no correctional officers came in. Everyone else sat together on chairs, arranged in a circle. Lozano spoke up.

• 24:01Speaker 11

  I had the times where I said no. You know? And when I said no, being still groped from my breast and my hand put on someone's penis, and I never reported that. And how did I feel when that happened to me? I felt like I was raped, even though there might have not been no penetration, but I felt how I felt when I was raped as a teenager. There's things that happen where it's out of your control, truly honestly out of your control.

• 24:37Speaker 03

  Person after person spoke. These conversations were difficult, but it felt like something hard and immovable and secret was starting to shift. Internal reports of sexual assault, those PRIA reports, went through the roof, and lawsuits were getting filed left and right.

• 24:58Speaker 12

  More than 130 former female inmates claim they were sexually abused by prison staff at the California Institute for Women in Chino.

• 25:07Speaker 03

  And while there was no formal acknowledgement of wrongdoing, the state also began to settle some of the lawsuits filed by Rodriguez's victims, including Ally's. Her lawyer told her this was significant.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  I just remember sitting on my bathroom floor and him talking to me. And he's always been really encouraging. He's like, "Ally, you have no idea the magnitude of this case and what you've done."

• 25:37Speaker 03

  But Ally had one more choice she had to make: whether or not to testify. If Rodriguez was going to do time, like actually get convicted, it was going to take a lot: witnesses willing to come forward, physical evidence, and a jury being willing to listen to women like Ally, women who've been in prison.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Nobody in my family wanted me to pursue this. They told me the correctional officers union is dangerous. The magnitude of this case is so big, I feel like I'm balancing the world on my shoulders. I had people beg me not to take the stand, beg me not to pursue this on a criminal matter. I was going to see justice through and testify regardless of whatever was coming my way.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  It was late summer 2024 when Madera County prosecutors were taking the final steps to bring Rodriguez to trial. Ally was gearing up to testify when she got a call from the prison. It was her former cellmate, Katrina Cameron. It was August 2, and she would remember that date.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  I called Ally, and I was in so much distress. All I could tell her is that we had just got assaulted in the town hall. I was scared. I didn't know. I just needed help. And that's all I could say was that I needed help.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  She had told me what had happened. She told me she couldn't see out of one eye that Christina, our other cellmate, had gotten beat up by correctional staff, that Christina was trying to protect her, that they were trying to beat up her, but she has a pacemaker.

• 27:18Speaker 04

  I didn't know what they were doing to us or why, but I needed help, and I need somebody out there to know.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  I think me speaking out has held a lot of nasty, bad people accountable for a lot of bad things. I think August 2 was the boiling point.

• 27:35Speaker 03

  Coming up next, what happened on August 2? Just a quick note: we are largely talking about the experience of women in this series, but there are also some people who identify as men or non-binary at the Central California Women's Prison, and sexual assault in prison is an issue that cuts across gender.

• 28:00Glynn Washington?

  The story continues. You're going to absolutely want to hear parts two and three because, like Madi said, it's not what anyone expected. Both episodes drop next week. The producers of We Are Jane Doe are Madi Bolaños, Anna Sussman, and Sukey Lewis. It's edited by Nancy Lopez, Mark Ristich, and Sukey Lewis. Executive produced by myself, Glenn Washington, and Mark Ristich. Fact-checked by Mark Bettancourt. The original music and engineering was by Dirk Schorchoff. Production support from Arissa Dodge. Jeremy Ru from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism was our data editor.

• 28:41Glynn Washington?

  Special thanks to Amika Moda and all of the women still inside the Central California Women's Facility, brave enough to share their stories with us. The supporting was made possible in part by funding from the Poynter Institute. If you missed even a moment, know that you can hear Snap's We Are Jane Doe series in its entirety on the Snap Judgment podcast. KQED in San Francisco allows Snap to broadcast stories like this one. On Team Snap, the union represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers, members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications

• 29:25Glynn Washington?

  Workers of America, AFL-CIL Local 51. And this is not the news. No way is this the news because sometimes the news doesn't care, but we do. And this is PRX.