Gregory Rodriguez, a former California women’s prison correctional officer, who was at the center of one of the state’s largest prison abuse scandals, was convicted of 64 sexual abuse charges on Tuesday.

The jury’s guilty verdict includes convictions for rape and sexual battery on behalf of 13 incarcerated women.

Rodriguez, 56, was facing 97 counts and was found not guilty on some while the jury was hung on others, the Fresno Bee reported. His convictions include 57 felonies and seven misdemeanors, prosecutors said.

Rodriguez is one of the few California prison guards to face criminal charges for on-duty sexual misconduct, which data suggests is rampant in the state’s women’s prisons and across the US, but infrequently punished.

The scandal exposed how difficult it is for survivors of officer sexual assaults to come forward behind bars and how the system shields abusive guards from accountability.

Authorities first disclosed in December 2022 that Rodriguez was suspected of sexually abusing at least 22 people incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility, the state’s largest women’s prison, located in Chowchilla in the Central valley. Rodriguez, who had worked in the state prisons since 1995, retired in August 2022 after he was approached by investigators, the California department of corrections and rehabilitation (CDCR) said at the time.

In May 2023, the Madera county district attorney’s office charged Rodriguez with nearly 100 counts of sexual abuse on behalf of 13 women. Investigation records and accounts from survivors suggested a pattern – that Rodriguez would first verbally harass women, making sexually explicit remarks, then summon them to isolated areas without cameras, falsely claiming they had appointments or were needed for prison labor. He allegedly offered them items such as tobacco or gum in exchange for sex and threatened to discipline them if they did not comply or they reported him.

A Guardian investigation revealed in 2023 that the prison had received a report of Rodriguez’s abuse in 2014, but instead of firing him, punished the victim. That woman said she was sent to solitary confinement as the prison conducted its sexual misconduct investigation. She was eventually sent to another prison.

In an interview last year, she said the experience severely affected her mental health and that she was left isolated without support. She said: “I just felt trapped because I couldn’t talk to anybody … I really internalized that anger towards myself.”

After the 2014 investigation, Rodriguez went on to commit dozens of acts of sexual violence, prosecutors said.

Roger Wilson, Rodriguez’s lawyer, said in an email that he and his client were “disappointed” with the outcome of the trial: “The jury had a monumental task of wading through weeks of testimony and exhibits to reach decisions on 97 counts … The jury clearly believed some inmates and disbelieved others.” He said he couldn’t comment further while the jury continued to deliberate on issues related to sentencing.

Terri Hardy, a CDCR spokesperson, said in a statement that the verdict “reaffirms” its own investigation into Rodriguez, which it sent to prosecutors in 2022: “The department resolutely condemns any staff member – especially a peace officer who is entrusted to enforce the law – who violates their oath and shatters public trust,” she said.

Records showed that women incarcerated in California’s state prisons filed hundreds of complaints of sexual abuse by staff from 2014 to 2023, but only four officers were terminated for sexual misconduct during that timeframe.

The California Coalition for Women Prisoners, a group that supported victims during the trial, shared a statement from one imprisoned survivor in its press release: “This is not a one officer problem. From my experience, Rodriguez is one bad apple on a tree that’s rotten to its core,” the woman said.

“I had to tell my story in detail while facing my abuser. It was awful and humiliating. His attorney tried to paint us as liars, despite all kinds of evidence against him,” another survivor said.

The coalition lamented that women had been forced to testify in chains. “While we recognize this step in holding Gregory Rodriguez individually accountable, we call for systemic change in CDCR policies and practices that will help ensure that abuse in the women’s prisons does not continue,” advocates said in a statement.

Last year, California lawmakers adopted legislation meant to support outside investigations into claims of sexual misconduct filed by incarcerated people. In September, the US Department of Justice also opened a civil rights investigation into sexual abuse at the state’s women’s prisons, though the fate of that inquiry is unclear as Donald Trump resumes office.

As fires continue to devastate Los Angeles County, a president will soon be inaugurated who has promised to withhold federal help from states like California if Democratic lawmakers there don’t sing to his tune. Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal disaster relief from the state just months ago, and he recently repeated that threat. 

There’s plenty of reason to believe Trump means it, too, considering he reportedly delayed or withheld disaster aid to blue states and Puerto Rico during his first term as president.

Republican lawmakers like Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) have also raised the idea in light of the California wildfires, while House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on Monday that he believes federal aid should be conditional. “It appears to us that state and local leaders were derelict in their duty in many respects. So that’s something that has to be factored in,” Johnson said, echoing the larger right-wing response to the fires, which has been to blame Democrats.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) chimed in later on Monday. “They don’t deserve anything, to be honest with you,” he said of the prospect of outside aid coming into California, citing “inner-city woke policies.”

The wildfires in California have burned roughly 40,000 acres of land — or about 62 square miles — which is nearly three times the size of Manhattan. The Santa Ana winds are expected to pick up and increase the risk of fires spreading further. If Trump were to deny a state like California federal aid during such a disaster, the consequences could be enormous.

“It would be unprecedented. The longstanding protocol among presidential administrations has been to leave any kind of electoral politics behind when it comes to any disaster declarations,” says Jesse Keenan, an associate professor and director of the Center on Climate Change and Urbanism at Tulane University. “The impacts would be devastating.”

In response to the Los Angeles fires, President Joe Biden on Jan. 8 approved a Major Disaster declaration that directed government funds to support the region’s recovery and help pay for the cost of fighting the fires. The administration also deployed large air tankers and federal firefighting helicopters operated by the U.S. Forest Service to help fight the fires. 

“There are different faces to federal involvement in disasters,” says Daniel Farber, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “There’s somebody that’s available beforehand to try to reduce risks of various kinds, there’s the immediate disaster response where you see the guys with the FEMA jackets on the ground, and then there’s this longer term rebuilding process, which can take years, and there’s federal aid for reconstruction.”

Beyond helping deal with the disaster initially, the most significant role of the federal government is to help the affected region recover. Keenan says that means helping to pay for debris removal and the repair of critical infrastructure. When necessary, it may also pay to upgrade infrastructure to help prepare for future threats. 

“These are very large upfront costs,” Keenan says. “The federal government, when they deploy this money for debris removal and for individual assistance and all of that money that floods in after a disaster, it really does a lot to stabilize the local economy. Without it — if you remove those federal dollars — you see a real delay in the return of what we call normal, stabilized economic outputs.”

Without that money, Keenan says, it would take these communities a lot longer to recover from a disaster. That might mean another disaster could strike while the recovery from the last one is still ongoing. Federal resources allow a community to recover as quickly as possible and hopefully prepare for the next disaster before it happens.

“You could see damage to the community for years or decades if the federal government sort of boycotted the disaster relief,” Farber adds.

Knowing that the Trump administration may be considering withholding federal aid from blue states in the future, governors and other leaders in these states may want to consider how to prepare for such an occasion. There are some things these lawmakers could do if help is denied, but they will never fully replace the impact of the federal government intervening.

“There is a compact between the states to help each other called EMAC,” Farber says. “That’s been used quite a number of times. That’s a possibility, to make preparations and think about what other states you might want to call on and what you would ask them to do.”

Keenan says he might recommend that blue states start to get financially prepared for disasters in ways they haven’t necessarily needed to in the past. That could involve putting money aside for future disasters and creating lines of credit for municipalities that could be affected.

“I would try to create budget line items where I start putting money away — where I have contingency funds, as well as opening pools for lines of credit for local governments,” Keenan says. “It’s not just the cash. It’s also creating credit facilities, which may mean lending pools, that local governments could borrow against for short-term credit needs.”

Farber says that if the federal government decides to deny aid for purely political reasons, states may want to be prepared to sue the government and see how that plays out in the courts.

“If the president just said ‘no’ without an explanation, then it would be really hard to sue,” Farber says. “If the president said it was because you voted against him, then there’s a chance of it succeeding in court.”

The federal government is typically expected to step in and help a community when it faces a natural disaster, the idea being that we’re all in this together, and we should help each other in times of need, regardless of political affiliation. The Biden administration sent federal help to red states that had been ravaged by hurricanes last year, even while Trump tried to claim he was withholding it for political reasons. 

“In moments like this, it’s time to put politics aside,” Biden said during a visit to Georgia following Hurricane Helene. “It’s not one state versus another — it’s the United States.”

It’s clear Trump doesn’t see it that way. The president-elect is transactional, and he is spiteful, so states may not be able to consistently rely on federal help going forward. However, Trump may find himself in a political bind if he starts threatening to withhold aid due to how the electoral map looks in this country.

“Disproportionately in this country, disaster declarations are made in red counties,” Keenan says. “You can pick on Nevada or California or Virginia or wherever, but it’s not going to be so easy politically,” he adds, noting that Trump could wind up hurting his own supporters by using disaster relief to carry out his political vendettas.

Perhaps, for this reason, he may be hesitant to do so. That being said, Trump has not always been known to let logic get in the way of his actions.