Marie was released from prison at the end of 2023 and tried to make him lose his mind. But it was hard to move on, she said, because he called her almost every day, telling her he missed the things they did together. These things broke her self-esteem and her long-term relationship with the father of her child, she said. She had never had multiple sexual partners, but “I went out and just slept with people. Almost in a leverage sort of way,” she said. “Because that’s what I learned there.”
Before going to prison, she had used drugs, and now she has relapsed on meth. She begged her probation officer for help, asking her to go to rehab, she said. Instead, in 2024, she was sent to a federal prison in Alabama for violating the terms of her release.
Depressed and alone, Marie received an unexpected visit in prison, she said: a federal investigator who said she was looking into abuse allegations against Ross. Marie told him everything.
She hadn’t made the connection between her experiences with Ross and her breakdown outside of prison. Now, she said, “I realized what happened wasn’t right. »
As a federal investigation into Ross unfolded that summer, he was allowed to stay on the job, but other prison employees were assigned to follow him around the facility and he was not allowed to be around women unsupervised, according to a Bureau of Prisons memo and witnesses confirm. Ross acknowledged to the Marshall Project and NBC News that he was assigned an escort to the prison because of sexual misconduct allegations against him, but he said he was cleared of any wrongdoing and ultimately allowed to return to his department.
In late 2024, while still incarcerated in Alabama, Marie sued Ross in federal court, accusing him of sexually assaulting her. Ross used his influence over Marie to “exploit her position of authority,” the complaint states. “He made it clear that her job was in jeopardy if she did not comply with his unwanted sexual advances.” The complaint was dismissed after she failed to submit the necessary paperwork to waive the $405 filing fee. Ross did not respond to a written question about the lawsuit.
Ross left his job with Bryan in March 2025. He said he resigned for reasons unrelated to the misconduct allegations. The Bureau of Prisons would not say whether he had been disciplined.
Three other women who said Ross pressured them into sex said they never felt safe enough to report what happened to them.
D’lena said she knew it was best not to tell anyone about the abuse she suffered from a staff member who allegedly exploited her position to dissuade her from reporting him.Bethany Mollenkof for NBC NewsIn 2023, D’lena was about to leave prison after 10 years for conspiracy to produce false identification documents when she said Ross accused her of failing to report a romantic relationship between two other incarcerated women, an offense he said could get her kicked out of a drug program, delaying her release. He groped her, she said, and penetrated her with his fingers.
“Just to keep him happy,” D’lena, 51, said. “I wasn’t interested in him at all. I was just in survival mode at that point because I was ready to go home.”
People still talked about the time three years ago when Darlene had been sent to another facility after reporting the chaplain. D’lena said she knew it was better not to tell anyone.
For some who have tried to report allegations of sexual misconduct at Bryan – both from incarcerated women and prison employees – they say it has taken a heavy toll on them personally.
R. asked not to be named because she is still under surveillance by the Bureau of Prisons. In the summer of 2022, she was in Bryan after being convicted of financial fraud and sentenced to eight years. She was assigned a job in the prison’s facilities department, and she and her boss, Jeff Smith, the department head, began flirting. Soon, she said, it became physical.
R., who was incarcerated at Bryan, said she felt “a little rejected” after reporting sexual relations with two prison employees and was subsequently transferred to a harsher federal facility.Bethany Mollenkof for NBC NewsR., 50, said she and Smith had sex about once a week in an office with a locked door and no windows. Other times, they met behind the garage or in his government truck.
Five other people at Bryan told The Marshall Project and NBC News that his connection to Smith was an open secret at the prison.
Smith said in an emailed letter that Bryan’s allegation of a sexual relationship with a woman was false.
“These allegations were thoroughly investigated by my employing agency and the Office of Inspector General of the United States Department of Justice, and I have been officially cleared of any wrongdoing,” Smith said.
The Bureau of Prisons and the Justice Department said they do not comment on specific cases.
R. said she first sought to meet Smith. Newly arrived in prison, she felt alone. After several months, however, she felt uncomfortable because he was married. But she felt that she could not end this relationship. Smith was not only his supervisor; he often filled in for some of the higher-ranking correctional staff at the prison, acting on some days as a lieutenant.
“How can you stop when someone has so much control over your life?” » said R. “I can’t do it.”
Ashley Anderson, an officer in Bryan since 2015, said she noticed a change in R. “She was sick. Lying in bed, crying,” Anderson recalled. “I was walking around and trying to get her out of bed.”
In early 2023, Anderson said R. opened up and confided in her about Smith, and Anderson said she alerted prison officials — first a captain, then the warden. When, months later, Smith had not been discharged, Anderson informed the Office of Inspector General of the Federal Prison System. A Bryan lieutenant who spoke on the condition that she not be named because of an ongoing labor dispute said she also submitted a report to a captain about R. and Smith.
Ashley Anderson, former senior specialist officer at the Bryan federal prison camp.Bethany Mollenkof for NBC NewsIt was not until July of that year that prison officials came to speak to R. about his allegations regarding Smith. But she didn’t trust the prison’s top officials, and she felt protective of Smith. When pressed by authorities, instead of officially naming Smith, she told them another secret.
At the same time she was seeing Smith, R. said, a second prison employee began approaching her while she was working in a tool room, a small closet-like space. There, R. said he touched her breasts, grabbed her crotch and put his hand on his penis, according to a report written by a prison sexual assault examiner. More than once she performed oral sex, she told the nurse practitioner who performed the exam. The report does not reveal the name of the accused staff member.
The office then transferred R. to the federal detention center in Houston, a move it viewed as retaliation for speaking out about the two men. Bureau documents indicate that R. was moved because Bryan agents discovered contraband vapes and R. confessed to helping smuggle them in; she says she wasn’t involved.
At Bryan, women can go out whenever they want, walk the track or sit and talk in the grass. Currently at the Houston Detention Center, R. was among those who committed violent crimes, crammed into a tiny cell behind a heavy metal door with a cellmate and a metal toilet.
In early 2025, she wrote in a complaint to prison administrators that “this feels like a punishment” and that if she had known she would be transferred to a harsher facility, she “simply would not have come forward.” She emphasized “no” twice.
Smith and the second employee still work at the prison, a Bureau of Prisons spokesperson confirmed. The second employee denied R.’s allegations and directed his questions to prison officials.
Throughout 2024 and 2025, Anderson, the correctional officer, wrote a series of increasingly frustrated memos to office managers, up to the warden, alleging that at least five staff members had sexually assaulted women incarcerated at the prison while maintaining their jobs. Some of them later left Bryan, although the circumstances are unclear.