In June 2009, the District Attorney’s office in Santa Barbara, California filed charges against Roland Ygelsias and Miguel Jacobo, former employees of U.S. Extradition Services, a company that contracts with law enforcement agencies to transport prisoners to and from prisons and jails.

Ygelsias and Jacobo were accused of engaging in illegal sexual activity in October 2008 with a female prisoner they were transporting from Chowchilla State Prison to the Santa Barbara County Jail. Ygelsias, 29, was charged with one count of forcible oral copulation, which is classified as both a violent and serious felony under California law, and a misdemeanor count of sexual activity with a prisoner in a detention facility. Jacobo, 28, was accused of only the misdemeanor violation.

Ygelsias was terminated after being charged, while Jacobo resigned. They had worked for the company for less than six months.

The few details that emerged were sordid. Ygelsias reportedly received oral sex from a female prisoner he had picked up at Chowchilla; the sex act occurred in a van that was transporting seven offenders, some male and some female. The victim alleged that Ygelsias sat next to her in the front bench seat of the van. He then unzipped his pants, felt her legs, digitally penetrated her vagina, pushed her head down onto his lap, violently pulled on her hair, and forced his penis into her mouth until he ejaculated. The victim spit the semen onto the gown she was wearing, thereby presumably preserving evidence of the crime.

For his part, Ygelsias claimed that he took four sleeping pills and when he awoke he found the victim performing oral sex on him. Overcome by the sleeping pills, he was powerless, he told investigators, to stop what was happening.

As for Jacobo, he denied having physical contact with any of the prisoners, though he reportedly told one person he had received a hand-job. The victim claimed that Jacobo forced her to masturbate him. Other prisoners in the transport van reported they didn’t see anything, or said the sex act with Ygelsias seemed to be consensual.

On September 4, 2009, Ygelsias pleaded no contest to one count of oral copulation in a detention facility and one count of sexual activity in a detention facility. The same day, Jacobo pleaded no contest to a single charge of sexual activity in a detention facility. Ygelsias received a 270-day jail sentence and must register as a sex offender; Jacobo was sentenced to 75 days. The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department no longer contracts with U.S. Extradition.

PLN has previously reported on the abysmal track record of private prisoner transport companies, including a disturbing number of cases involving rape and sexual abuse by transportation guards. [See: PLN, Sept. 2006, p.1].

Source: Santa Barbara Independent