Prisoner Assaulted by BOP Guard and Left With Bleeding Rectum—Then the Cover-Up Began
by Chuck Sharman
A 50-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on October 30, 2025, seeks “some measure of justice” for the prisoner who filed it, identified in the complaint as “J.M.” and in the accompanying claim under the Federal Tort Claim Act (FTCA) as Jahleel McLendon, 32. It also peels back layers of official obstruction to reveal a stunning web of violence and deceit connecting at least four lockups where the prisoner has been held by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
The most recent chapter of his saga began in November 2023 at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Atwater, California, where guard Sandra Munagay spotted J.M. in a straw hat and confiscated it from him—though he had bought it from the commissary. When he later asked for its return, Munagay punched him. Another guard seeing this on surveillance video in the control room sent an emergency response team. Munagay lied to them that J.M. had punched her and wrote up a false disciplinary report. The other guards took him to an off-camera area, pinning him to the wall and “ramming a blunt object into his anus through his clothes until he bled,” the complaint recalled.
This was not J.M.’s first assault by guards; attempts to litigate earlier attacks by staff at the U.S. Penitentiary (USP) in Big Sandy, Kentucky, had gotten him transferred to USP-Thomson in Illinois and its notorious Special Management Unit—before a sky-high death rate forced the BOP to close it in 2023, as PLN reported [See: PLN, Aug. 2023, p.16.], and he was sent to FCI-Atwater.
Having been through this before, J.M. was aware that the nurse who saw him would not record his sexual assault report. So he said it aloud, for surveillance audio to record. BOP immediately transferred him to FCI-Mendota, farther north in California, and from there to a hospital emergency room, where the injury was confirmed.
“The retaliation was swift,” the complaint continued; J.M. was held in solitary confinement and “repeatedly ‘four pointed’—lashed to a concrete slab in isolation for 20 hours or more without food, water, or a toilet, forced to urinate and defecate on himself.” He was released only when the hearing finally convened six months later on the false disciplinary report, and “one look at the video surveillance showed that Munagay and every other officer had lied.”
Munagay was charged with felony assault and obstruction; her case remains pending. See: United States v. Munagay, USDC (E.D. Cal.), Case No. 1:24-cr-00256. With the aid of attorneys from Connelly Law Offices PPLC in Tacoma, Washington, J.M. filed the FTCA claim in April 2025. But as the complaint recalled, the BOP “made no effort to investigate, request additional information, discuss settlement, or provide any substantive response.”
Meanwhile, as PLN reported, Big Sandy guard Lt. Terry L. Melvin pleaded guilty in January 2025 to assaulting another prisoner, telling the federal court for the Eastern District of Kentucky that the brutality was a “commonplace occurrence,” abetted by a conspiracy that went almost to the top of the prison’s hierarchy. It was certainly bigger than the four guards sentenced to federal prison in 2024 for assaulting prisoners, which PLN also reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2025, p.19; and July 2024, p.12.]
Combined with a scandal of staff raping prisoners at nearby FCI-Dublin—which cost the BOP $116 million to settle [See: PLN, July 2025, p.1]—FCI-Atwater was under too much scrutiny to succeed in burying J.M.’s claims. After Munagay was indicted, he was exonerated of the false disciplinary charge. But he had “also suffered profound psychological harm, including mental pain and suffering,” his complaint continued, including “attempt[s] to commit suicide multiple times due to the assaults, the emotional distress inflicted, and BOP’s efforts to cover up its employees’ crimes.”
Yet when J.M. filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act for his medical, grievance and housing records in January 2025, the BOP ignored it; “[t]en months later,” the complaint noted, “the BOP has not produced a single record.” For that and the other violations of his rights, it makes claims under the FTCA and the Eighth Amendment. The suit was only recently filed, and PLN will continue to update developments. But the light it has already shed on the BOP’s cruel culture is invaluable. See: J.M. v. United States, USDC (E.D. Cal.), Case No. 1:25-cv-01011.
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Related legal case
J.M. v. United States
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (E.D. Cal.), Case No. 1:25-cv-01011 |
| Level | District Court |