'Rejected': How Federal Prisons Stonewall Grievances and Deny Care for Years
Date: 08-12-2026
For any problem in an incarcerated person's life - from not getting enough toilet paper to extreme physical abuse - the grievance system is the primary way to speak out. But in the vast majority of cases, those efforts go nowhere, according to an analysis of federal data by The Marshall Project and NPR.
From National Public Radio
A federal prison doctor first found the mass on Terri McGuire Mollica's uterus in 2016. According to a lawsuit, the fibroid was small, and could be removed with a simple, noninvasive surgery.
But officials at FCI Aliceville, a low-security prison for women in west Alabama, never scheduled the procedure, court and medical records show.
Mollica, then 50, started fainting during heavy periods that lasted nearly two weeks. She used five menstrual pads at a time, she said, with blood often soaking through her prison khakis. The pain was an "8 out of 10," she wrote on multiple sick call forms. In 2018, the same doctor determined the fibroid had grown to the size of a grapefruit. Her uterus swelled as though she were nearly five months pregnant.
