For months, inmates at Georgia’s second-largest prison for women have been subjected to brutal acts of violence, including at least three alleged sexual assaults, as a gang of inmates has bullied and intimidated the prison’s understaffed security detail, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation has found.

Two inmates said that they were sodomized at knife point by gang members seeking money for “protection.” Another claims she was beaten as fluid from a gang member’s genitalia was smeared on her face and in her mouth. Yet another had a portion of her ear bitten off as four gang members staged what authorities have characterized as a gang initiation.