SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — Mercedes Carrera, the adult performer who was arrested on February 1, 2019 at her Rancho Cucamonga apartment alongside husband Jason Whitney, spoke to XBIZ on the phone today, on the eve of their first anniversary behind bars awaiting trial.
Carrera phoned XBIZ from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Central Detention Center (CDC), where she was transferred last October, after spending the first seven months of her incarceration at the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga.
Carrera told XBIZ she cannot discuss details of the ongoing legal proceedings against her and her husband, accused by San Bernardino County District Attorney Brieann Durose of several charges of child molestation and abuse against her underage daughter from a previous relationship.
“I’ve been here for a whole year, I guess. But you get to a point when the anniversary doesn’t really matter. Overall, I prefer to be at the CDC than at West Valley,” Carrera said on a phone call which was being recorded by the house of detention. “The female on-staff deputies are great.”
But while stressing the more humane treatment she is getting from day-to-day prison staff, Carrera also pointed out what she sees as a pattern of “psychological abuse designed to break” her and Whitney.
“It comes from high-up,” Carrera told XBIZ. “I had been placed in a cell that was incredibly loud and I couldn’t sleep. After many requests, I was moved to a quieter cell but this morning at 4 a.m. I was moved back to a loud cell. The staff deputy said it didn’t make sense. I felt this was mandated from above. I feel the sergeant is following instructions to make me suffer extra.”
Carrera also mentioned that she has repeatedly requested a special diet to address her Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD), but was told that a GERD diet was not available. Instead, she was switched to what the prison calls “the Bland Diet,” which largely consists of rice, beans and unseasoned pasta. “I have zero proteins five days a week,” Carrera said.
“The medical care in here is literally below Third World standards,” Carrera added, pointing out that ice packs are a coveted commodity as pain relief, particularly after dental problems or in the aftermath of the fights that break out with regularity.
“This is a violent place, every day,” she said.
According to Carrera, her husband is being held in Adelanto Detention Center, a High Desert facility that also serves as an immigration jail. She claims Whitney is held in a “medical” section at Adelanto for unexplained reasons and that this results in strained sleeping conditions and an almost total lack of exposure to outdoor space or even windows.
“My husband got hurt by the shackles during the last court day, and the bruises have not healed because he is not getting Vitamin D,” explains Carrera, who corresponds with Whitney daily.
A People Farm
For Carrera, as she has insisted since XBIZ first interviewed her at the West Valley Detention Center back in March, San Bernardino County itself is the reason for what she calls the “cruel and unusual punishment” against two people who have not yet been tried.
“This county is inhumane,” Carrera said. “At times when other counties are eliminating restraints, because they’re getting sued for ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ of prisoners being taken to court in chains and shackles, San Bernardino has just added more chains and shackles starting January 1.”
According to Carrera, the reason for this is economics.
“They make money out of inmates, plain and simple,” she explained. “They hold you here without a trial for a long period of time, trying to break you, trying to make you plead guilty. This county has inexplicable rates of incarceration without due process. The county makes money the longer you’re held here — it’s a people farm.”
“Something’s rotten in San Bernardino County,” she added.
Even the establishment-friendly local newspaper, the San Bernardino Sun, has reported similar sentiments about the state of local jails. Last August, the paper ran a feature headlined "San Bernardino County: Jails critically lack health care, but have plan to improve."
The article explained how a group had sued the county in 2013 claiming that:
(J)ail medical, mental health, and dental care is so deficient that it is harming the people it aims to serve. Jail staff uses excessive force against people they are charged with protecting, and fails to take even the most basic steps to prevent violence. Jail staff discriminates against people with disabilities by locking them in housing units that don’t have accessible toilets and showers, and by locking people with mental health problems in tiny cells for 22 to 24 hours a day, which only worsens their psychiatric conditions.
The county settled the lawsuit in 2018, agreeing to improve those conditions and to submit the facilities to regular monitoring. The San Bernardino Sun’s feature acknowledged that the county had failed to meet even basic standards of improvement after the first reviews.
A New Twist in This Story: A Bizarre Coincidence
In the process of telling XBIZ about the subpar medical conditions she has witnessed during her incarceration, Carrera revealed a piece of information that had not been reported before and that adds a bizarre coincidence to this ongoing legal saga.
“When the inmates ask for medical treatment they can’t [receive] in here,” Carrera said, “they take us to the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center. And you know who runs the ER there? Dr. Louis Tran. And I was married to Dr. Louis Tran before I got into porn.”
Up until today, the 36-year-old Carrera had told industry friends and journalists that she had once lived with a motorcycle photographer with whom she had her daughter, around 2009-2012, and that after her entrance into porn, in late 2014, she had met and then married Jason Whitney.
Today, Carrera claimed she had another short-lived marriage, to Tran, around 2013-2014.
XBIZ has not been able to confirm the marriage, but we have confirmed that a Dr. Louis Tran works at the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center emergency room, where inmates from the San Bernardino CDC are taken when they ask to go to the hospital and that Tran and Carrera shared an address in Mission Viejo, Orange County, sometime in the mid-2010s.
It seems likely that if Carrera’s latest revelation is corroborated in full, a man who was once Carrera’s partner has ended up in charge of her health and welfare during her trial.
Dr. Tran could not be reached for comment.
The Next Court Date
As XBIZ reported, on December 6, the court-appointed lawyers for Carrera and Whitney requested another extension of the date for their pre-trial hearing — a proceeding necessary to begin the road to the actual trial — which was supposed to take place today.
"We continue to prepare for the trial," San Bernardino County Public Defender Joshua Castro told XBIZ then. "Our priority is winning the trial, and that's why we asked for more time."
The pre-trial hearing should take place on February 14, and the trial itself should take place before April 14, 2020.
For more of XBIZ’s coverage of the Mercedes Carrera case, click here.
