Trans Woman Says Prison Officials Allowed Inmates to Attack Her
Passion Star is a 30-year-old transgender woman who has been incarcerated in Texas since 2003.
When Star was 18, she went along for a test drive in a new car, with her boyfriend at the wheel. Star says her boyfriend ignored the salesman’s request to take the car back to the dealership, and the salesman eventually fled the vehicle. The couple was caught and Star later pleaded guilty to aggravated kidnapping, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Because Star was assigned male at birth, she went to a men's prison. In most prisons across the country transgender people are locked up according to their assigned gender, though they're sometimes held in protective custody or segregated from the general population. Star, however, has been in the general male population. Since entering prison, she said she has been raped, punched, threatened, and has had agreed to sex in order to protect herself. She once had to get 36 stitches after a gang member cut her face with a razor blade.
After the slashing incident, Star asked, as she had done several times before, to be placed in "safekeeping." In Texas the Safe Prisons Program provides protection to people who are vulnerable within the general population. In safekeeping, unlike in solitary confinement or administrative segregation, prisoners can access the same programs as in the general population, have work opportunities, and call their families.
A corrections officer denied her request, writing that, “The committee did not find sufficient evidence to support your allegations.”
Star is suing 16 corrections officers and officials working in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Her complaint, filed on Thursday, alleges that on another occasion when Star asked for protection from an attacker, correctional officers told her, “you can’t rape someone who’s gay,” and suggested that Star was “enjoying the attention.”
Jael Humphrey of the LGBT legal rights non-profit Lambda Legal is representing Star and told TakePart her client has been keeping meticulous records of what has happened to her during her more than 11 years in prison.
Repeatedly, Star complained and asked to be moved to safekeeping, and prison officials would instead transfer her to a different facility. She’s been shuffled between six different prisons in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and despite the fact that she identifies as female, she is housed in general population with male inmates.
Violence against gay and transgender people in prison is a huge problem across the country. One-third of trans and gender non-conforming people who have been incarcerated report that they've experienced physical harassment while locked up and 44 percent of trans people have been sexually harassed while incarcerated, a recent survey found.
The problem seems acute in Texas, which is where half Lambda Legal's helpline calls from LGBT people behind bars come from, Humphrey said.
The Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA, is a 2003 law that was clarified in 2012. After the rules were approved, the Department of Justice offered Texas and other states funding to comply with its standards, which are far from stringent. PREA asks that prisons take gender identity into account when determining where to house an inmate. It prohibits cross-gender searches, and recommends making services available to people in protective custody or creating pods for LGBT inmates.
"If any state needs the PREA standards, it’s Texas,” Chris Daley, deputy executive director of Just Detention International, told TakePart in May.
Though one quarter of the most sexually abusive male prisons in the country are in Texas, earlier this year, Governor Rick Perry turned down the money and criticized the PREA standards, saying the rules "appear to have been created in a vacuum with little regard for input from those who daily operate state prisons and local jails."
“All he had to do was certify that Texas would use this money to work towards compliance,” Humphrey said. “In turning down those funds, Texas’ already under-resourced criminal system can’t prevent sexual abuse.”
If Texas prisons complied with PREA, people like Passion Star might have some protection against this harassment and could be housed outside the general male population. Her lawsuit argues that because this PREA exists, it demonstrates that prison officials in Texas should have known how to protect Star.
While Humphrey was careful not minimize Star's crime, "cause that's not helpful," she said that constant sexual assault and abuse shouldn't be part of the punishment.
"It doesn’t matter what you’re incarcerated for, rape is not a penalty that we assign to anybody for any crime in this country," Humphrey said.
Related stories on TakePart:
• A New Law Could Bring Harsher Punishments for Violence Against LGBT People
• Why Is a Trans Teen Being Sent to Prison If She Hasn't Been Convicted of a Crime?
• How Bad Media Coverage Makes Things Worse for Transgender Victims of Violence
Original article from TakePart
