Transgender inmate sues to move to women’s prison, says Oregon guards call her ‘freak’
A transgender inmate in Oregon is suing in federal court to move from a men’s prison to a women’s prison, accusing guards at her current facility of ridicule and abuse.
Amber Thorrden — the 41-year-old prisoner who filed the lawsuit Tuesday — started serving a sentence for rape and sex abuse charges in 2015 and is being held at Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario, according to Oregon Department of Corrections records.
Thorrden’s lawsuit lists the Department of Corrections’ Transgender and Intersex Committee as the first defendant, as well as naming state corrections leaders and individual corrections officers at the men’s facility where she’s being held.
The lawsuit accuses the Department of Corrections of discrimination and intentionally inflicted emotional and physical pain, as well as negligence “for failing to transfer [Thorrden] to a women’s prison despite multiple threats of physical violence” and “repeated attempts at sexual violence against” Thorrden.
“It is the policy of the Oregon Department of Corrections to not comment on pending litigation,” Jennifer Black, a department spokesperson, said in an email to McClatchy News on Thursday.
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Thorrden said she requested a move to Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville but was not successful.
She said that in 2018, she “filed a discrimination complaint regarding the fact that the [Transgender and Intersex Committee] has housed other transwomen at CCCF, and that given my current hormone levels as well as other biometric indicators, I should likewise be housed at a women’s prison.”
Thorrden said in her lawsuit that she began hormone therapy for gender dysphoria in 2010, which she said she was diagnosed with before she was convicted.
“I have gone well beyond exhausting my administrative remedies,” Thorrden said in the lawsuit. “I am missing out on the much needed ‘real-life’ experience of living as a female. Being placed in a female prison is a necessary step in my treatment, and must not be denied.”
Thorrden suggested she’s unsafe in the men’s prison, saying that in December 2015 she was attacked for wearing a bra. She also said in the lawsuit that just last year “the officers assigned to my unit were conducting ‘faggot checks’ on my cell-mate and myself. The officers were likewise encouraging some of the other inmates to ‘keep an eye on the freaks in cell 2.’”
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Guards at the prison have done contraband checks designed to embarrass Thorrden, according to the lawsuit, which said that in April 2019 she “was forced to take all of my property and lay it out on the tier so the officer could inspect it. This was done at a time when other inmates had access to the day room and several walked past my belongings, including my feminine undergarments and incontinence supplies.”
Thorrden said that “the pretense was to ensure I had no contraband, but in reality it was a blatant attempt to show the ‘freak’ off to the whole unit.”
She said in the lawsuit that — at another point that same month — an officer told her: “I don’t like your kind. Don’t talk to me.”
KOIN reported that Thorrden “was convicted of multiple counts of second degree rape and first degree sexual abuse in 2015 for sex with a minor.” The earliest release date listed for Thorrden is in January 2027, according to the Department of Corrections website.
