Trans Woman Says Prison Officials Allowed Inmates to Attack Her

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/10/24/terror-texas-trans-woman-rape

Passion Star was repeatedly raped and threatened while in prison. Now she’s suing guards and officials who ignored her complaints.




Texas prison. (Photo: RJ Sangosti/Getty Images)

October 24, 2014 By Nicole Pasulka

Staff Writer Nicole Pasulka has written for Mother Jones, BuzzFeed, The Believer, and New York Observer. She lives in New York City.

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 fled the vehicle. The couple was caught, and Star later pleaded guilty to aggravated kidnapping. She 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, and threatened, and she has agreed to sex 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 the general population, have work opportunities, and call their families.

FULL story at link.

[theHandpuppet]

1. Trangender men and women are particularly vulnerable to violent hate crimes

What Star has been going through is nothing short of torture. I wish her strength and luck in her legal battle.

[LostOne4Ever]

2. Just when I think the rw idiots in my state couldn't get any worse

They find a way to out do themselves.

I hope someone somewhere in the Texas justice system comes to their senses and get this woman the protection she so desperately needs!

[Initech]

3. There's a special place in hell for whoever thought it was a good idea to privitize prisons.