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Too few Americans realize that “gender-affirming” policies means that male inmates can also be housed in women’s prisons simply by claiming to be transgender — with horrific repercussions for women prisoners.
A former prisoner at the Rose M. Singer women’s jail on Rikers Island is suing the city of New York, charging that a male inmate who claimed to be transgender for the purpose of gaining access to women raped her and that correctional facility officers ignored her complaints and efforts to be protected.
The plaintiff is referred to as “Rose Doe” in the suit and she alleges that her cries for help went unheeded despite clear signals that the man asked to be put in a women’s prison so he could assault women.
“His introduction was, ‘I’m not transgender. I’m straight. I like women,” Doe said.
Her lawsuit says that the male prisoner was “instructed to claim that he was transgender by DOC staff so that he could stay in the female dorm where he would have access to female inmates.”
Doe’s attorney Nicholas Liakis states that he has testimony and evidence of accounts from inside the prison that a Department of Corrections officer “said something along the lines of, ‘If you want to go into the women’s facility, all you have to do is say you’re trans.’”
The male inmate is alleged to have said that he was only there to have sex with women. The inmate was transferred in April 2022.
Rose Doe filed two complaints that the male sexually propositioned her on April 4, then again, on April 6 when he sexually harassed her, exposed himself to her, and groped her.
Acting Warden Floyd Phipps then sent an email, which read, “I feel that individual is not a suitable fit for RMSC. . . . [Rose Doe] does not want to remain in the unit due to feeling unsafe.”
Doe’s lawsuit claims that even after her complaints and the acting warden’s email, nothing was done to protect her from the perpetrator. Two of the DOC officers named as plaintiffs in the suit are said to have ignored Doe’s fears. One DOC officer is said to have made it clear that she did not care what happened to the inmates.
On April 7, as Doe was sleeping, the male inmate woke her up and raped her.
The suit says that Doe freed herself and alerted the guard, who was sleeping. The other women in the cell forced the alleged rapist from their housing unit and threw his possessions out.
The DOC officers then are said to have shifted the male back to his dorm and then moved Rose Doe back to the general population as punishment for reporting the assaults.
The suit also claims that she was prevented from seeking medical care for most of the day. Staff of Rikers covered up her sexual assault and failed “to provide her with adequate medical and mental health services, failing to collect, document, and review evidence,” the suit claims.
Two months after the rape, jail investigators told Rose Doe that there was insufficient evidence to rule on the assault.
There were plenty of warning signs that the male was a threat to women. The man had five complaints against him under the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
Doe and her attorney were careful to avoid any appearance of opposition to transgender inmates being placed in women’s prisons. Doe even said she agrees that males who claim to be female can be safely housed among females. Yet they cautioned that not being more careful about who gets moved to women’s prisons hurts women.
“When someone is claiming to be something they’re not, it’s to the detriment of the entire community now, because it will cause concern. Gender aside, when you have a clear danger it has to be removed, and this is something where there were so many opportunities to step in and prevent a rape,” her lawyer stated.
He added, “Whether or not this person was truly or not transgender ignores the fact that you had a history of complaints of predatory behavior. This individual had documented complaints of harassment. It culminated with a rape after being ignored.”
“They just took my complaint and said they’d do something about it and they never did,” Rose Doe claimed.
She lamented, “I’ll be scarred for the rest of my life.”
This wasn’t the first time that a transgender prisoner has raped a woman at Rikers. On April 7, 2022, the same day that Doe was raped, Ramel “Diamond” Blount pled guilty to attempted rape after he raped a female inmate.
These incidents aren’t limited to Rikers. Women in California and other states (and even prisons in the U.K.) have been sexually assaulted by transgender inmates. New Jersey, which started housing prisoners based on gender identity rather than biological sex, had a transgender inmate named Demi Minor impregnate two female inmates in 2022. Minor, who is serving a 30-year sentence for manslaughter, has since been moved out of the women’s prison. While these two latter incidents were ostensibly consensual sexual encounters, they show that male convicts will claim to be women so they can be placed in women’s prisons where they have access to women.
Minor’s former foster mother said it was all a scam. “I think all this about him being transgender is a ploy,” she stated. “He’s manipulating people to get a better situation for himself and to get attention. He’s learned the language to use. He’s dangerous and he’s a psychopath.”
Activists and transgender prisoners have been vocal about the supposed need to move male inmates who identify as female into women’s prisons because they claim that these inmates face much higher rates of sexual assault in men’s prisons, as well as mistreatment by guards. It could be true that a man claiming to be a woman would face more risk of sexual assault by male prisoners, and certainly no one wants that.
Yet the solution is not to place these men in women’s prisons. If we are seeking to protect prisoners from sexual assault, violence, and invasions of privacy, then shouldn’t women be protected from men being placed in their prisons? Shouldn’t guards be protected from being forced to search prisoners of the opposite sex?
The real problem isn’t that male inmates who believe they are women are being placed in the wrong prisons. It’s not even that prisons don’t want to figure out which men are “actually transgender” — because they really can’t, given that the new transgender “standards of care” demands that anyone who claims to be transgender must be immediately accepted according to their preferred gender identity and to live out their “authentic” identity. That means no in-depth psychological assessment is mandated; in fact, pretty much no questions are allowed. So, if therapists aren’t allowed to assess and determine who actually has clinical gender dysphoria, how are prison officials supposed to know?
No, the real problem is transgender ideology itself.
We wouldn’t be placing men in women’s prisons and there wouldn’t be men who are assaulted because of their transgender status in men’s prisons if the poison of transgenderism and the misguided concept of “gender-affirming care” hadn’t taken control of our society.
There are men who believe they are women and that is truly and deeply tragic. That’s not something to mock or ridicule. It’s something to mourn and weep over that a sick and twisted idea such as “gender-affirming care” has now convinced therapists, doctors, prison officials, politicians, and even some church leaders that it’s better to lie to confused individuals than it is to actually help them deal with their mental illness and try to overcome it. And in lying to these individuals and refusing to question the motives of those who would game the system for their own gain, they are complicit in the very real harm that has now come to others, including this female prisoner in New York who has been “scarred for life.”
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