Mother Jones
In December 2013, Ashley Diamond, a transgender woman locked up at a men’s state prison in Georgia, found herself in solitary confinement. Rutledge State Prison warden Shay Hatcher, she says, put her there for “pretending to be a woman.” The 36-year-old Diamond, who was first diagnosed with gender dysphoria as a teenager, had been denied hormone therapy since entering the prison system in 2012. She still identified as a woman, even as her body was becoming more masculine, causing her extreme anxiety and physical pain.
Later that month, Diamond claims, Hatcher sent her to solitary for a second time after she met with lawyers. About six days later, still in isolation, Diamond told him that she was not pretending, but rather had serious medical needs requiring treatment—and that she was suicidal due to her lack of care. That same day, Diamond tried to cut off her penis with a razor and kill herself; she was hospitalized on an emergency basis. She then received a letter from the medical director of the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC), saying that the officials who had confiscated her women’s clothes and refused to provide her with hormone therapy had handled matters “appropriately.”
Now, Diamond is taking her grievances to court. Earlier this month, the Southern Poverty Law Center initiated a lawsuit on her behalf that accuses eight current and former GDC employees of wrongfully denying her hormone therapy against the recommendations of doctors, and of failing to protect her from at least seven cases of sexual assault. Court documents, including copies of correspondences between Diamond and prison authorities, allege numerous incidents in which officials mistreated and outright harassed her. (The GDC declined to comment.)
Since stopping her hormone therapy, Diamond says she has experienced chest pain, muscle spasms, heart palpitations, vomiting, dizziness, hot flashes, and weight loss. Stephen Sloan, a GDC psychologist who met with Diamond in both December and January, noted that she is staying in a prison where the atmosphere is homophobic, with little support for sexual minorities. “She continues to require hormone therapy and gender role change if she is to receive adequate care,” he wrote in a report after the second meeting. “Withholding this therapy from her increases her risk of self-harm.”
As her body has transformed, Diamond has tried to kill herself at least three times and has tried to castrate herself four times, in addition to attempting to cut off her penis. She is seeking an injunction requiring the resumption of hormone therapy; the right to express her female identity through grooming, pronoun, and dress; and safe placement in a medium security or transitional facility. She secretly filmed a video statement from behind bars; here’s what she had to say:
Transgender women inmates are among the most vulnerable in American prisons, facing a high risk of sexual violence and harassment from other inmates as well as staff, who often house them with men and refer to them with the wrong pronoun. One study in 2007 found that 59 percent of transgender women detained in men’s facilities in California were sexually abused, compared with 4 percent of male inmates. Laverne Cox, the first openly transgender actress to be nominated for an Emmy, has helped bring broader attention to some of these issues with her role on as Sophia Burset, a trans inmate forced to stop estrogen therapy on the hit TV show Orange Is the New Black. And in a high-profile legal case earlier this month, Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning, the soldier who was convicted of sending classified documents to WikiLeaks) made national headlines when she received the go-ahead to begin hormone therapy in a military correctional facility after suing the government.
Federal prisons are required to provide inmates with individualized medical care, including hormone therapy, but at the state level it’s a different story. While some states do require individualized medical care at prisons, others, like Georgia, have policies in place that specifically prevent transgender inmates from accessing treatment despite recommendations from medical professionals. (BuzzFeed‘s Jessica Testa has written at length about the state’s treatment of trans inmates, including Diamond and Zahara Green.)
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“3 Years of Torture Is Enough”: A Transgender Inmate Sues Georgia Prisons
