Inmate says pod move denial led to her rape

DENVER— A transgender inmate who is suing Colorado’s corrections agency says she was raped at a men’s prison hours after a federal judge denied her request to block the prison from keeping her in a disciplinary unit, according to court records and the woman’s attorney.

Lindsay Saunders-Velez filed a lawsuit in July saying she has been threatened, harassed and assaulted since entering Colorado’s prison system last spring for violating her plea deal in a menacing case. She called the state’s prisons “discriminatory and dangerous” for transgender offenders.

Last month, her lawyers asked a judge not to send Saunders-Velez to the Territorial Correctional Facility’s “punishment pod” for a disciplinary infraction, saying she could end up with inmates who had tormented her. The judge said the attorneys failed to prove an imminent risk, and rejected their request .

Saunders-Velez, 20, was attacked in the pod and spent more than a week in the infirmary before being moved back to a housing area of the Canon City prison this week, her attorney Paula Greisen said.

Saunders-Velez entered Colorado’s prison system after being sentenced in May to three years for violating the terms of a plea agreement on a felony menacing charge.

According to court records, in December she reported that an inmate sexually assaulted her during a brief transfer to another Colorado prison.