Trans inmates split
Prisoners want reforms but don’t like Saunders-Velez’s strategy
S Lindsay“There are games going on. Lindsay is paving a path, but she’s also paying a price for being vocal.”
Paula Griesen, attorney for Lindsay Saunders-Velez, a transgender inmate who sued the state prison system claiming she was raped
ome transgender inmates at Colorado Territorial prison want reforms — including the option to be jailed in a woman’s prison — that could result from Saunders-Velez’s outspokenness. They just don’t like how she went about it.
They say the transgender inmate who sued the state prison system claiming she was raped is making their situation worse by failing to follow an unofficial code of conduct that keeps safe people who identify with a gender other than the one with which they were born.
“We call her a him,” Paula Marie Thompson said, using one of the most searing insults to trans people: using male pronouns when referring to someone who identifies as a woman. “Nobody wants to be around him any more.”
Colorado lawmakers on May 7 cited Saunders-Velez by name in a resolution prodding the Colorado Department of Corrections to update their policy regarding transgender inmates, asking that “gender non-conforming” prisoners be housed according to their gender identity rather than genital configuration.
“Transgender inmates are particularly vulnerable in U.S. prisons because of a general policy of housing inmates according to birth-assigned gender or genital configuration, regardless of their current appearance or gender identity,” the resolution says
The resolution isn’t mandatory, but “we have officially asked them to update their policies,” Rep. Daneya Esgar, DPueblo, said Friday. She was one of three sponsors of the resolution.
The resolution runs counter to current policy at Colorado prisons, and to a recent decision by the Trump Administration to roll back rules for transgender prisoners that were adopted in 2016.
Under the Obama Administration, Federal Bureau of Prisons officials were to recommend housing by gender identity when appropriate. On Friday, that rule was struck from the Transgender Offender Manual and replaced with rules requiring officials to use biological
sex to determine placement, except in rare cases.
All Colorado state prison inmates are placed according to their biological sex. Department of Corrections spokesman Mark Fairbairn, said that while the department does not currently have an overarching policy for the treatment of transgender inmates, all state facilities comply with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, including standards for managing them.
He said the the Inspector General’s Office is completing the review of best practices requested in the legislative resolution and will release its findings to the public.
Regardless of official prison policy, convict code is a more practical consideration, Thompson and four other transgender inmates said in a series of interviews at Territorial in Cañon City.
They say SaundersVelez’s behavior, including showering with men when she could shower privately and repeatedly claiming she was raped, draws attention that is potentially dangerous to all of them.
But according to attorney Paula Griesen, their condemnation of her client, SaundersVelez, comes at a time when support and compassion are called for.
“It’s reminiscent of the days when we told rape victims that they asked for it and we assumed they were lying,” Griesen said.
She said the transgender inmates were offered preferred cell assignments after they spoke with The Denver Post. Fairbairn said they were not.
“There are games going on,” Griesen said. “Lindsay is paving a path, but she’s also paying a price for being vocal.”
Griesen said Colorado is on the brink of potentially dramatic reforms for the transgender community behind bars.
Trans people want to be known by their chosen gender identity, not their birth names, Griesen said. They want access to female hygiene items and clothing, like bras that don’t hide their femininity, she said. They should be bodysearched by female correctional officers. And they want to live in their own unit, whether that is in a men’s prison or a women’s prison, she said.
Several of the transgender inmates who spoke with The Denver Post agreed that reforms are needed. What they said they are opposed to is SaundersVelez being the poster child for them.
Like many other prison subcultures identified by race, gang affiliation, crimes committed and religion, the gender identification group has a complex set of rules governed not only by the wardens who control prison gates, but by intricate unwritten rules dictated by the inmates themselves.
The written rules are enforced by potentially withdrawing privileges, segregation and by reducing an inmates’ “good time,” all affecting how long they remain in prison. But the con code dictates whether inmates live or die.
In July 2017, SaundersVelez, 20, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Denver against the Department of Corrections after she was transferred from female quarters at the Colorado Juvenile Offender Center in Pueblo into the adult prison system after she was convicted of assaulting staff at the juvenile jail.
Her lawsuit says she is in peril in a men’s prison.
SaundersVelez has claimed she was raped in December and then again on April 20, hours after Chief U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger denied a request to halt her transfer to a disciplinary pod in Territorial, ruling that SaundersVelez failed to prove she was in imminent danger of assault.
Hours later, an inmate grabbed her, slammed her head against a metal bunk bed and “brutally raped her,” Griesen said.
The five inmates interviewed on May 4 blamed the rape on what they called SaundersVelez’s provocative behavior.
Each of them also said that being a transgender person in a men’s prison isn’t necessarily fraught with danger, but said some behaviors can get them killed.
To stay safe behind bars, transgender inmates must dress modestly and not flaunt their breasts, said Monica Anaya. Anaya said she fatally shanked a catcalling inmate at Limon Correctional Facility — “but only in selfdefense.” She said the inmate had stabbed her twice after demanding her tennis shoes.
Members of Territorial’s transgender dysphoria group said they have tried to teach SaundersVelez the convict code, said Taliyah Murphy, 34.
“He is extremely flirtatious,” Murphy said. “I believe he had sex and because he got caught he is turning it into rape.”
Murphy was convicted in 2006 of four counts of attempted murder of Colorado Springs police officers. Murphy said she was in a “domestic situation” with her lover at the time of the shooting. Police answered a suicidal person call.
“If you carry yourself like a ho you are going to get treated like a ho,” Murphy said of a class of transgender inmates that prisoners call “gay boys.” These inmates are extremely feminine and overtly sexual, she said.
Prison isn’t a place for flirting, Anaya said.
Acacia Lyndarr, 39, said when a transgender prisoner acts like a prostitute, it affects every transgender person on the yard. Lyndarr is serving life in prison for a 2012 Pueblo conviction for felony murder and arson.
“She’s disrupting my home,” Lyndarr said, referring to SaundersVelez. Lyndarr said she is intersex, meaning that she was born with male and female genitalia. “I don’t like people dragging my transgender community in the dirt.”
Like other transgender inmates in a men’s prison, Lyndarr has been bombarded with taunts, catcalls and propositions. But Lyndarr said she is given wide birth because she carries herself with dignity and doesn’t verbally spar with her tormentors.
Lyndarr also acknowledged that her reputation protects her.
Lyndarr was convicted in the 2010 murder of Robert Piserchio, 50, who was bound with duct tape, tortured, beaten and set on fire, according to the Pueblo Chieftan. Although Lyndarr said she was in Denver conducting a drug deal at the time, codefendants told police Lyndarr poured deck sealant over Piserchio’s body and lit him up.
Murphy said SaundersVelez is fixated on suing CDOC.
“That one is always talking about suing guards,” said Jessica Guitron, 58. But in accusing the prison of failing to protect her, SaundersVelez is also violating a prison taboo by “snitching,” which can have deadly consequences in prison, she said.
Griesen said the inmates were taking SaundersVelez to task for things she has no control over. Her client doesn’t wear the sports “compression” bra offered by the prison because it dis guises her preferred gender, she said. Griesen said the other transgender inmates have ostracized SaundersVelez and refuse to speak to her.
Prisons and jails that do not offer individual analysis of each transgender inmate in terms of the best location for them in terms of safety violate the Prison Rape Elimination Act, said Demoya Gordon, an attorney with Lamba Legal’s Transgender Rights Project in New York City.
“Transgender persons are especially vulnerable to rape and sexual assault in prison,” Gordon said. For example, a recent California study found that 59 percent of transgender inmates in the California prison system are raped compared to 4 percent of other prisoners, she said.
Although the five transgender inmates eagerly castigated SaundersVelez, in many instances they agreed with positions SaundersVelez had taken in her lawsuit.
For example, Murphy agrees with SaundersVelez that transgender inmates should be held in a female prison. She added that it is emotionally and psychologically damaging to repeatedly be called by her male birth name and male pronouns. Getting strip searched by male correctional officers is demeaning, Murphy said.
“I can’t tell you how uncomfortable it is,” she said.
Anaya said she is offended when correctional officers or fellow prisoners call her by her birth name.
“I’m Monica,” she said. “I’m not Cuahutemoe.”