‘JAIL TRANS’ HELL
Woman inmate: Rikers liar con raped me
A former Rikers Island inmate claims she was raped by a male inmate posing as a transgender woman — with her repeated complaints to Department of Correction staff going ignored, according to a lawsuit.
The anonymous plaintiff — identified only as Rose Doe — was sexually propositioned, groped and raped by the prisoner within days of him being moved into the “protective custody” dorm at Rikers’ Rose M. Singer Center (RMSC) women’s jail on April 4, 2022, the suit alleges.
In addition to the alleged attacker lying about his identity, Doe believes the man 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,” the filing states.
“The perpetrator informed [a trans inmate] that he was not transgender, or gay, but that he was just there ‘to get p---y,’ ” the lawsuit filed in November reads.
“We have some accounts from inside the prison that as the [transfer] request was being made . . . the [DOC] 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,’ ” Doe’s attorney, Nicholas Liakas, told The Post Wednesday.
Complaints from Doe, then 21, and other inmates about the man’s transfer to their unit were allegedly ignored by correction officers Jennifer Cruz and Rashida King, who along with the city are named as defendants in the Bronx Supreme Court suit.
“Defendant Cruz told Plaintiff and the other female inmates in no uncertain terms that she did not care what happened to them, saying ‘I don’t give a f--k,’ ” the lawsuit alleges.
‘5 claims vs. attacker’
The alleged attacker — who is not named in the suit — had been implicated in at least five Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) claims, all of which were still open cases at the time of the transfer, according to the filing.
Doe was particularly nervous about the man’s presence because “officers were rarely at their posts,” the suit states.
Within the first two days of his transfer to the dorm, the alleged male inmate stared at Doe “while he masturbated” and once “exited the [bathroom] stall with his erect penis exposed and groped [her] buttocks,” the filing reads.
During the latter incident, the correction officer present “did nothing except yell” for the man to leave the bathroom, according to the suit.
At that point, Doe wrote two complaints about the male inmate’s behavior, the filing states.
After reviewing the complaints, the acting warden of the RMSC, Floyd Phipps, allegedly sent an email that read “I feel that individual [Perpetrator] is not a suitable fit for RMSC . . . [Rose Doe] does not want to remain in the unit due to feeling unsafe.”
But correction staff still failed to remove the offender from the allfemale dorm, the suit alleges.
The next morning, on April 7, “while [Doe] was sleeping in her bed, the Perpetrator, took the opportunity to sexually assault [Doe] again . . . pull[ing] down her pants while she was sleeping and begin[ing] to rape her,” the lawsuit claims.
Doe eventually freed herself and alerted the guard, who was supposedly “sleeping” in a plexiglass bubble, the filing states.
“The other women in the housing unit did what Defendants repeatedly failed to do — they removed the Perpetrator from the housing unit by physically removing him from Plaintiff and ‘packing him up,’ ” the lawsuit says, describing how the female inmates chucked the man’s belongings from the unit.
DOC staff — including Rivera and King — then allegedly barred Doe from seeking medical attention for most of the day, while also refusing to remove the man from the unit, the suit states.
Transfer as ‘punishment’
The supposed rapist was “quietly” shifted back to his original dorm the next day — but not before Doe was moved to the general population “as punishment for reporting her sexual assaults,” the lawsuit claimed.
Doe, who was discharged from Rikers in August 2022, is now suing the city, several DOC officers, the acting warden and other jail officials for alleged negligence and civil rights infractions.
A DOC spokesperson said they could not comment on active litigation.
Speaking to NBC-4 New York, which first reported on her suit, Doe said she still lives in fear.
“I’ll be scarred for the rest of my life,” Doe said. “They just took my complaint and said they’d do something about it and they never did.”