Transgender pioneer out of prison, on a new path
“I come from a hostile planet,” says Michelle-Lael Norsworthy.
That planet is the men’s prison system in California, where Norsworthy had spent nearly her entire adult life as a transgender woman.
Norsworthy was serving a sentence for second-degree murder when a federal judge in San Francisco ordered prison officials in April to grant her request for sex-reassignment surgery, the first such ruling in California and the second in the nation. She was freed in August after the state parole board, which had repeatedly turned her down in the past, abruptly approved her release.
Today, Norsworthy, 52, is making plans for her own surgery this summer, covered by MediCal. She lives in a halfway house in San Francisco for female drug addicts. Although she’s been sober for more than 20 years, it was the only place that would take her, she says. She’s also looking for long-term housing, employment and her place in a world far different from the one she had inhabited for 30 years.
“I was on the front line,” she said in an interview. “I was raped. I saw people murdered.”
Norsworthy was sentenced in 1987 to 17 years
to life in prison for killing a man in a bar in Fullerton (Orange County) three years earlier.
“I went to prison because I had spent my whole life denying who I was,” she said. “Overly male ways. Carrying guns. Being a tough guy. ... It (her crime) haunts me to this day.”
After years of confusion about her gender identity, she began openly identifying as a transgender woman in the mid-1990s. She was diagnosed by prison doctors as transgender in 2000 and began receiving hormone therapy from the medical staff.
Prison attack
Though her appearance was female, under state policy, she remained in a men’s prison. In 2009, nine male inmates gang-raped her, infecting her with hepatitis C.
She suffered from sleeplessness, panic attacks and other symptoms associated with the condition known as gender dysphoria. In 2012, prison doctors recommended her for sexreassignment surgery, but prison officials objected. They argued that hormone therapy was efficient, and assigned their own group of evaluators, who found no medical necessity for surgery.
In his April 2015 ruling ordering Norsworthy’s request for surgery, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar said officials had been “deliberately indifferent to her serious medical need.” The following month, the Board of Parole Hearings, which had denied parole to Norsworthy since 1998, citing disciplinary violations and behavior problems, held another hearing. This time, the board found her suitable for release, and she was freed three months later.
Prison officials had appealed Tigar’s ruling, putting off any plans for surgery, but dropped their appeal after Norsworthy’s release. Prompted by the ruling, officials announced new standards for treatment of about 400 transgender inmates now undergoing hormone therapy. They also approved surgery for one prisoner, Shiloh Quine, the first time any U.S. prison system had authorized such an operation.
Adjusting to new life
Norsworthy’s new freedom hasn’t fully sunken in yet. She said she still wakes up at 3 every morning because that’s when she had to get up in prison to make it to breakfast. She reminds herself that she can cross lines, talking and relating to people of different races, for ex- ample. In prison, that might have been a death warrant.
And she’s still getting used to being around other women.
In a men’s prison, “I had to adapt my personality in order to survive,” she said. “I had to be a man just to be a woman. Now I’m in an all-female facility. I’m learning what females are like, more expressive. I go to sleep knowing nobody’s going to hurt me or rape me. That’s a relief.”
Norsworthy was an advocate in prison, working on statewide leg- islation to combat sexual abuse behind bars. But on the outside she said she hasn’t been able to work well with gay-rights groups, who seem to “expect me to behave and think the way they do.”
“I’m an advocate for all transgender people,” she said, “but sometimes I come across as too intense. Not always easy to be around.”
On the other hand, she said, the Transgender Law Center “did a wonderful job” in helping her win the right to surgery. She serves as house secretary at her residence, run by the recovery group HealthRight 360, but said she spends most of her time by herself, studying Jewish scriptures (Lael, part of her chosen name, is Hebrew for “to God”) and catching up on her reading.
Employment obstacles
Norsworthy was a medical specialist in the Army National Guard before her imprisonment and said she’d like to find work in the medical field but would take a clerical job if someone offered it. No luck so far.
“The biggest obstacle is, I was convicted of murder,” she said. “They ask about felonies. You can Google my name. I’ll have a lot of explaining to do to landlords and potential employers. It scares me.”
Still, she said. “I know that girls I left behind (in prison) will now have an opportunity to receive the same health care as people out here” because of her confrontation with the system. With that knowledge, Norsworthy said, “I will go to my grave.”