Transgender inmate gets parole

Prisoner had sued for hormonal treatments.

A transgender prisoner who had filed a lawsuit demanding hormonal treatments and safer housing was paroled Monday.

Ashley Diamond, 37, of Rome, was freed from the Augusta State Medical Prison five days after the Southern Poverty Law Center filed additional documents supporting her motion for preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed in February.

The court papers included affidavits from transgender prisoners to support Diamond’s contention that the prison system continues to deny “appropriate care” to transgender inmates, the law center said.

“I’m overjoyed to be with my family again and out of harm’s way,” Diamond said in a statement through the group.

Steve Hayes, spokesman for the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, said the parole had nothing to do with the lawsuit.

The parole board made the decision Aug 1, Hayes said.

Diamond, a male who identifies as female, had been serving more than three years of an 11-year burglary sentence. She filed the lawsuit in February, claiming she had been sexually assaulted eight times in male prisons and denied the hormone treatments she had received for 17 years to develop female characteristics before imprisonment.

In retaliation, she contends, officials moved her to Georgia State Prison in Reidsville, a maximum security facility with more dangerous inmates.