Transgender woman raped over 2000 times after being sent to male prison
– A transgender woman experienced “hell on earth” after she was sent to male prison
– She was raped more than 2000 times and tried to escape three times but with no success
An unnamed transgender woman was sent to prison for car theft, where she was sexually abused on a permanent basis with the tacit consent of the prison officials.
The life of a woman albeit a transgender locked behind bars with dozens of violent men is hard to imagine but this is exactly what she had to go through at Boggo Road Prison in Brisbane, Australia.
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Recalling the nightmarish days in cell with , she said: “You are basically set upon with conversations about being protected in return for sex. They are either trying to manipulate you or threaten you into some sort of sexual contact and then, once you perform the requested threat of sex, you are then an easy target as others want their share of sex with you, which is more like rape than consensual sex.
It makes you feel sick but you have no way of defending yourself. It was rape and yes I was flogged and bashed to the point where I knew I had to do it in order to survive, but survival was basically for other prisoners’ pleasure. It was hell on earth, it was as if I died and this was my punishment.”
During her four-year sentence she was sexually abused more than 2000 times and tried to escape three times. She was not allowed to continue her hormone treatment and soon grew back her facial hair and her long hair was forcibly cut off by another inmate.
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Even after leaving prison she found it difficult to get her life back, an experience she said was also endured by a fellow transgender inmate who killed herself rather than go back after breaching parole.
“You shouldn’t be subjected to sexual assault. You are serving a punishment for an error you made in your life. I’d rather die than go to prison ever again in my whole life. We are human beings and most of us were born this way and we want to just live our lives but are ridiculed by society because we have the guts to be who we are,” she added.
Trans women, like all gender variant people, face a vast amount of discrimination and transphobia. A survey of roughly 3000 trans women living in the United States revealed that among jailed trans women, 40% have been harassed by inmates and 38% have been harassed by staff, 21% have been physically assaulted and 20% sexually assaulted.
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