Former Transgender Inmate Sues State to Stop Sexual Abuse

Alexis Giraldo is a young Puerto Rican woman who served over two years in California prisons. Unlike most women, she was placed in a men's prison and endured repeated violent rape by her male cellmates. She begged for help from prison staff, reported her injuries to doctors and therapists, and meticulously documented her situation. No help came.

How could this happen? The answer is simple: Alexis is a transgender woman, and California lacks policies to protect her. Transgender women are identified as male at birth, but self-identify and live in the world as women. California's prison system classified Alexis as male, even though she had been taking female hormones since 2004. When she was assaulted -- an inevitable occurrence under this backwards classification system -- and reported the attacks to prison staff, they condoned the brutal violence against her by refusing to help.

Alexis' story is not unique. Transgender people are over-represented in prison due to severe employment and housing discrimination, which leads many to participate in "survival crime," including theft and sex work. A1997 study conducted by the San Francisco Department of Public Health found that 65 percent of transgender women in San Francisco had been imprisoned or jailed. Once in custody, they encounter widespread sexual and physical violence, and even murder. In a recent study commissioned by the state, the Center for Evidence-Based Corrections at UC Irvine found that 59 percent of transgender people in California prisons were sexually assaulted -- a rate nearly 15 times higher than in the general population.

What is unique about Alexis' case is that after winding through an exhausting bureaucratic complaint process, she courageously filed suit against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and the staff members who allowed her to be raped. The suit was heard in San Francisco Superior Court over the past two weeks. Alexis raised serious constitutional questions about the state's failure to protect transgender people in prison, particularly the inadequate policies that subject the majority of transgender people to sexual assault while in the state's custody.

Instead of recognizing the need for policy change in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence, Attorney General Jerry Brown's office vigorously fought the suit. Brown's office used every desperate argument possible: they claimed that Alexis was lying, despite thorough documentation of the violence against her. They denied the systemic nature of anti-transgender violence in the California prison system, despite objective research demonstrating the problem. They repeatedly used male pronouns to refer to Alexis and claimed that the state was unaware of her gender identity, despite her obvious feminine appearance. They unethically delayed the case until Alexis was paroled and then argued that her claim was moot; the judge then dismissed her constitutional claim against the state, saying that because she was not in custody she no longer required relief from the state's inadequate policies.

The behavior of the attorneys representing the state was so outrageous that it brought over a hundred people to protest outside the courthouse during the trial. It is astounding that Attorney General Brown would choose to sanction systemic sexual violence rather than take steps to end these horrific human rights violations.

California imprisons more people than any other state, and the need for change is clear. We need to abandon the illusion that locking people up creates real safety. We must work to give communities resources to avoid poverty and criminalization, and to respond to the root causes of violence. For transgender people, this means having access to basic needs: meaningful employment, affordable housing, safe education, and accessible healthcare.

Although six of the defendants were not found liable for Alexis' rape, and the seventh defendant's case resulted in a mistrial, the CDCR remains guilty of systematically violating the human rights of transgender persons. The state of California still has a moral and legal duty to protect transgender persons in its prisons. The CDCR should place transgender people where they feel most safe and provide them with gender-appropriate clothing, healthcare, and educational and vocational programs. Denying the need for such policies is unconscionable, and a clear indication that "cruel and unusual punishment" is alive and well in California. As California's Attorney General, Jerry Brown's mission is to "Ensure justice, safety, and liberty for everyone." In this case, he has failed the people of California.