Page 7 - aruba-today-20180106

A7
U.S. NEWS Saturday 6 January 2018

Transgender inmate seeks rare transfer to female prison

By MICHAEL TARM other transgender perform the (department) in a situa-
AP Legal Affairs Writer sex acts on each other as tion where Plaintiff is merely
CHICAGO (AP) — A the guards hurled slurs and attempting to manipulate
26-year-old transgender laughed. When she was the system,” Illinois Depart-
woman serving a 10-year transferred to the higher ment of Corrections law-
sentence in Illinois for bur- security Menard, she says yers argued in a filing.
glary is seeking a rarely guards there warned they The same state filing casts
granted transfer to a fe- would retaliate for com- doubt, not only on Hamp-
male prison where she says plaints she made about ton’s accounts of abuse
she’ll be less vulnerable to Pinckneyville guards. by guards, by on her gen-
the kinds of sexual assault, Unable to comfortably rep- der identity — alleging that
taunting and beatings resent herself as female in Hampton in initial sessions
she’s been subjected to in the male prison — where with prison health workers
male prisons. she can’t wear her hair or never claimed to be trans-
Deon “Strawberry” Hamp- nails long — has also been gender and, in the words of
ton describes in a lawsuit devastating physiological- the filing, “was ok with be-
filed last year asking for the ly, said one filing from her ing male.”
transfer how guards and lawyers at the Chicago- But a key witness for Hamp-
fellow inmates would regu- based MacArthur Justice ton, clinical psychiatrist
larly single her out for bru- Center and the Uptown George Brown, said in a
tal treatment at the high- People’s Law Center. “I feel declaration to the court
security prison in southern inhuman,” Hampton was before Friday’s hearing
Illinois, Menard Correction- quoted as saying. that Hampton shows all the
al Center, and earlier at While prison officials do This photo shows Deon “Strawberry” Hampton, a transgender features of someone con-
Pinckneyville Correctional have the option of assign- Chicago woman serving a 10-year sentence for burglary. vinced of their identity as
Center. ing such male-to-female Hampton is seeking a transfer from a male to a female prison a female, saying Hampton
A U.S. magistrate judge transgender inmates to where she says she’ll be less vulnerable to abuse. has identified as female
began a first-of-its-kind evi- women’s prisons — it hap- (Illinois DOC via AP) since the age of 5.
dentiary hearing in Hamp- pens infrequently. Federal in state and federal pris- setts, sued a sheriff alleging He also challenged the
ton’s case Friday in Ben- data from 2016 indicates ons as of 2012. And nearly she was mocked with anti- department’s contention
ton, southeast of St. Louis, there were no transgender 40 percent reported be- transgender slurs, extorted that Hampton is a greater
to help the court decide prisoners in Illinois’ two fe- ing victims of sexual mis- and raped while an inmate risk to women because she
whether to order the trans- male prisons; there were 28 conduct by other inmates at a Hampden County jail hasn’t had sex reassign-
fer. The hearing, which will in the state’s 24 male pris- and guards — compared for men in 2016. She recent- ment surgery, saying such
last several days, is focused ons. to around 4 percent of the ly agreed to drop the suit in a view “conflicts with all
on Hampton’s gender Surveys support claims that general prison reporting exchange for a slightly ear- reliable medical literature.”
identity and on whether transgender inmates are at such abuse. lier release. He added Hampton’s low
she could pose a risk to fe- greater risk of abuse. Some prisons and jails na- Having a court decide testosterone levels due to
male inmates if moved. The latest available Jus- tionwide have faced simi- where to send Hampton previous hormone treat-
While at the Pinckneyville tice Department data es- lar legal challenges. Jenni- and other transgender in- ments meant she was
prison, she alleges that timates there were over fer Picknelly, a transgender mates “would directly inter- “functionally chemically
guards made her and an- 3,200 transgender inmates woman who in Massachu- fere with the operations of castrated.”q

White supremacist faces terror charge after train stopped

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — An and mass transportation and enabled the emergen- guess that was the brakes.” No injuries were reported.
armed man believed to systems. cy brake in an attempt to Amtrak staff searched the The court documents show
have ties to white suprem- Wilson was a ticketed pas- derail the train, authorities train and discovered Wil- the FBI has evidence of Wil-
acist groups has been senger on the eastbound said. son in the engineer’s seat son’s activities with white
charged with terrorism af- California Zephyr with Passengers sat in darkness of the follow engine, where supremacist groups, includ-
ter he stopped an Amtrak about 175 people aboard, for more than an hour after he was behaving errati- ing a business card for the
train in Nebraska. when the train was halted the train suddenly stopped, cally and playing with the National Socialist Move-
Documents unsealed early Oct. 22 in Oxford, according to passenger controls. A Furnas County ment in Detroit, a neo-Nazi
Wednesday in U.S. Dis- Nebraska, about 200 miles Bobbie Garris. deputy sent to the scene group.
trict Court in Lincoln show (320 kilometers) southwest “We lunged forward in our found Amtrak employees FBI agents searched Wil-
26-year-old Taylor Wilson, of Omaha. The train was seats and all the power holding Wilson, court docu- son’s home in December
of St. Charles, Missouri, is headed to Chicago from went out, it went com- ments said. Wilson had a and found a tactical vest,
charged with terrorism at- California. pletely black,” Garris said. loaded revolver, plus more 15 firearms, ammunition
tacks and other violence Wilson had entered a re- “We could smell something ammunition and a knife, and white supremacy doc-
against railroad carriers stricted area of the train burning and I’m going to the deputy said. uments and paperwork.q