Transgender Woman Raped At Men's Prison Hours After Judge Denial

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A Transgender Inmate Was Raped Following Judge’s Denial For Move

A transgender inmate says she was raped at a men’s prison. This happened only a few hours after a judge threw out her request to block corrections officers from keeping her in a disciplinary unit.

Lindsay Saunders-Velez claims she had been threatened, harassed and assaulted since entering Colorado’s prison system. She entered last spring after violating her plea deal in a menacing case. The prisoner filed a lawsuit against the state’s corrections agency in July, branding the system “discriminatory and dangerous” for transgender offenders.

Last month, her lawyers requested that a judge not send Saunders-Velez to her jail’s “punishment pod” for a disciplinary infraction, because she could end up being around the same inmates who tormented her earlier. The judge claimed that the attorneys failed to prove an imminent risk, and their request was rejected.

This proved to be the wrong move on the judge’s part, because the 20-year-old was attacked during her time in the pod–needing more than a week in the hospital to recover, according to her attorney. “This issue is not going to go away, We’re going to fight it until these individuals are treated with the respect they deserve.” she said about the incident.

According to attorney Demoya Gordon, federal law requires that prisons individually asses where to house each transgender person–But almost all facilities still house inmates based on their birth gender, which results in many transgender women being abused or raped during their sentence.