A transgender woman who claims she was repeatedly raped and beaten by a male cell mate went to court this week to challenge a state policy that assigns inmates like her to men's or women's prisons depending on whether they have undergone sex-change surgery. Alexis Giraldo, 30, claims that Folsom State Prison guards ignored her complaints of abuse and returned her to the same cell until a subsequent assault got her placed in protective custody and eventually moved to another facility.
A transgender woman who claims she was repeatedly raped and beaten by a male cell mate went to court this week to challenge a state policy that assigns inmates like her to men's or women's prisons depending on whether they have undergone sex-change surgery.
Alexis Giraldo, 30, claims that Folsom State Prison guards ignored her complaints of abuse and returned her to the same cell until a subsequent assault got her placed in protective custody and eventually moved to another facility.
Giraldo, who was born a man but lives as a woman and takes hormones to feminize her appearance, is suing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for emotional distress and violating her constitutional right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.
"Prisons are violent places, and male prisons are especially violent places," said Greg Walston, a San Francisco lawyer who took on Giraldo's case pro bono. "You take that boiling cauldron and you put one woman in there – which is exactly what happened here – and it's like throwing a fresh piece of meat into a lion's cage."
The San Francisco jury hearing the case has been asked to award Giraldo unspecified damages. Superior Court Judge Ellen Chaitin has been asked to order prison officials to come up with a new system for housing transgender inmates.
The California Attorney General's office, which is representing the corrections department and Folsom staff members also named as defendants in the lawsuit, said Friday that it would not comment on the case.
Briefs filed by the state argue that Giraldo initially was in a consensual sexual relationship with her cell mate in violation of prison policy, did not report specific rape claims, and refused offers to be moved to a different cell. Once she made it clear she was being forced to service her cell mate against her will and strangulation marks were found on her neck, she was removed to protective custody, the state maintains.
"Plaintiff alleges that he informed prison staff on a number of occasions about these events. However, the documentation maintained by prison personnel – including some of the defendants in this case – does not bear out these assertions," the state's brief states.
Several counties in California, including San Francisco, have created separate units specifically for transgender prisoners. But like other states and the federal Bureau of Prisons, California assigns inmates to prisons based on their genitalia rather than physical appearance.
Biological men who dress and act like women but have not had sex reassignment surgery can be assigned to a psychiatric prison like the one to which Giraldo eventually transferred or the general population of a regular men's prison.
Teda Boyll, a retired guard and supervisor in California, testified for Giraldo as an expert witness on Friday, saying that in her opinion Folsom officials failed to adequately investigate Giraldo's concerns and assure her safety.
"There are some warning signs," Boyll said. "When an inmate says, 'I am getting pressured for sex,' it means it is already happened or it is imminent he will have to provide nonconsensual sex to another inmate."
Giraldo was sent to Folsom for shoplifitng and a parole violation in January 2006 and spent three months there before she was transferred to the medical prison. She was paroled earlier this month and is scheduled to testify on Friday afternoon.
Her former cell mate, who is serving a sentence for armed robbery, is also scheduled to testify in the case.
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