Advocates for female inmates demand prison officials keep male sexual offenders from coming back

The U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation Tuesday that prohibits males from competing in sports "designated for women or girls" in federally funded programs, which unlike the previous session has a plausible path into law in GOP-unified government. 

About 2,700 miles away, females face a greater threat from males than physically endangering them in athletic competition and usurping their accomplishments and scholarships.

Male inmates who were convicted of violent crimes yet were placed in a women's prison based on their gender identity – and then committed sexual offenses – could get access to those incarcerated women again.

The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism is organizing a pressure campaign on the Washington Department of Corrections to not "preemptively grant" requests by male inmates to be moved back to the Washington Corrections Center for Women or "released into the general population at WCCW" from solitary confinement, respectively.

The ACLU is representing Amber Kim, known as Bryan when the inmate was convicted of murdering his parents, in a lawsuit against the department to move Kim back to WCCW from Monroe Correctional Facility for men, where Kim was transferred last year for "consensual sexual contact" with Kim's female cellmate at WCCW.

Nonnie Lotusflower, known as Nathan Goninan when convicted of manslaughter for strangling a 17-year-old girl, sued WCCW for placing the inmate in solitary confinement and reportedly sued several officials the day after Christmas to prevent transfer to a men's facility based on Lotusflower's sexual and physical assaults of female inmates.

The ACLU is representing Lotusflower in another lawsuit going back to 2017 seeking to compel the state to pay for so-called gender affirmation surgery. 

The parties notified the court last month they are implementing a settlement agreement, under which Lotusflower has already received two taxpayer-funded surgeries and will get a third this May, at which point "they will be reasonably positioned to inform this Court of a timeline for a final dismissal of this matter," the joint status report says.

The department must "prioritize the safety of female inmates over the feelings of males," says FAIR's open letter to the department, which is seeking signatures. While Kim is petitioning the Washington Court of Appeal to go back to WCCW, the department "may independently choose to return him to WCCW at any time" under its own authority.

Lotusflower is in solitary because of "previous infractions for sexually assaulting a female inmate and the DOC's assessment that he poses an 'unmitigated threat to the safety of other incarcerated individuals'" in the women's prison, FAIR said.

The group has communicated with "hundreds" of female inmates housed with males, many of whom filed formal reports about the "severe harms" of the placement, it said.

Those include the sexual harassment and groping of a woman in her sleep, physical assault against a disabled woman, "voyeurism, sexual advances" and purportedly consensual sexual encounters that nonetheless violate the Prison Rape Elimination Act, and PTSD "triggered by proximity to male offenders," according to the open letter.

"Women's prisons are not designed to manage the risks posed by male inmates, many of whom have histories of violent crime," while female inmates are "disproportionately survivors of past male abuse" and yet must now live with them, "exacerbat[ing] their vulnerability and trauma," a situation that is "intolerable, discriminatory, and unlawful," FAIR said.

Last month, a California judge ordered prosecutors to use female pronouns in male inmate Tremaine Carroll's trial on charges of raping two women while incarcerated in a women's prison, overruling Madera County District Attorney Deputy District Attorney Eric DuTemple's objections, according to a transcript given to Just the News earlier this month.

"The bottom line here is this is a biological male with male genitalia who is currently housed in a male prison and is accused of committing two rapes against two females, a crime that can only be committed by a biological male," DuTemple told Judge Katherine Rigby. 

It runs "contrary to our legal theory" that Carroll is using female pronouns "simply to get into a female prison so he can carry on these …. rapes," would cause confusion at trial and is "absolutely disrespectful to and traumatic to the victims that would then have to testify and have to worry about policing their language" toward their alleged rapist, DuTemple said.

The issue has nothing to do with "respect" for transgender inmates, as Carroll's lawyer said, but is "the very core" of the case, "and you're really handcuffing us by making this order," the DA said. "I would want some further guardrails" on how victims are supposed to testify.

Rigby replied by simply reading off prior state court rulings that counsel must use preferred pronouns as a condition of their obligations to show "respect, courtesy and dignity" for defendants, given the "elevated standard of conduct" expected of prosecutors, but also said prosecutors could call Carroll "the defendant" without pronouns at all.

Carroll's counsel withdrew at that hearing based on "additional discovery" provided by DuTemple that created an "unavoidable and unwaivable conflict," the transcript shows. 

Rigby allowed Carroll to self-represent, and now the inmate is "throwing tons of motions out to try to delay his trial," Women's Liberation Front Executive Director Sharon Byrne, who provided the transcript, told Just the News, attributing the update to DuTemple.

WoLF lost a lawsuit against California's gender identity prison placement law on behalf of female inmates on a technicality.

Byrne noted a female inmate's lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Prison's transgender placement policy is going to trial this week, alleging violation of her constitutional right to bodily privacy. The Free Press profiled Rhonda Fleming's case, which alleges her "private parts and genitalia were regularly exposed" to male inmates and theirs to her in communal settings.