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Tag: sexual violence
Transgender Prison Inmates Face Troubling Issues Of Sexuality And Danger

Transgender Prison Inmates Face Troubling Issues Of Sexuality And Danger

The issue of where corrections officials will house transgender women isn’t going to go away soon. The March 16 temporary reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act mentioned where transgender inmates should live. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) introduced a bill to house inmates based on their genitals alone. There’s a bill on Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s desk to prevent the press from accessing transgender inmates’ files.

So far, analysis of polices placing transgender women in women’s prisons has focused on safety. The Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) filed suit to challenge California’s SB 132, a law that allows any male prisoner to identify as transgender and get moved to a women’s facility, vowing to fight for incarcerated women “until their safety and dignity are restored.”

Under the heading “Reaffirming the need for the elimination of violence against women,” Article 8 of the Women's Declaration International’s (formerly the Women’s Human Rights Campaign) Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights wants transgender women out of women’s spaces because “single-sex services and physical spaces …provide them with safety, privacy, and dignity.” The message is clear: when trans women are around, there’s no safety.

Casting the conversations around housing transgender inmates in terms of safety is a mistake. It’s better to analyze these policies’ effects on rehabilitation which, after all, is supposed to be the mission of corrections.

Saying transgender women pose a safety threat when housed with other women was a bad move because it implies that transgender people are inherently dangerous when they’re not. And that unfair characterization of transgender women has more far-reaching effects. In essence, it has shut down and sidestepped substantive discussions of these policies lest participants get labeled transphobic.

I disagree that it’s transphobic to analyze whether these policies benefit inmates. The addition of transgender women to traditionally female facilities might not culminate in rape. Instead, the result might be recidivism and we need to decide if we can accept that effect.

People in prison develop relationships that can be sexual, romantic, business-related, or friendly. It’s impossible to cram thousands of people into one small space and prohibit connections between them. Not all of these relationships are illicit or illegal.

But many are. Sex will be had and whether it’s consensual or not depends on the unique circumstances of each situation and the laws in the state. While sexual contact between a prisoner and a staff member is always non-consenual under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, some states criminalize sexual contact between inmates. California criminalizes only sodomy between inmates. That’s an important distinction because much of the safety rhetoric surrounding the housing of transgender inmates depends on sexual activity between inmates being statutory sexual assault. It’s possible for two inmates in California to have sex with each other without committing rape.

And that’s the problem that, so far, remains unspoken: consensual sex in prisons is just as much of a problem as sexual violence. Consensual sex is still against the rules in all 50 states and subjects people to discipline. I’m highly critical of prison disciplinary systems, especially the enforcement of rules, but this one I support and my position has nothing to do with gender or sexuality. Rather, it has everything to do with my desire to see these women succeed.

Introducing a new population of prisoners, women who have male genitalia, adds a new — and quite frankly, for some, exciting — dimension to a prison subculture. Undoubtedly some women will seek sexual connection with an inmate with male genitalia; the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation bet on it when they started distributing condoms shortly after implementing a law that places transgender women in women’s prisons.

Women in prison who embrace that subculture are “less inclined to introspection and continue to involve themselves in relationships, drugs, and other distractions to divert their attention away from looking at their own behavior,” according to researchers who’ve examined relationships in prison.

If a person’s life has become so out of control that they’re incarcerated, then they need to focus all of their energy on taking that control back. Investing energy in romantic or sexual connections diverts attention away from that goal. This is standard advice for anyone in recovery from substance abuse. Even if a prisoner is innocent or her confinement owes itself to purely structural factors, that person still needs to learn how to navigate those unjust systems to protect herself. A ‘bae’ or a ‘boo’ makes those lessons much harder.

Inmates admit that these aren’t really prosocial connections. In a survey of women incarcerated at the federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia, the most reported motivation attributed to prison sexual/romantic relationships is that they’re economic in nature. It’s essentially prostitution where the currency is ramen soup.

Watching women throw away opportunities to see their children in the visiting room or even their chances at parole was a constant for me while I was incarcerated. They’d develop a discipline history for behaviors related to seeing their girlfriends, activities that had nothing to do with sex, like being out of place or carrying benign contraband, and lose visiting privileges and their chances to sit before parole boards.

The system views women who do this much like the quote from Benjamin Franklin that said “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” — which, incidentally, doesn’t mean what most people assume it means. But the sentiment tracks to modern corrections; parole board members think that, if women are willing to endanger their liberty for fleeting romantic or sexual connections that may not be real, then they shouldn’t get either. Denied.

We have to grapple with whether effects on rehabilitation are acceptable byproducts of housing transgender prisoners by their gender identity. Incarcerated women should know better than to endanger reuniting with their families for a fling, but their decision-making skills can be suspect at times, hence their current predicament. I don’t think it’s fair to tempt them.

Of course, just because inmates are capable of consensual sex with each other doesn’t make sexual assault impossible. In Illinois, a cisgender female prisoner accused a transgender prisoner of sexual assault. The Department of Correction dismissed the complainant’s report, saying that the sexual contact was consensual; she’s now suing the state for being disbelieved. It bears noting that, in this situation, in a time when believing women has become paramount, authorities believed the woman with the penis.

But transgender inmates face sexual violence and harassment at rates 10 times higher than cisgender inmates when prisons house them according to their natal genitalia. Not only is it unconstitutional to confine people and not protect them from sexual harm but it’s also morally untenable to know that people face a risk of that type of violence and not stop it.

We may be forced to accept that transgender inmates’ rights to security will cost other inmates their liberty, long-term, because of compromised opportunities for rehabilitation. The question becomes more about why as a country we rely on a system that won’t protect both liberty and security, and less about where we should house transgender inmates.

Chandra Bozelko did time in a maximum-security facility in Connecticut. While inside she became the first incarcerated person with a regular byline in a publication outside of the facility. Her “Prison Diaries" column ran in The New Haven Independent, and she later established a blog under the same name that earned several professional awards. Her columns now appear regularly in The National Memo.

VA Secretary Wilkie Sought To Discredit House Staffer Who Complained Of Sex Assault

VA Secretary Wilkie Sought To Discredit House Staffer Who Complained Of Sex Assault

Reprinted with permission from ProPublica.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie personally sought damaging information about a congressional aide who said she was sexually assaulted in a VA hospital, according to an anonymous complaint to the House committee the woman works for.

The written complaint was obtained by ProPublica. In addition, a former senior official with direct knowledge of the matter said Wilkie discussed damaging information he collected about the aide and suggested using it to discredit her. Another person said he spoke with other officials who were in those discussions, and they corroborated the former senior official’s and the written complaint’s account. The people interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying they feared retaliation.

Wilkie denied inquiring into the aide’s past. “I never would do that to a fellow officer,” he said in a statement. “It is a breach of honor.”

The aide, Andrea Goldstein, is a Navy reserve intelligence officer and a senior policy adviser for the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s Women Veterans Task Force. In September, she said she was sexually assaulted at the VA medical center in Washington. According to Goldstein’s account reported in The New York Times, she was buying a snack in the cafeteria when a man slammed his body into hers, pressed against her and told her, “You look like you could use a good time.” Goldstein said she did not know who the man was, but he was not an employee.

As required by VA regulations, Goldstein’s allegation was turned over to the department’s inspector general to conduct an independent criminal investigation, working with federal prosecutors.

But the complaint alleges that while the inspector general and prosecutors investigated Goldstein’s allegation, Wilkie initiated what the complaint described as “his own investigation into Ms. Goldstein’s credibility and military record.”

The House committee said it is considering how to respond to the complaint, spokeswoman Jenni Geurink said. While the committee has oversight jurisdiction over the VA and often fields complaints from employees and patients, it is in an unusual position since this complaint relates to one of its staff members.

“We have been contacted about possible actions taken within VA which may have utilized government time and resources to attempt to tarnish a member of our staff’s character, discredit her and spread false information about her past in retaliation for her reporting of a sexual assault at VA,” Geurink said. “This ordeal has been draining and unfair to Ms. Goldstein.”

According to the complaint and the former senior official, Wilkie repeatedly shared the information he had gathered about Goldstein with his senior staff, including officials responsible for public relations, between October 2019 and January 2020. One of the officials present, Assistant Secretary for Public and Intergovernmental Affairs James E. Hutton, did not respond to requests for comment.

“Wilkie’s energies are directed toward attacking her character,” the complaint said.

Wilkie did not specify the source of his information but said he wished his findings could be used to undermine Goldstein’s account of the assault in the Washington VA, the complaint and the former senior official said. While Wilkie did not direct anyone to do anything with the information, he wondered aloud about how it might become public, according to the complaint and the former senior official.

Wilkie, through a spokeswoman, denied saying that.

Wilkie also met in his office with Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, who is a former Navy commando. After the meeting, Wilkie told his staff that Crenshaw agreed with the allegations that Wilkie made about Goldstein’s credibility, according to the complaint, the former senior official and the other person with knowledge of the meeting.

Wilkie denied discussing Goldstein with Crenshaw. Crenshaw, in a brief interview in the Capitol, confirmed that he met with Wilkie. “I had breakfast with him once,” Crenshaw said. “I know where this rumor’s coming from. So you have a bunch of Democrat staffers who are leading you guys down a really stupid path. I’ve never been asked about the case, never been told about the case.”

Wilkie and his staff have not publicized the information he collected about Goldstein’s past. But after the inspector general concluded its investigation and federal prosecutors declined to bring charges, Wilkie sent a Jan. 15 letter to Congress calling Goldstein’s complaint “unsubstantiated” and saying it “could deter our veterans from seeking the care they need and deserve.”

Wilkie’s letter prompted an objection from the VA’s inspector general, Michael Missal, who said calling Goldstein’s allegations “unsubstantiated” was “not an accurate description of the results of our investigation.” The Timesreported that the criminal probe was hindered because video cameras that might have captured the incident at the hospital weren’t working.

“Neither I nor my staff told you or anyone else that the allegations were unsubstantiated,” Missal wrote to Wilkie. “Reaching a decision to close the investigation with no criminal charges does not mean the underlying allegation is unsubstantiated.”

Goldstein, in an op-ed published Monday on the website Jezebel, criticized Wilkie, saying that his letter to Congress was retaliation for her reporting the assault and that she had also faced retaliation from a military commander when she reported sexual harassment while on active duty. She said she receives treatment at the VA for conditions related to sexual trauma during her military service.

“He used coded language, but the words still stung,” Goldstein wrote. “The Secretary of the second largest federal agency knew how his words would resonate. He was implying that a fellow Navy veteran was a liar. He was implying that I was a liar.”

Asked about the subject at a post-State of the Union press conference on Wednesday, Wilkie said he was “not satisfied with the resolution of the Goldstein case” and wants to reexamine it.

“I met with the [inspector general] yesterday,” he said. “We’re going to make a renewed push to get answers.”

But the inspector general’s office later said the investigation remains closed. “We are not working with anyone to seek additional information at this time,” a spokesman said.

A spokeswoman for Wilkie later clarified that he wasn’t asking to reopen the investigation but wants to receive more details of the inspector general’s findings. “At a minimum, the IG should let VA and committee leaders know if its investigation found any wrongdoing so the department can take action to protect and safeguard our patients,” VA press secretary Christina Mandreucci said. “We need this help to make sure our facilities are safe.”

IMAGE: Official photo portrait of Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie.

Rape Is A Vile Crime, But The ‘Epidemic’ Of Campus Sexual Violence Is Exaggerated

Rape Is A Vile Crime, But The ‘Epidemic’ Of Campus Sexual Violence Is Exaggerated

Look, the Great Campus Rape Crisis was mainly hype all along. What Vice President Joe Biden described as an epidemic of sexual violence sweeping American college campuses in 2011 was vastly overstated. If people actually believed that 20 percent of college girls ended up being raped or sexually assaulted—as activists claimed—then they’d quit sending their daughters.

Instead, what’s happened on too many campuses has been a kind of psychosexual panic akin to the “recovered memory” episodes of the 1980s—such as the infamous McMartin preschool trial in Los Angeles, and the fantastic allegations of orgiastic rape and murder in Olympia, Washington described in Lawrence Wright’s terrific book Remembering Satan.

This is in no way to minimize rape, a vile crime deserving heavy prison time. Nor even boorish drunken carousing often winked at by college authorities even as Title IX administrators on the same campuses conduct Star Chamber sex investigations against students accorded none of the due process rights guaranteed in the US Constitution.

It’s not a criminal matter, you see. Merely one’s educational and professional future that can be at stake.

Somebody changes her mind after a one-night-stand and a young man may as well pack up and go home. That, or prepare himself for months in virtual exile, banned from anywhere on campus frequented by the “survivor” of this misbegotten tryst, while being interrogated by an administrator serving as one-size-fits-all investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury.

There is no right to remain silent. Refusal to testify against oneself can result in expulsion. No cross-examining one’s accuser, either. It’s thought too traumatic. Anything an accused student does say can be used against him at a criminal trial.

The standard of guilt is the “preponderance of evidence,” i.e. 51 percent. Were they alone together in his dorm room? OK, then he raped her.

I’m sorry, that does not sound like America.

If you think that’s too strong, check out the excellent series of investigative articles by The Atlantic’s Emily Yoffe. A careful, even scholarly reporter, Yoffe describes an upside-down world where the weaker the evidence of sexual transgression in too many instances, the stronger the finding of guilt.

Indeed, things on campus had gotten so out of hand that Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy De Vos has even taken time out from her busy schedule of attacking public schools to promise badly needed reforms to the Obama-mandated Title IX system.  Groups of law professors at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the American Association of Trial Lawyers and the American Association of University Professors broadly support her.

Campus activists are certain to put up a fight. If nothing else, quite a few jobs could be at stake. Harvard University, for example, now has 55 Title IX investigators—full time sex sleuths, most of them.

“Who Gets to Define Campus Rape?” ask Miriam Gleckman-Krut and Nicole Bedera, University of Michigan “campus sexual violence researchers” in a recent New York Times op ed.  Definitely not judges and juries. “College tribunals,” we’re reminded “are not criminal courts.” Also, false rape accusations are perishingly rare—a truism among academic feminists that Yoffe shows to be based upon fallacious evidence.

In real life, of course, both men and women lie all the time, and sex is one of the topics they lie about most often. Ask any divorce lawyer.

But the real heart of the matter comes when Gleckman-Krut and Bedera insist that bad witnesses are the best witnesses: “[T]rauma can make survivors seem disorganized to campus administrators who are untrained.”

To Emily Yoffe, this is the intellectual heart of the matter. Based upon a highly influential, but highly unscientific paper called “The Neurobiology of Sexual Assault,” Title IX investigators have been taught that trauma wrecks memory, so that the more confused a victim’s story, the truer it’s apt to be.

Brain scientists Yoffe interviewed say otherwise, as does common experience. Terrible events too often can’t be forgotten. Intoxication, however, definitely makes for shaky recall. Meanwhile, as in “recovered memory” episodes of yore, overzealous inquisitors can persuade people of damn near anything.

Yoffe writes that her own reporting doesn’t “typically describe campuses filled with sociopathic predators. They mostly paint a picture of students, many of them freshmen, who begin a late-night consensual sexual encounter, well lubricated by alcohol, and end up with divergent views of what happened.”

 In short, basic Animal House stuff—more John Belushi than, well, Donald Trump. The Michigan team does patronizingly concede “that being accused of sexual assault hurts. And there are things that we can and should do to help accused students — namely, providing them with psychological counsel. But accused men’s pain does not excuse rape, and men shouldn’t be the ones defining it.”

Look, nothing excuses rape. Nowhere, never. But they can keep their psychological counseling. It’s legal counsel accused students need.

Let judges and juries do the defining.  

Two Teen Girls Gang-Raped, Hanged From Tree In India

Two Teen Girls Gang-Raped, Hanged From Tree In India

McClatchy Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI — Two teenage girls were gang-raped and hanged from a tree in a village in northern India, officials said Thursday.

The two girls, cousins ages 14 and 16, went missing in Uttar Pradesh’s Badaun district on Tuesday night and their bodies were found hanging from a tree Wednesday.

“A girl’s father, the complainant, said the victims were gang-raped by five men before they were hanged by the attackers. The post-mortem has confirmed rape and death by hanging,” district police chief Atul Saxena said by phone.

An 18-year-old suspect was arrested, said Saxena, and police had formed a 60-member team and expected to arrest another suspect soon.

“We have to finally confirm whether the victims were hanged by the attackers or committed suicide,” he said.

The incident triggered protests with villagers alleging police inaction and delay in launching the search after the girls went missing.

Three police officers were suspended and two of them were booked for allegedly conniving with the accused and delaying the search, Saxena said.

Villagers had blocked a highway and demanded action against staff at the local police station. The blockade was lifted after the police announced the suspensions.

Attacks on women and sexual violence have been a focus of public attention in India since the fatal gang rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi in 2012 triggered mass protests.

The safety of women was also among the issues in the recent Indian elections.

AFP Photo/Prakash Singh

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