人兽性交

Ashley Diamond, a Black transgender woman held in a men鈥檚 prison in Georgia, continued her legal battle for protection from the ongoing sexual abuse she endures, by renewing her request last night for a federal court to order her transferred to a female facility.

Ms. Diamond has endured repeated sexual assaults and sexual harassment since being placed in the custody of the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC). Ignoring her pleas and reports of sexual abuse, Georgia prison officials have refused to take any steps to protect Ms. Diamond, showing 鈥渄eliberate indifference鈥� to her suffering, according to a brief filed on her behalf by her lawyers from the Southern Poverty Law Center (人兽性交) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR).

The filing responds to a GDC brief that Ms. Diamond鈥檚 lawyers say shows 鈥渃allous disregard鈥� for the safety of a woman it insists must be housed with men. GDC urges the court to, as it has, ignore the ongoing abuse because Ms. Diamond has not documented the physical injuries from her sexual assaults and because, they allege, she has disciplinary violations.

Neither of these arguments justify ignoring a victim鈥檚 pleas for protection, and neither is legitimate legal grounds to deny Ms. Diamond the injunctive relief to which she is entitled under the law, her lawyers say.

鈥淕DC has proven, time and again, that they consider transgender women like Ashley Diamond unworthy of protection. That鈥檚 why we鈥檙e asking the Court to step in. Serial sexual abuse should not be part of Ms. Diamond鈥檚 鈥� or indeed, anyone鈥檚 鈥攊ncarceration,鈥� said Chinyere Ezie, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Since reentering GDC custody in October 2019, Ms. Diamond has reported more than 15 sexual assaults. In May 2021, Ms. Diamond detailed nearly a dozen sexual assaults and described an environment in which she is grabbed, groped, propositioned, threatened, and otherwise sexually abused on a daily basis. Since that hearing, as today鈥檚 filing lays out, she has suffered even more sexual assaults, including one by multiple men.

GDC does not dispute that it has failed to take action to protect Ms. Diamond since the May hearing. She is still forced to live and shower with men, even though she is female, has breasts, and has taken hormones for more than 25 years. After the hearing, GDC abruptly stopped providing her escorts from her dorm to other locations in the prison that gave her a measure of safety, her lawyers say.

Not only has GDC failed to transfer Ms. Diamond to a female facility or take any other protective measures to which she is entitled, it has failed to properly investigate her reports of abuse. Instead, it has summarily dismissed all of her reports as 鈥渄isproven鈥� and allowed the destruction of video footage that would have corroborated her accounts of abuse.

At the same time, GDC has targeted Ms. Diamond with an avalanche of alleged rules violations, which it now cites as cause to deny her protection 鈥� despite the absence of an impartial tribunal and due process, her lawyers say. According to today鈥檚 filing, not only does the Constitution require prison officials to protect everyone in their custody, regardless of alleged discipline charges, but the unreliability of these alleged violations is clear. At the May hearing, prison officials were caught falsely designating Ms. Diamond as a sexual aggressor to justify their refusal to transfer her 鈥� a designation the court ordered them to reverse after recognizing the discipline charges were supported only by unreliable evidence.

鈥淪adly, Georgia prison officials have met neither their constitutional nor moral responsibility to safeguard Ms. Diamond from a vicious environment of unending sexual abuse,鈥� said Beth Littrell, Senior Attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center. 鈥淭heir latest filing shows a stunning disregard for human suffering when it comes to housing a woman in a men鈥檚 prison. Hopefully, the federal court will see through their head-in-the-sand, blame-the-victim excuses and grant our request for injunctive relief.鈥�