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An inmate at Illinois’ largest women’s prison says she was raped by
a transgender inmate who was transferred into her housing unit last
year, and claims Illinois Department of Corrections officials
conducted a “sham investigation” to help cover up the incident.

In a federal lawsuit filed last week, a Jane Doe inmate at the Logan Correctional Center in central Illinois said that after being
sexually assaulted in June 2019, she was coerced by a supervisory
officer into denying the attack took place and then punished for
filing a “false” complaint under the Prison Rape Elimination Act
(PREA).

The suit names Logan’s acting warden Beatrice Calhoun as a
defendant, along with officers Brent Keeler and Todd Sexton.

“The transfer of transgender inmates from male to female prisons has
been a contentious policy within IDOC,” the plaintiff’s Peoria-based attorneys wrote in a five-page complaint. “In an attempt to justify
the transfers, Defendants Sexton, Calhoun, Keeler and currently
other unknown IDOC employees covered up the sexual assault of
Plaintiff and tried to falsely classify it as consensual, to keep it
from being considered a PREA violation.”

Two transgender inmates who were housed in men’s prisons, Strawberry
Hampton and Janiah Monroe, have sued IDOC separately in recent
years, demanding they be moved to Logan because they’d allegedly
been the target of sexual harassment and abuse from male inmates and
prison employees. Alan Mills, who leads the Uptown People’s Law
Center – a Chicago-based legal group, which has represented both
Hampton and Monroe – confirmed Monroe is the inmate who is being
accused in this case, though he was dismissive of the allegations
against her.

An IDOC spokeswoman did not respond to multiple requests for
comment.

According to the new lawsuit, Monroe, who is identified as a
transgender inmate who “identifies as female, but still has male
genitalia” was moved into the plaintiff’s housing unit on June 18,
2019, and immediately began “express(ing) an interest” in the
plaintiff.

“Plaintiff was terrified of this inmate as the inmate was much
bigger and stronger than Plaintiff,” the lawsuit states. “Plaintiff
had also heard that this inmate had assaulted prior cellmates and
had been convicted of murder.”

That same day, the plaintiff said she was raped by Monroe – whose
name is not included nor listed as a defendant in the complaint.

Following the incident, the plaintiff was moved into the prison’s
Health Care Unit, where she was interviewed by internal affairs
officers, according to the complaint. The following day, she was
interviewed by Sexton, who allegedly told her “that he did not
believe her and he pressured Plaintiff to say there was no sexual
assault.”

https://news.wttw.com/2020/02/19/lawsuit-female-prisoner-says-she- was-raped-transgender-inmate

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