For Transgender People Prison Isn’t Just Terrifying It’s Hell

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Samantha Hill prayed to God that it would finally end — even if it ended with her death.

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It had been almost 10 days since Hill, a transgender woman, was placed in an isolated federal prison cell with the man who would rape her — a member of the Latin Kings gang. In those 10 days, he had physically attacked her and sexually assaulted her multiple times. In a secluded, small special housing unit — typically used for solitary confinement — no one acted on her screams for help.

But in what she calls a miracle, Hill’s prayer was answered the next day: She would be freed from the cell, eventually taken away from her rapist.

Still, she would not be free from such attacks for long — soon after, the federal prison system put her in another cell in another facility with another male inmate who once again sexually assaulted her. And this wasn’t the first time Hill went through this cycle — before the Latin Kings member became her cellmate, she was sexually assaulted at least four times.

Altogether, it took at least eight sexual assaults across five federal prisons throughout the country and the threat of a lawsuit for the federal prison system to finally move Hill to a safe facility.

It took at least eight sexual assaults across five federal prisons for the prison system to finally move Samantha Hill to a safe facility

During the course of her time in prison since 1998, Hill was sexually assaulted once in 2001, once in 2003, at least four times in 2010, once in 2011, and once in 2013, according to Hill and her lawsuit. There was also an attempted sexual assault in a shower in 2014. And throughout all of this, Hill was repeatedly physically assaulted.

The core problem is how the prison system classifies and treats Hill and others like her. Hill is a transgender woman — someone who identifies and presents as a woman but was designated as male at birth. But the prison system treats her as a man, so she has been locked up in men’s prisons, typically high-security facilities with very violent inmates. The results have been tragically predictable.

Despite all of this, Hill believes she’s finally reached the “light behind the darkness of the tunnel.” In addition to keeping Hill safe, the lawsuit settlement requires the Federal Bureau of Prisons to provide treatments for Hill’s gender dysphoria, PTSD, and rape trauma syndrome, as well as pay her $70,000.

Hill, for now, has her own cell and can only be assigned a cellmate with her “serious consideration.” She has access to makeup and women’s clothing and hygiene products. And prison staff now refer to her as a woman, calling her by her chosen name.

Hill doesn’t name a specific event that put her on the path that eventually doomed her to prison. She does admit her mistakes. But she also references her early life, explaining how she lived in an abusive family that pushed her to homelessness, leading her to resort to drugs for an escape and crimes — sex work, theft, and eventually attempted bank robberies — to make ends meet.

It is tragic enough as one person’s story. But Hill is no anomaly. She is just one trans person whose experiences reflect the horrible circumstances many trans people — and, to a lesser extent, LGBTQ people more broadly — go through. From family rejection to higher rates of victimization in prison, one factor that makes Hill’s story so terrifying is how common her experience may be.

Here is Hill’s story, told largely from her perspective, based on her conversations with me and verified by legal and prison documents and her attorneys, Lisi Owen and Sarah Hartley.

An abusive family to nearly two decades in prison

Hill was born in 1971 in Massachusetts. From the start, she faced serious problems in her family: “My mom and stepdad were both alcoholics. There was some abuse there.”

Hill says her uncle sexually abused her — abuse she didn’t even identify as such until she was older. In her understanding as a child, her mother wouldn’t drop her off at a dangerous man’s place. And her uncle always told her he loved her after it was over. So Hill assumed there was nothing wrong with what was happening to her.

But Hill says she always knew something was different about her. At first she thought she was gay, since she was attracted to boys. But she also knew she identified more with girls than boys — and as she got older, this would lead her to embrace her identity as a trans woman.

At 16 or 17, Hill came out to her parents, and she was caught sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy. (Hill says she didn’t know it was wrong at the time. She thought, based on her experience with her uncle, that’s just how love is expressed.) Shortly thereafter, her parents kicked her out of the house.

“I was kicked out of the house by my mom and dad when they found out I was gay. So I went to the street, became homeless, and lived on the streets.”

Hill said, “I went through middle school, all the way up high school. Then I dropped out, because I was kicked out of the house by my mom and dad when they found out I was gay. So I went to the streets, became homeless, and lived on the streets.

“I continued to stay on the streets for years. I would get arrested for petty crimes. I went to jail. As I got older, I just got tired of the life down there on the street, and I got into drugs really heavy.” She turned to theft and sex work to buy food and drugs, but that eventually wasn’t enough. “So I went and robbed a bank, and then got sent to federal prison and did eight years.”

The line from family rejection to homelessness and prison that Hill described is far from atypical. According to the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS), 57 percent of trans and gender nonconforming people report family rejection.

This has precipitous effects: Those rejected by their families were nearly three times as likely to experience homelessness, 68 percent more likely to resort to drugs and alcohol to deal with mistreatment, and 73 percent more likely to be incarcerated. So family rejection can potentially play a tremendous role in a trans person’s future — and it appeared to in Hill’s life.

Read the rest of the story at Vox.com.

About Post Author

Professor Mike

Professor Mike is a left-leaning, dog loving, political junkie. He has written dozens of articles for Substack, Medium, Simily, and Tribel. Professor Mike has been published at Smerconish.com, among others. He is a strong proponent of the environment, and a passionate protector of animals. In addition he is a fierce anti-Trumper. Take a moment and share his work.
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