MACON, Georgia — A federal judge told transgender inmate Ashley Diamond on Monday that she had not proven prison officials' "deliberate indifference" to her well-being, despite her claims that she's been repeatedly sexually assaulted while in their custody. Federal Judge Marc T. Treadwell of the Middle District of Georgia told Diamond that "there may indeed be some risk" of rape at her current facility and that a transfer might be the "optimum solution," but that he would not order the prison to do so.
The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit on Diamond's behalf against prison administrators in February, alleging that the Georgia Department of Corrections violated her Constitutional rights by depriving her hormone therapy and disregarding her "substantial vulnerability to sexual assault." On April 10, after intervention from the U.S. Department of Justice, Georgia changed its policy on medically treating transgender inmates, ending its "freeze-frame" policies. It was a victory in the national fight for transgender prisoners' rights — the first time the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has formally supported trans prisoners' right to medical treatment, which resulted in a major policy change by a state that has faced criticism from LGBT rights activists for its trans rights record.
On Monday, the federal court heard testimony about the second part of Diamond's lawsuit: her unceasing fear of being raped, and her lawyers' request to a judge that Diamond be transferred from her current facility, Georgia State Prison, to a place "where she can be afforded reasonable safety." But after harrowing testimony from Diamond about her experiences in prison, Treadwell denied the request, while acknowledging the "substantial pressures" of her "current placement."
Diamond, appearing in court for the first time, was explicit about those pressures. "What do you think would happen if you were raped again?" Diamond's lawyer asked her during the hearing.
"I'd rather die," she replied.
When she entered prison in 2012, Diamond was assigned to begin her sentence at a male facility, though she identified as a woman and had been taking female hormones for 17 years. (Under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, prisons are required to consider the wishes of transgender prisoners, but the final decision on their placement lies with the state.) Diamond has been housed with men ever since, and over the last three years, she said, she has been sexually assaulted seven times. She's also been transferred at least six times — her most recent transfer to Georgia State Prison (GSP) was in March, weeks after her federal lawsuit was filed. On Monday, Diamond said that before the transfer, an officer told her that "when you fuck with the GDC, they fuck with you back."
Wearing a sterile white prison uniform with navy collar and her hair cut short, Diamond described how on her second day at GSP, she was allegedly cornered by another inmate in a stairwell. The inmate referenced a gang rape that Diamond had reported at another facility, then asked if her if she had an "old man" at the new facility, Diamond said. He grabbed her wrists and told her he wanted "to see if that ass was soft" before groping her. When Diamond yelled for help, she said, another inmate helped chased off the assailant.
Diamond also told the court about allegedly being raped by six gang members at one facility, about watching inmates masturbate in front of her on the prison yard of another facility, about finding threatening letters left on her bed, about how some prison officials have advised her to "guard your booty," and about how more men have assaulted her in prison than she'd consented to being with before her arrest. All of this, she said, has made her feel "a little less human-like." But each time she's reported an assault to the Georgia Department of Corrections, Diamond said, they've failed to take it seriously. In one instance, BuzzFeed News reported in December, Diamond said she was told by a lieutenant that "it was her fault because she was transgender and … screaming rape at every camp she goes to."
In the SPLC's injunction, attorneys argued that GSP "boasts one of the highest rates of sexual assault of any GDC facility." The document describes how Diamond has been "threatened by an inmate who began following her around her dormitory, exposed himself, and demanded to see her genitals, saying 'I know you're a girl. Let me see that pussy. I know you have a pussy.'" In the following days, that same inmate "lunged at her, grabbed her buttocks, and told her she needed his 'cobra cock.'" Diamond allegedly complained to prison staff about the inmate, but he remains in her dorm.
Before the judge's decision, lawyers for the correctional department argued that GSP officials have met with Diamond and asked her if she felt safe. Twice she has signed declarations stating she did feel safe. But Diamond and her lawyers said these statements were made under duress — under the threat that if she said she didn't feel safe, she'd be put into "lockdown," or some form of administrative segregation. But that "doesn't save you," Diamond said. "If someone wants to hurt you, they can get to you."
Previously in segregation, Diamond had attempted suicide and self-castration.
"At this point, it's not an option," she said. "Why does it always have to be lockdown? … Why can't we change the environment?"
Diamond's attorney and SPLC Deputy Legal Director David Dinielli said during Monday's hearing that prison officials supervising Diamond have had no training on housing transgender inmates. During the last hearing, Dinielli pointed out, one official testified that he's never read through the entire federal PREA law because they're "too long" — but that official works on the prison Sexual Assault Response Team (SART). Dinielli also argued that while administrators have made strides in Diamond's care — providing her hormones after the Justice Department's intervention and increasing her daily supervision — "there's no reason to believe after three and a half years, they'd suddenly get it right."
In a statement after Monday's hearing, Dinielli said he was disappointed by the court's decision, but "encouraged by the court's close attention to the dangers Ashley Diamond currently faces in prison."
In December, Dinielli told BuzzFeed News that in the Georgia prison system, "it seems as if there is literally disbelief at the fact that there are people who are transgender." A prison deputy warden who testified Monday repeatedly referred to Diamond as "Mr. Diamond," using male pronouns to describe her — a continuation of prison officials' behavior from prior hearings. (Diamond's lawyers, the state's attorneys, and the federal judge all referred to Diamond using female pronouns.)
In the courtroom, Diamond's mother and sister watched from the front row. Right before a break, while Diamond was being escorted in chains out of the courtroom, they told her they loved her, and she blew kisses to them. When Diamond left the room, her sister hunched her whole body over the bench and wept.
Diamond was allowed to hug her mother at the end of the hearing. She told her, "It's not over. It's just the beginning."
