Jun 09, 2006  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

Two transgender women said they plan to file a discrimination complaint against the District’s Department of Corrections after officials at the D.C. Jail refused to allow them to visit inmates because of their personal appearance.

Gigi Thomas, a client advocate for the local group HIPS, which provides services to local sex workers, and Tiffany Everlasting, a HIPS volunteer, said jail officials told them they could not enter the jail because they wore women’s clothes but lacked identification classifying them as biological females.

The two women said they appeared separately and at different times on May 30 at the visitor’s reception desk of the Correctional Treatment Facility at 19th and D streets, S.E. The facility, known as the CTF, is operated privately under a Department of Corrections contract with the Corrections Corporation of America, a firm that operates prisons throughout the country.

An official with the D.C. Office of Human Rights said the action by the jail appears to violate the city’s Human Rights Act, which bans discrimination against transgender people. The act covers city government agencies as well as the private sector, including private employers.

Walter Fulton, program manager at the command center for the Correctional Treatment Facility, said the facility has a dress code policy that prevented “cross-dressers” from being admitted as visitors.

He said the policy, which was under review, was based on concerns about how jail employees could conduct a “pat down” search of a transgender person as part of routine searches of all jail visitors. He said the searches were aimed at preventing visitors from bringing contraband, including illegal drugs, into city correctional facilities.

“It’s likely that accommodations will be made to allow cross dressers to visit,” he said.

Guard convicted of sexual assault

The refusal by CTF officials to allow Thomas and Everlasting visitation rights came less than three months after a D.C. Superior Court jury convicted a guard at the same facility of sexually assaulting a transgender inmate.

Court records show that Robert Ali White, 37, was convicted of a single count of first-degree sexual abuse of a ward for allegedly forcing a transgender inmate to perform oral sex on him in December 2004. He was scheduled for sentencing on July 21.

D.C. police arrested White on Dec. 29, 2004, at the CTF facility after an inmate reported that the corrections officer allegedly forced the inmate to engage in a sexual act with him, according to court records.

“The correction officer, who was later identified as Robert White, told the inmate to step into the bathroom that’s next to his cell,” a police affidavit submitted to the court says.

The affidavit says White ordered the inmate to face him as he masturbated and ordered the inmate to take his penis into his mouth as he ejaculated.

Court records identify the inmate as Timothy Jones.

The inmate said she has retained an attorney and plans to file a civil lawsuit against the Department of Corrections and CTF unless an out of court settlement for damages can be reached in the next several weeks.

Beverly Young, a spokesperson for the Department of Corrections, said the department has no comment on the sexual assault incident or the denial of Thomas and Everlasting admittance into the CTF as visitors. Young said the CTF and the Corrections Corporation of America were responsible for actions and developments that occur inside CTF-run facilities and any comments about the two incidents should come from them.

Devon Brown, director of the Department of Corrections, did not respond to a request for an interview.

Pattern of discrimination?

Although White’s conviction is unrelated to the jail’s refusal to allow visitation rights for Thomas and Everlasting, transgender activists say they view the incidents as part of a continuing pattern of discrimination against transgender people in the city’s correctional system.

“I can list any number of problems that the transgender community has faced at the corrections system going back many years,” said Earlene Budd, a transgender advocate who counsels those leaving the city’s prisons and halfway houses.

Alexis Taylor, general counsel for the D.C. Office of Human Rights, said the Department of Corrections and all of its facilities, similar to other D.C. government agencies, are prohibited from discriminating against transgender persons under the city’s Human Rights Act.

The D.C. Council approved language earlier this year that added the term “gender identity and expression” to the act. Gay D.C. Councilmember Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who pushed through a bill calling for the new language, said the legislation was aimed at clarifying the law to make it clear that transgender persons were protected from discrimination.

“If this ...