MACON, Georgia – Ashley Diamond, a black transgender woman, presented new evidence to the court overseeing her case against the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) Tuesday and again urged the court to order a transfer from male prison to which she has confessed to repeated sexual assault and relentless sexual harassment.
She has suffered two more sexual assaults, including one by several men, since a hearing in May detailed the abuse by both detained men and prison officials. Conditions have become so dangerous that Diamond, an activist who has campaigned for the rights of incarcerated and transsexuals for years, recently attempted suicide.
“As a result of the retaliation I have described, and because all of my efforts to report sexual abuse and ill-treatment have been disregarded, reporting sexual assault within the GDC continues to feel both dangerous and pointless,” said Diamond. “I still fear for my life when I report assault and sexual misconduct from gang-linked aggressors, of which there are several. And although I am sexually harassed so often, it is impossible for me to document every incident, but my complaints to the GDC employees have also brought nothing. “
Exactly a year after Ms. Diamond filed her lawsuit, attorneys at the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Center for Constitutional Rights resubmitted today on Ms. Diamond’s behalf. Since the hearing in May, GDC has refused to take any action or corrective action, or to transfer her to a women’s facility where she would be safer. Evidence recently released by the GDC shows that she has unceremoniously dismissed all of Ms. Diamond’s reports of sexual assault, refused to review camera footage, and refused to dismiss eyewitness accounts.
“Contrary to the arguments of the defendants, prison officials cannot justify failure to protect Ms. Diamond from sexual assault by improperly investigating more than a dozen assaults under her supervision,” said Beth Littrell, SPLC senior attorney.
“Deliberate ignorance is not a constitutional excuse.”
The need to take protective measures couldn’t be more urgent, lawyers say. At the Coastal State Prison, where the GDC insists on keeping Ms. Diamond, she is faced with ever-present dangers. Sexual assaults aside, the times she has been caught, groped, suggested, threatened and molested are too numerous to count, according to court records. She is routinely threatened with death if she even looks in the direction of certain men, and narrowly escapes when a group of men with knives stormed her dormitory.
“Putting transgender women in male prisons where they are certain to be subjected to sexual abuse and assault is the definition of cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment,” said Chinyere Ezie, senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Diamond was sexually assaulted 18 times during two terms. Based on her active history – her first lawsuit resulted in a loss for the division, and both lawsuits led the DOJ to investigate their failure.
She was first arrested in 2012 and sentenced to 12 years in prison after pawning a saw stolen from her boyfriend. Officials also denied critical hormone therapy, which she had received for 17 years, and put her in solitary confinement for “pretending to be a woman”.
Diamond filed a lawsuit demanding that the GDC provide both safe accommodation for transgender prisoners and medically necessary care. In February 2016, after her release, she reached a landmark agreement that led to significant reforms; For example, the GDC approved hormone therapy. Little changed for transgender people in Georgia’s prisons, however, as Diamond learned firsthand when she was re-incarcerated in 2019 for a technical suspended sentence violation.
In 2020, she filed a second lawsuit against the GDC, demanding transfer from a men’s prison and adequate care for gender dysphoria.
In response to her legal advocacy, the GDC launched what her lawyers called a “smear campaign” to punish her and reduce her chances of early release by accusing her of a spate of suspicious violations. The recent dismissals of their sexual assault complaints without notice, say their lawyers, are part of this pattern of retaliation.
While her 2016 settlement secured important reforms, Diamond has been fighting essentially the same litigation for years, and the risks she faces have only grown more acute. The motion filed today calls on the court to protect Diamond by transferring her to a women’s facility and otherwise taking measures to protect her from the onslaught of sexual assault and abuse.
