Transgender woman placed with men in central Pa. prison gets pepper-sprayed, blamed by guards after assault: lawsuit

The incident happened in Dauphin County Prison in October 2020.

• By Jenna Wise/ PennLive

(Harrisburg) — Moving to Pennsylvania was supposed to be a fresh start.

Miss Henderson had been living in a Middletown apartment with her fiance for more than two years, actively working on leaving the trauma and legal issues she’d run into in North Carolina behind.

That all changed in October 2020 when she got a call from her fiance, who was at work, saying Middletown police were at their apartment door because someone called 911 about a disturbance.

Henderson, a transgender woman, said she rushed home to talk to the police. The encounter in her home ended with officers using a stun gun on her, handcuffing her and eventually taking her to the Dauphin County Prison.

She told prison officials upon admittance that she was transgender and asked them not to jail her with a bunch of men, but that’s exactly what happened. During her ten-day stay, she says she was groped by another inmate, then brutalized by guards. She filed a lawsuit in November against Dauphin County, Dauphin County Prison, and a number of prison employees.

PennLive is identifying the subject of this article only as “Miss Henderson” out of privacy and harassment concerns.

Her situation illustrates how guidelines for transgender inmates at the federal, state and local level are mixed at best, even as gender norms have become increasingly fluid in America. The situation can be challenging for jails but accommodations aren’t difficult, advocates say.

A federal law, the Prison Rape Elimination Act, requires jails and prisons to place transgender people within prisons on “a case-by-case basis,” but doesn’t provide guidance beyond that, resulting in confusion and varying levels of attention to the plight of vulnerable transgender inmates. Still, the act mandates that prison officials must screen all individuals at admission or transfer to assess their risk of experiencing abuse.

Dauphin County officials declined to answer questions about the incident, including whether any employees were ever investigated or reprimanded, citing the pending litigation. Dauphin County spokesman Brett Hambright told PennLive that officials “followed proper protocols.” He declined to say how many transgender people have passed through the jail.

Cumberland County told PennLive they were housing one transgender inmate as of Jan. 28, 2022, and put her in the female population because she identified as such.

Miss Henderson’s ordeal began when a disturbance was reported to Middletown police at her apartment building. Police described her behavior as instantly belligerent in a police report, but she said the encounter only turned ugly when officers saw her driver’s license that listed her as a male.

She said the officer took one look at the card and told her to “take that [expletive] back to North Carolina.”

Middletown Public Safety Director Bill Baldwin declined to answer any specific questions about Henderson’s arrest but denied police made any derogatory comments.

An argument ensued between Henderson and the officer, and ended with a disturbance, officers firing a stun gun at her back and Henderson on the floor in handcuffs.

Middletown police took Henderson to the hospital for an evaluation and then booked her at Dauphin County Prison while she was still clad in only the top and pajama pants she wore to the grocery store, she said.

Police charged her with aggravated assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. The most serious charges of assault and resisting arrest were later dismissed, and Henderson pleaded guilty to a third-degree misdemeanor of disorderly conduct for being loud when dealing with police.

When she arrived at the prison, she asked to be kept away from the all-male blocks, since she has lived life as a female since she was 12. She had begun transitioning in 2019 with medication, but was not legally allowed to change her driver’s license under Pennsylvania law at that time.

Henderson soon found herself assigned to a bunk bed in a hallway, on an open block with about 100 men.

For two or three days Henderson said she held her bladder, too afraid and uncomfortable to go to the bathroom in such a setting.

She finally could not hold it any longer, she said, and went behind the curtain concealing a small toilet. Prison security footage reviewed by PennLive showed a dimly lit hallway with a line of metal bunk beds against one wall. Private cells with sliding doors line the opposite wall. The video showed what happened next.

Henderson painstakingly hooked in place a white curtain that shielded the toilet from the rest of the block. A male inmate, meanwhile, waited outside the curtain, while pacing at times and looking into other cells.

Seconds later, the man lunged through the curtain and tried to grab Henderson’s butt, she said. Henderson said she ran out of the stall and back to her bunk. The prison footage did not have audio, but Henderson told PennLive the other inmates at this point were yelling for the guards because they saw the man try to assault her in the bathroom stall.

“Look, (homophobic slur,) do not disrupt my pod,” one of the guards said, according to the lawsuit. “Shut your [expletive] mouth or I’ll spray you.”

Two guards walked up to Henderson’s bunk, and she can be seen emotionally describing what took place and pointing to the bathroom. A third guard approached. Within seconds, one of them sprayed Mace in Henderson’s face. They wrestled her to the ground and a dozen additional guards sprinted down the hallway to help detain her.

Henderson said the guards blamed the incident on the way she was dressed and told her to stop screaming and crying.

In the fray, Henderson’s weave — glued and sewn into her head — was ripped off. Screaming and crying, Henderson was forced to her feet and taken to the showers to wash off the pepper spray.

The man who Henderson said assaulted her stood nearby, watching the whole ordeal, without any guards detaining him, according to the video.

A correctional officer started filming Henderson on a handheld video camera as she was forced to strip and step into the shower. Dauphin County would not answer questions about this procedure, but Henderson’s lawyers said it may be protocol to film inmates during guard-facilitated showers.

“He attacked me for no reason,” Henderson gasped, still standing in the shower. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You’re gonna live,” one of the guards is heard saying.

“I can’t breathe,” Henderson sobbed.

Henderson continued to cry as she toweled off, dressed and was taken to what she said was a suicide-prevention cell. These cells are used to monitor inmates who are at risk of killing themselves and are not the same as solitary confinement cells.

“I really thought I was going to die in there,” Henderson said in reference to the assault. “They tried to cover it up — they didn’t report the sexual assault.”

In the suicide cell, Henderson said she was forced to wear a “turtle suit” that decreased mobility to keep her from hurting herself — even though she said she never expressed a desire to do so.

Su Ming Yeh, executive director for the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, told PennLive that prisons have a constitutional responsibility to keep inmates safe.

“We know people who are LGBTQ+ are particularly vulnerable in prisons, especially in jail sexual assaults,” Yeh said. “Jails should do everything possible to protect those individuals.”

Forty percent of incarcerated transgender people have been sexually assaulted—more than ten times the general prison population rate, according to data collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the Department of Justice.

Yeh said prisons generally have the ability to make accommodations for transgender inmates, and have done so in the past. Accommodations may include full privacy while using the bathroom or showering, or being in a cell with supervision. Yeh said it’s also important for all prison staff to be trained on how to work with LGBTQ+ inmates.

“When someone is incarcerated – if they’re assaulted – that’s not their fault. The jail has a responsibility to mitigate all risks of harm to them,” Yeh said.

Lexipol, a lawyer-led organization that provides guidance for public safety agencies, said prisons have a responsibility to thoroughly screen inmates and make sure they’re receiving resources for conditions that could be detrimental to their health.

“If the offender is in the LGTBI group, careful examination must be given to his or her fears, depression, anxieties, etc.,” Lexipol posted on their website.

Multiple experts told PennLive Dauphin County is required to follow guidelines established under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), passed in 2003, because the county prison receives federal funding for housing inmates.

PREA has multiple guidelines that refer to LGBTQ+ inmates, including: providing adequate employee training for how to work with all inmates, screening for risk of victimization and abuse, assigning housing in ways that will protect inmates without unfairly segregating them, and taking the proper steps to identify whether a prison sexual abuse incident was triggered by a gender identity or LGBTQ+ hate crime.

Hambright told PennLive Dauphin County was deemed in PREA compliance in 2020. Reporting options and services, with phone numbers, are posted next to the phones, he said. He declined to say whether the unidentified man Henderson said assaulted her faced any disciplinary action or additional charges.

Henderson said she was kept in the suicide cell for several days, unable to leave the jail because of a $10,000 monetary bail. In that time, she said she was forced to defecate in a sink because the outside and inside of her toilet was covered in a previous inmate’s feces.

Prison medical staff did not provide her with her hormone medication, or the prescription pills she takes on a daily basis for anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, Henderson said. She said she was refused a cup or utensils, and had to use her hands for anything she ate or drank.

The suicide cell did not have a mat or any sheets for her to sleep on, Henderson said. After four days in the cell, she said, a correctional officer brought in her Mace-soaked sheets from her old bunk bed.

About a day later, Henderson’s fiance posted her bail. She immediately went to the hospital and was diagnosed with a closed-head concussion, which she said was caused by guards shoving her head into the concrete floor and wall.

Henderson called more than a dozen lawyers before finding one who agreed to take her case, because lawsuits can be difficult to win money damages with the qualified immunity defense for government officials.

“I knew I didn’t do anything wrong,” Henderson said. “I knew what was done to me was wrong,.”

Depositions are in progress, and Henderson’s lawyers will soon be attending a mediation hearing on her behalf to weigh all their options on how to move the case forward.

“We’re in 2022. We have many different kinds of community members and they have a constitutional, legal obligation to care for people’s safety,” said Leticia Chavez-Freed, Henderson’s attorney. “They’re taking a very vulnerable community member and just putting her in a bunk bed where anything can happen. This is a victim of sexual assault and their response is to beat her, Mace her.

“It is our hope the next Miss Henderson is going to have proper housing, proper clothing, a proper bathroom for her, use the proper pronouns for her. … that she’s going to be considered a human being who makes it to the judge.”

Reliving her time in Dauphin County Prison has been traumatic, Henderson said. She has physically healed, but said she continues to struggle with emotional and mental anguish.

“[But] I could not let it go. It becomes a part in your life when you’re tired of being walked on and mistreated,” Henderson said. “I had to do it for me.”