By Allan Turner
Houston Chronicle
HOUSTON, Texas — Lawyers for a transgender woman who says she repeatedly has been threatened, forced into sexual encounters and physically assaulted filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, alleging prison officials failed to safeguard the inmate despite numerous requests for protection.
The lawsuit filed in Houston federal court by Lambda Legal, a GLBT advocacy group, says Passion Star, listed in prison documents as Joshua Zollicoffer, has been violently harassed in at least six men’s prisons over a 12-year period.
Star, 30, is serving a 20-year sentence for aggravated kidnapping in Coryell County, west of Waco. The lawsuit said Star was moved to a solitary confinement cell at Abilene’s Robertson Unit on July 27, one day after she met with a Lambda lawyer, and has remained there since.
“Ms. Star has been pleading for protection from rapes, beatings, knifings and threats to her life since she entered TDCJ custody as a teenager, but instead of separating her from aggressors, Texas prison officials have forced her to remain in the general population in male prisons,” said Star’s lawyer, Jael Humphrey. “It’s absolutely appalling how TCDJ officials … callously ignore the desperate pleas of Ms. Star and other LGBT people in custody asking to be protected from sexual abuse.”
‘Zero tolerance’ claims
Prison spokesman Jason Clark said he could not comment on the lawsuit. “TDCJ has a zero tolerance policy against sexual encounters of any kind within the system,” he said. He said his department operates a Safe Prisons Program aimed at curbing sexual assault and violence in all its units.
The lawsuit identifies Star as a homosexual man with a female alias. Humphrey said her client has not undergone a medical sex-change procedure.
Most violent incident
According to the lawsuit, gang members at multiple prisons have coerced Star into sexual encounters. Once, the lawsuit said, she was raped at knifepoint. On another occasion, she suffered a broken tooth when she was punched in the face.
The lawsuit says one of the most violent attacks occurred at the Hughes Unit, a men’s prison in Gatesville, on Nov. 20 - one day after Star had pleaded with officials to protect her against a Crips gang member named “J.T.” Instead, officials ordered her returned to “the next available cell,” a cell that turned out to be in the pod occupied by the man she feared.
Despite a personal plea to a prison official and an emergency grievance appealing the decision to return her to the general population, Hughes officials took no action, the lawsuit claims.
The next morning, J.T. and other gang members accosted Star as she walked to breakfast, denouncing her as a “snitching (expletive).” J.T., the lawsuit says, then repeatedly slashed her face with a razor, inflicting wounds that required 36 sutures to close. Two days later, prison officials informed Star that they did not find sufficient evidence to support her allegations, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit asks that Star be lodged in safe quarters for the duration of her incarceration, be provided medical, psychological and counseling services as needed, and awarded compensatory and punitive damages from prison officials listed as defendants.