by Debra Heine
Female prison inmates inside the Washington Corrections Center For Women (WCCW) revealed in secret video footage this week how biological males are gaming the state’s Transgender Housing Program and victimizing vulnerable women.
Washington State’s Department of Corrections (DOC) boasts that it has been “a leader in the nation working with incarcerated transgender individuals providing gender affirming care to include housing in gender appropriate facilities.”
DOC officials, however, reportedly refuse to disclose how many genitally intact biological males have been incarcerated in state women’s prisons, and are not taking allegations of sexual abuse seriously, according to whistleblowers.
An inmate at WCCW in Gig Harbor, whose voice was altered to protect her identity, explained to an O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) journalist how the state’s radical “gender affirming” policies have victimized women.
“Rapists, murderers, child rapists, and men who have killed women get put in our rooms,” the woman said, adding that women have been sexually assaulted, but the state hasn’t reported the incidents.
“Imagine coming into your room one day and you’re in closed custody and you turn around, and there’s a man peeing in the toilet,” the woman, identified as “Inmate #1,” said. “There’s nothing you can do!”
“Somehow in this institution, they are adopting ways to apply these so-called mandated laws, that came out of nowhere to prohibit segregation for certain individuals,” a second whistleblower told OMG. “Usually sex offenders are not in general population,” the woman noted.
“Some of these men are not confused. They’re just manipulating the system,” Inmate #1 said. The woman complained that the policies appear to prioritize the “rights” of the self-identified trans inmates over the rights of biological women in the facility.
“They kind of cater to the trans community,” she explained.
In March of 2022, Washington’s State legislature passed House Bill 1956, which prevents the state DOC from having to reveal any information about an inmate’s “transgender, intersex, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming status, sexual orientation, genital anatomy, or gender-affirming care or accommodations other than that person’s preferred name and pronouns.”
Meanwhile, a GOP authored bill proposing that inmates convicted of sex crimes against women be barred from the general population in women’s prisons “went nowhere.”
In recent years, according to past whistleblowers, a “transgender” inmate who was charged and convicted for sexually mutilating and killing three women in the Spokane area was sentenced to the Gig Harbor facility for women. In the same facility, another biologically male inmate identifying as “trans”—who was originally convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl—allegedly groomed and raped a developmentally disabled female inmate.
Inmate #1 told OMG how easy it is for biological males to game the system.
“All you have to do is say that you are a woman,” she said, explaining that men in the county jail often tell authorities that they identify as female just to get sent to their facility.
“The guys don’t even have to go to the men’s prison first,” she said. “Some of these men know that they’re men. They’re not trying to be a woman. They just say that to come here to have sex with women during their prison sentences.”
She said there’s nothing the female inmates can do to avoid bunking with one of these male predators than pretend to be suicidal so they are put in “the crazy unit to get out of that room.” She added that women who object to going back, get in “major” trouble.
“We don’t have a voice. We don’t have a leg to stand on,” she complained. “Any time we voice these kinds of things we are met with ridicule, targeting, bias, punishment, solitary confinement.
“I told all of this to the assistant secretary,” the woman told OMG, adding that she was told the state would “look into” the alarming allegations.
The Assistant Secretary of the Women’s Prison Division at the Washington State Department of Corrections is former State Senator Jeannie Darneille (D-Tacoma).
Inmate #2 said that she’s heard men scheming about getting a woman pregnant in order to prompt a lawsuit against the Washington Corrections Center For Women. She said one man was the “mastermind” of a scheme to have sex with a female inmate and impregnate her. She said he was willing to be accused of rape so his purported victim could get a million dollar settlement, and share it with him.
“The slang term that they’re calling it is “million dollar baby,” the woman said. “No, no. That shouldn’t even be in America.”
She told OMG that the medical staff at WCCW is “the poorest in the country,” and the women’s needs are not met, including estrogen shots for women going through menopause. The biological males posing as women, however, get all of their needs met, including estrogen shots if they want them, she said.
O’Keefe said that he “wrestled over the decision to publish the undercover footage of the women due to the potential for retaliation against them, but determined that the story was too important to drop.
“The thought of letting this continue, and allowing women who are confined to be raped with impunity, was unconscionable to us. And the women themselves, knowing the risks, agreed to let their interviews be used,” he said.
Melissa Johnson, the Public Information Officer for the Washington Corrections Center for Women, deleted her Twitter account following the publication of OMG’s video.
GONE: The Public Information Officer for the Washington Corrections Center for Women has DELETED her Twitter account.
This follows an OMG News investigation into the facility’s policy to place trans identifying male rapists in the same cell as women. pic.twitter.com/LGPwAMTSII
— O’Keefe Media Group (@OKeefeMedia) April 14, 2023
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Debra Heine reports for American Greatness.
Photo “Female Prisoner” by Officer Bimblebury. CC BY-SA 4.0.
