This whole situation has too many unanswered questions.
What is your take on it?
Sexually reassigned Va inmate sues prison system
The Associated Press
© December 29, 2010
RICHMOND
A Virginia inmate who was born a male but surgically altered to be a female because of severe birth defects claims in a lawsuit against state officials that she should be held in a women's prison.
Deena Kaye Myers, 28, was going by the alias "Scott" when she was convicted of 11 felonies, including robbery and several auto thefts, and sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2001. She is being held in an all-male dormitory at Deerfield Correctional Center in Capron.
Myers was born a male with cloacal exstrophy, a rare defect that includes an exposed gastrointestinal and bladder. Traditionally, males born with the disease were sexually reassigned soon after birth, as was Myers.
Myers' birth certificate lists her as a female.
The lawsuit, filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in Richmond, seeks $25 million in damages, that prison authorities change her records to reflect that she is a female and that she be transferred to a women's facility. The lawsuit was first reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
The prison system doesn't comment on litigation, spokesman Larry Traylor said.
According to the lawsuit, Myers suffers from spina bifida with partial paralysis of the legs requiring use of a wheelchair, clubbed feet, urinary and intestinal problems.
Myers claims prison officials have violated her rights under the Constitution and the Americans with Disabilities Act by holding her in an all-male institution.
Myers said she questioned why she was being held in a male facility when she was first assigned to Deerfield. Myers claims Department of Corrections physicians twice — in 2008 and 2010 — examined her and found she did not have male genitalia.
Prison officials have refused to transfer Myers. The lawsuit claims the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the issue. The Justice Department did not immediately return a call seeking confirmation of an investigation.
Myers claims that in June, prison officials told her the matter was a "medical issue" that was being reviewed. A month later, she was informed that the physician recommended she stay at Deerfield.
Myers claims the prison forced her to take testosterone injections for several years in order to leave segregation and be with other inmates, but that she stopped taking them in 2008 because they made her aggressive.
She also claims that she was sexually harassed by a correctional officer and that she was subjected to numerous strip searches and body cavity searches by members of the opposite sex. She also claims that before being placed in a handicapped accessible cell she was forced to crawl around her cell for months because her wheelchair couldn't fit through the door.
Myers has unsuccessfully petitioned to correct her court records to show she is female. She also has asked the governor for clemency.
Myers is representing herself, but has asked the judge to appoint a lawyer.
Original Article
Richmond Times-Dispatch, VA, USA
Sexually reassigned, inmate’s alone among 96 males
By Frank Green
Published: May 23, 2010
Updated: May 26, 2010 4:45 PM
[Photo: Even though her birth certificate and driver’s license list
Deena Kaye Myers as a female, she has been assigned to serve her
sentence in an all-male facility.]
CAPRON—Deena Kaye Myers entered the world on Christmas Eve 1981 with a birth defect so severe that males with the condition were often
surgically altered to females.
The newborn male was rushed from Danville Memorial Hospital to Duke
University Medical Center for a series of neonatal operations. On Feb. 18, 1982, a Virginia birth certificate was filed recording Myers’ sex as female.
Like others sexually reassigned at birth, Myers later had trouble with gender identity. She also had trouble with the law and is serving a 15-year sentence, for 11 felony convictions, in a dormitory with 96 male inmates.
Myers admits that it is her own fault that she is behind bars, on
convictions including robbery, but she contends her biggest problem in life is not one of her choosing: “I’m not a man. . . . I should never have been in a male prison.“
Myers claims she was told in jail and later in prison that she could
leave segregation and be with the other inmates if she took
testosterone, a male hormone, which lowered her voice and caused her
to grow thicker facial hair.
Myers also claims that she often got in trouble in prison because of
the testosterone, which she says made her aggressive. She said she
stopped taking it in December 2008 and has had no disciplinary charges since.
“I done something wrong and, yes, I’m doing my time and [paying] my
debt to society. I’m not saying I’m perfect,“ she said in a recent
interview. But, she added, “doing time is one thing, being forced to
be someone that you’re not is another.“
Myers insists on being called “she” and “Ms.,“ not “he” or “Mr.“
The Virginia Department of Corrections, citing restrictions on
commenting about inmate medical issues, will not answer questions
about Myers, who is under 5 feet tall, and whose disabilities include club feet. She uses a wheelchair.
. . .
Myers, who is being held at the Deerfield Correctional Center in
Capron, about 20 miles east of Emporia, made available a copy of a
prison medical record indicating she was receiving testosterone
injections in 2005. The record also indicates that at the time, she
was using the name “Scott,“ an alias listed in her court records.
“When I was taking them male hormone shots, I didn’t know Deena, if
you understand what I’m trying to say,“ said Myers.
Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said
testosterone has been prescribed by physicians and given to inmates if ordered by the courts. He could not say how often, for what reasons or the cost.
Traylor said that in general, each inmate is evaluated when entering
the system to determine all aspects of the inmate’s needs. “This is a rigorous classification process established to determine an inmate’s medical and mental-health status,“ he said.
“We also scrutinize the inmate’s conviction history to determine the
proper security level and any therapeutic and educational needs. In
short, we evaluate every inmate and then place him according to his
needs, security level, and the availability of bed space,“ he said.
Traylor said every case is different.
“We strive to balance the inmate’s needs while at the same time
securing the overall safety of the prison environment. We also make
sure we are following all proven and proper standards of treatment,“
he said.
. . .
To the Office of Vital Statistics, Deena Kaye Myers is female, but to the Virginia prison system and three different circuit courts, she is male.
One thing is clear to her mother, Peggy Harville of Danville, who
raised Deena as a girl: “It’s been a lot of pain for that child. I’ll tell you, it’s been a lot of pain.“
Myers was born with cloacal exstrophy, a defect that occurs once in
every 400,000 births. Its cause is unknown, but its effects can be
devastating for both the baby and family.
Abnormalities include an exposed gastrointestinal tract and bladder.
In males, genitalia can be undeveloped, deformed or absent. For
decades, treatment for male newborns included reassigning their sex to female—legally, socially and surgically.
Dr. William G. Reiner, director of the Psychosexual Development Clinic at the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine, studied 14 such cases—one of them apparently Myers—and co-wrote a 2004 paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“You could build a vagina, [but] in those days you couldn’t build a
penis,“ he said. The concern among physicians around the time Deena
was born was that a male who grew up without male genitalia would have a difficult life.
Reiner said it was believed you could change a newborn’s sex as long
as you raised the baby accordingly and the child had the right
genitalia.
“There was a tremendous emphasis on the genitalia instead of an
emphasis on the truly important sexual organ in the body, which is the brain.“ The problem, said Reiner, is that “there’s no evidence that you can convert anybody to anything.“
Of the 14 genetic males altered to females at birth and raised as
females reviewed in his study, co-written by Dr. John P. Gearhart, six later reassigned themselves male, five were still living as females and three had unclear sexual identities.
. . .
Myers’ mother was 17 when Deena was born. “I had a son. The son was
named James Ronald Myers at the time of birth,“ she said. But because of his medical condition, doctors thought it would be better to raise James as a girl.
“It had to be done,“ said Harville, reached by phone. “They said it
was lucky the child was still living.“
A new name, Deena Kaye, was chosen and recorded on the birth certificate.
Harville raised Deena as a girl. “She wore dresses. Real pretty. Bows in the hair and stuff like this. Long hair. Beautiful child,“ Harville recalled. But things changed as Deena grew older.
“School was rough. . . . I was picked on, bullied,“ Myers said.
Deena says she was 12 when her mother took her to a Pizza Hut
restaurant for an unusual “birds-and-bees” conversation. Deena
maintains that she told her mother she was confused at the time about her feelings and was attracted to both girls and boys.
Harville said Deena told her that she was confused—that she liked
girls, not boys. Harville believed it was time Deena learn the truth
about her birth.
“I was young. I tried explaining the things that had happened to my
child, let him know that, ‘Look, don’t be scared and don’t be worried, because I don’t think it’s going to be anything wrong with you liking girls,‘“ Harville said.
So Harville said she decided to let her daughter live as a boy.
Harville said that was “hard to do when people are calling you Deena
at school, everywhere you go.“ Myers said she used the names Scott and Zachary. But Harville says Myers’ name was never legally changed from Deena.
“At a certain point in life, I don’t know exactly the age, he started getting crew cuts,“ Harville recalled. Myers said she decided to live as boy and did so until the age of 17, when she says she decided she felt more like a woman than a man.
“I was raised that way for the first 12 years of my life . . . that’s the life that I want to live. It was so peaceful. I didn’t have none of this picking on me,“ she said.
Myers said that when she leaves prison, she wants to receive estrogen treatment and get breast implants.
. . .
According to prison and court records, Myers was convicted of 11
felonies in Danville and Pittsylvania County, including a robbery and several auto thefts, starting in 2001. Two convictions in Amelia
County were tossed out on appeal.
Myers was represented by J. Patterson Rogers III, a Danville lawyer,
on the robbery charge—a purse-snatching from a car in which the
pedestrian victim was dragged.
“I can’t say that Deena was living as male or female. I think
predominantly male,“ Rogers said. “I will say that Deena never
complained to me when I was counsel back in 2001, that the Danville
City Jail, among the male population, was an improper place to be.“
Myers said she was held in segregation in jail and did not know
whether she was being held as a male or female. She also said she does not know why the courts considered her a male. “How was my birth certificate overlooked?“ she asked.
Her Social Security card and driver’s license also listed her as
female, she said.
Myers recently asked the Danville Circuit Court to correct her records
to show she was female. However, records show the court denied the
request last month and that Myers is appealing. Circuit court records
in Pittsylvania and Amelia counties also classify Myers as a male.
Rogers said the judge imposed a 15-year sentence for the robbery but
suspended it so Myers could get further medical and other help.
Instead, Myers got in more trouble.
Deerfield Correctional Center is the home of many of the state’s
elderly and infirm male inmates. Nevertheless, Myers needs more
medical attention than she is receiving, she says.
Myers lives in a dormitory and says she is allowed to change and
shower in an assisted-living dormitory where she can receive some
privacy.
She complains that widespread knowledge of her anatomical condition at
the prison has made her a target for taunts, and that at times she
fears for her safety, though she says she has not been assaulted.
Rebecca Glenberg, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union
of Virginia, confirmed that she has been contacted by Myers. “We’re
very concerned about her situation, and we’re looking into the
matter,“ she said.
One of Reiner’s subjects in the 2004 study was a prisoner who
considered himself a male. Because of confidentiality considerations,
Reiner refused to say whether it was Myers.
Myers freely says she was that prisoner, and that she and Reiner spent
many hours together.
In Reiner’s study, the imprisoned inmate is described as someone who
did not receive testosterone until locked up, who considered himself
male, who had “dated and was sexually active with girls from the age
of 15 years,“ and who wanted to undergo surgical reconstruction to
have male genitalia.
Myers denied dating females and said that while she initially agreed
to the surgery, she changed her mind.
The governor’s office confirmed that Myers has asked for executive
clemency. Clemency or not, she insists she does not belong in a male
prison.
“I’m a woman,“ she said. “This is wrong.“
Contact Frank Green at (804) 649-6340 or fgr...@timesdispatch.com .
Original Article
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