Men behind bars in women’s spaces

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: more men moving into women-only spaces.

A liberal activist group is suing Washington State, demanding it allow an inmate born a man to be sent back to the women's-only facility he was kicked out of in the first place.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: If the ACLU gets its way, this would be a first in Washington State, and perhaps the nation, where an inmate has been housed with men, then with women, then in solitary confinement in a men’s facility, before returning to a women’s prison.

BROWN: If this makes your head spin, we have WORLD’s Relations beat reporter Juliana Chan Erikson joining us now to help explain it all. Good morning Juliana…

JULIANA CHAN ERIKSON: Good morning.

BROWN: At the center of this lawsuit is Bryan Kim. Tell us about this man and how his actions led to where we are today.

ERIKSON: Brian Kim is a man serving life in a Washington state prison for murdering his parents when he was 18 years old. And nine years into his sentence, which he started at Monroe Correctional Complex—in the male side of the facility—he started the process of legally changing his name and sex. So he successfully got his name changed to Amber Fay Fox Kim, and he changed his legal sex to female.

And so now you can tell where this is going. He applied to transfer to a women's prison. And three years later, he got his wish. He was transferred to the Washington Correction Center for Women, which the locals call WCCW. The WCCW is the largest women's only facility for corrections in the state. He spent three years there until this past March when he was caught having sex with a female inmate. So as a result, he was sent back to Monroe, which is where he was before. The American Civil Liberties Union announced it was suing the Washington Department of Corrections on behalf of Kim. They refer to Kim as a woman and say that placing Kim in a men’s prison threatens Kim’s safety and other transgender prisoners like Kim.

BROWN: Kim is not the first male inmate in Washington state to convince corrections staff that he should be housed in a women’s prison. What makes this case ground-breaking?

ERIKSON: Yeah, he's not the first and he probably won't be the last. But the ACLU says this is the first case where a transgender woman inmate has been moved back to a man's prison. And maybe I should just step back and unpack that for you since this is always so confusing. So Kim is a man and he started in a male facility. He then moved to a woman's facility and there he broke the rules and then he was sent back to a man's facility. So if the ACLU wins this case, Kim would get to go back to the female facility. And all of this back and forth is unheard of from what I can tell. Keep in mind that Kim is a convicted murderer with a history of mental illness. And of course, he's still a man.

BROWN: Absolutely. As more male inmates make this type of request, it makes me wonder about the process. You had the same question and you got some answers. Tell us about that.

ERIKSON: Yeah, I had a lot of questions about this. So this story came on my radar first when I read the account of a woman named Olivia. We'll just call her that. She's using a pseudonym to protect her career and her safety. And she used to work in the King County Jail Health Services. And so we're still talking about Washington State here, but I'm switching to jails briefly.

So this nurse noticed that male inmates were able to easily initiate the process to get transferred to the female side. So she decided to just check the general policy manual for her county's Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. And there it says, “a person's self-identification as transgender, intersex, or gender variant is sufficient to trigger the protections and procedures of this policy.” It means in other words, a male inmate in jail just has to say, I'm female. And that starts the process for applying for housing to a female facility.

BROWN: Just make a statement. Just say its so. Let me ask you this…so are there males in female prisons?

ERIKSON: Yeah, and that's an interesting question and it depends on who you ask. So I asked a spokesperson at the Washington Department of Corrections, Christopher Wright, and he said, and I'll quote, “no, there are transgender individuals housed at WCCW.” But I also spoke with Olivia and others who work on behalf of female inmates, and they say there are 11 inmates at WCCW. And just as we discussed earlier, Brian Kim had been at WCCW. So he was one of those male inmates at the women's facility. And to make the matters more complicated, Brian Kim is actually listed as female. So no one can really know for certain that there are males in the female facility.

BROWN: The ACLU isn’t the only organization that has filed suit. The organization FAIR has filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice accusing the Washington state Department of Corrections of sex-based discrimination. Can you tell us anything more about what’s happening there?

ERIKSON: Yes, last week, the ACLU sued the Washington Department of Corrections, but before that, FAIR also filed a complaint against the Washington Department of Corrections. So it seems like this department is getting hit from both sides with complaints. The ACLU is representing the male prisoners who want to be housed in the female prisons. And FAIR is representing the females who already live there. And FAIR says the prisons are neglecting the rights of women. And they say they're neglecting their needs for privacy and safety and separation from men.

BROWN: So obviously, what’s at stake is the potential harm to women, but what else is at issue here?

ERIKSON: I spoke with Leigh Ann O’Neill, managing director of legal advocacy for FAIR who’s spoken to some of the female inmates incarcerated in Washington prisons. 

LEIGH ANN ONEILL: Outside of the very you know, serious risks of rape and physical abuse, which are greater when there is a larger, stronger male present. The females who are incarcerated are the vast majority of them have been victims of sexual assault, rape, sexual abuse at the hands of a male before becoming incarcerated. And so the presence of males, no matter how the male acts, is deeply traumatizing to the female inmates, and they're really being subjected to re traumatization and psychological harm on an ongoing basis.

BROWN: Wrapping up here Juliana, this is happening in Washington state. Why should someone in Alabama or Illinois or wherever pay attention?

ERIKSON: So, listeners should know, of course, that this gender debate has been going on across our country. We hear about female athletes. We hear about students in bathrooms. But what whistleblowers like Olivia are saying is that women in prison are the most vulnerable when it comes to this debate. They're incarcerated and often they have to share rooms, bathrooms, showers and other spaces with potentially male inmates who have not had surgery or had cross-sex hormone treatment. So, as Olivia and others are saying, these women are at the most risk and they are imprisoned across the country.

BROWN: And they are fellow image bearers.

ERIKSON: That’s right.

BROWN: Well, Juliana Chan Erickson is WORLD’s Relations beat reporter. We’ll post a link to her digital story in today’s transcript. Thank you for your work on this. Happy New Year!

ERIKSON: Happy New Year to you, Myrna.

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