Thu 12 May 2016 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
Almost all transgender women who are incarcerated in New Zealand prisons are subject to sexual violation and even rape, according to a forum panel convened in Auckland last night to discuss the issue of transgender inequality. Speakers included Ti Lamusse of No Pride In Prisons, lawyer Kelly Ellis and arts lecturer and administrator Lexie Matheson. "I've acted for, or supported, transgender prisoners for 25 years and not once have I had a transgender woman who has been in the prison system able to say they hadn't been raped or sexually offended against," said Ellis. Accusations were made that sexual assaults have been committed by Corrections staff, especially in facilities where transwomen are locked up in male facilities due to still having their gender recorded as male on their birth certificates. "Every single transgender woman going through our prisons has been sexually assaulted, including by staff," said Lamusse. "In fact, even the strip search on admission to the prison is a sexual assault... for a transwoman it means having men hold her down while other men inspect her body including her genitals. There is systematic sexual violence in our prisons. "Corrections staff are supposed to identify transwomen and to assist them do an application to change to a female prison if that want that... but it is not happening," said Ellis. She said she has hopes that the treatment of a transwoman prisoner currently in Whanganui prison and being supported by trans-equality campaigners will soon be put before the Human Rights Review Tribunal. "But the bottom line is that we need to get gender identity put in the Human Rights Act," she said.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Thursday, 12th May 2016 - 3:04pm