Sun. December 30, 2018
Chicago, IL -
The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) has transferred a transgender woman from a men's to a women's prison.
According to the AP, Deon "Strawberry" Hampton, who is serving a 10-year sentence for burglary, fought a yearlong legal battle to be transferred.
Hampton, 27, was represented in federal court by the MacArthur Justice Center and the Uptown People's Law Center. Her lawyers argued that the move would minimize the violence and taunting she faced in male prisons.
A federal court sided with Hampton's argument that her equal protection rights were being violated, the second of only two such rulings by a federal court.
Hampton is the only transgender female inmate being held in an Illinois prison for women, one of her lawyers said.
Hampton claims that she was routinely subjected to violence while serving in male prisons, including being forced by guards to perform sex acts with another transgender inmate as they watched, hurled slurs and taunted the pair.
Clinical psychiatrist George Brown wrote in a filing that Hampton has identified as female since the age of 5.
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