Transgender Woman Inmate Sexually Assaulted Three Times In Span Of Six Months At Rikers Island Men's Jail

A transgender woman who was charged with robbery and imprisoned at Rikers is now suing the prison on Friday, Feb. 4 , after she was sexually assaulted in the men’s prison three times, with her requests to be moved to the women’s prison being denied.

Thirty-one-year-old Latee Brockington has been held on robbery charges since May 2020. She was housed at the men’s prison Anna M. Kross Center; when asked why, the prison said that she had not started hormone replacement therapy, which she has since started taking, according to the New York Daily News.

In June 2020, she was sexually assaulted after a guard allowed a prisoner into her room and choked her into unconsciousness, then sexually assaulting her as she was passed out. She was then transferred to the Rose M. Singer Center women’s jail that same month.

But by December 2020, she was transferred back again to Anna M. Kross for unexplained reasons. Since then, she has been sexually assaulted two more times, and she is currently asking for her own private housing unit at the women’s jail, The Advocate reported.

“Why not have me in a housing unit by myself but still inside the female facility for my safety?” she said to the press.

She has gotten rape DNA kits for each of the three times that she was assaulted, and on all three times, semen was found in her body after the incident. The lawsuit alleges that Rikers knew how vulnerable Brockington was, and still forced her to be in the women’s prison.

“She is feeling uncomfortable here, since this jail was [the] site of her previous sexual assault,” staffer Daniel Morris wrote before her transfer in December 2020. He also wrote that the reasons for transferring her were due to unclear reasons.

The Corrections Department has not made a statement regarding Brockington’s case, but has said that her allegations are being investigated and taken seriously.

“Sexual assault and abuse in our jails is absolutely unacceptable. We take allegations very seriously and investigate them all,” a spokesperson for the jail said.

Rikers does not have a good history with LGBT members. In 2019, trans woman Layleen Cubilette-Polanco died of an epileptic seizure while in solitary confinement after being neglected by a guard. Her family was awarded $5.9 million in a settlement with the city for her death.