Thaindian News

Los Angeles, Apr 21 (ANI): A transgender prisoner has made a legal appeal for a sex-change operation, saying that she is harassed and sexually assaulted by male prisoners.

Lyralisa Stevens, 42, who was born male but lives as a female, is serving 50 years to life in a California prison for killing a San Bernardino County woman with a shotgun in a dispute over clothes.

Stevens is one of more than 300 inmates in the state prison system diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder, a psychiatric condition addressed in free society with hormone replacement therapy and, in some cases, sex reassignment surgery.

Prison officials have provided female hormones for Stevens since her incarceration in 2003. But now she is asking the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco to require the state to pay for a sex-change operation.

Stevens and her expert witnesses say that surgery is medically necessary, and that removal of her penis and testicles and transfer to a women’s prison are the best way to protect her from rape and abuse by male inmates.

Judges have sided with transgender prisoners, who according to a UC Irvine study are 13 times more likely to suffer sexual assault than other inmates, on some significant cases.

A ruling in Stevens’ favour would make California the first place in the country required to provide reassignment surgery for an inmate, according to lawyers for the receiver appointed to oversee California’s troubled prison health system.

They argue that the state should be required to provide only “minimally adequate care”, not sex-change operations that cost 15,000 dollars to 50,000 dollars.

Stevens, who has a slight build - 5-foot-6 and about 115 pounds - and entered prison with silicon injections in her breasts and hips to feminize her physique, said in a court filing that she feels like she’s under threat of sexual assault in the men’s facility and wants the surgery, in part, so she’ll be sent to a women’s institution.

In a court filing supporting Stevens’ petition, psychotherapist Lin Fraser said she has “grave concerns” for Stevens’ safety because she “had been put alone in cells all night long with men who threatened and abused her”.

California law requires prison administrators to assign the state’s nearly 162,000 inmates to men’s or women’s institutions based on “gender”, which officials determine solely by a prisoner’s genitals.

Surgery is where the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation draws the line.

Attorney Steven J. Bechtold, who represents the receiver, revealed the state’s response to Stevens’ petition for the operation.

“A prison is not required by law to give a prisoner medical care that is as good as he would receive if he were a free person, let alone an affluent free person,” the Los Angeles Times quoted him as writing.

Stevens, who has fathered three children, argues in her court case that the cocktail of estrogen and testosterone-blockers the state has provided since her incarceration in 2003 are no longer adequate to combat her emotional distress.

Failing to provide surgery could increase her “risk of future self-harm”, wrote Dr. Denise Taylor, a medical expert who filed a brief on Stevens’ behalf.

Taylor also argued that leaving Stevens on estrogen therapy could lead to the re-emergence of a benign tumour removed from her brain in 2005.

Bick, who filed a declaration with the court in January defending the state’s position, said the previous tumour was not believed to be caused by estrogen therapy.

He said Stevens’ treatment in prison has been “adequate and successful”. (ANI)