News
2006-12-15
Transgender woman
tells panel of prison abuse
Suffering years
of violence and harassment as a transsexual in Mexico,
Mayra Soto sought asylum in what she hoped would be a more
Suffering years
of violence and harassment as a transsexual in Mexico,
Mayra Soto sought asylum in what she hoped would be a more
tolerant United States. But the trauma continued here.
She was detained in an immigrant detention center in
Los Angeles and forced by a guard to perform oral sex
on him under the threat of violence, she said.
Soto's story,
relayed tearfully to a bipartisan federal panel Wednesday,
was one of many allegations of guards taking advantage of
immigrant detainees. The guard in Soto's case
eventually pleaded guilty to sexual assault and served
a six-month sentence. But Soto told the National
Prison Rape Elimination Commission—whose eight
members include presidential and congressional
appointees—that her punishment was much worse:
Guards moved her to a cell with accused murderers and
rapists, she claimed.
''I took this as
another form of retaliation,'' said Soto, 33, sobbing.
''I still don't know how they could justify placing someone
as feminine as me in the same unit as murders and
rapists.''
The two-day
hearing in a federal courtroom is the sixth held by the
commission nationwide but the first to focus on sexual abuse
of immigrants held in federal detention facilities.
The panel, led by a federal judge and made up of
business leaders, academics, and human rights workers,
was formed by Congress in 2003 to find ways of deterring
prison rape—a crime that has claimed an estimated 1
million victims in 20 years, according to the
commission.
Outside the
courtroom, Soto—an Orange County,
Calif., hairdresser who has been granted a
temporary right to stay and work in the
U.S.—said she hoped the pain of recalling her horror
in public would lead officials to make changes. ''It's
very painful for me. It brings back the fear, the
trauma, the pain,'' Soto said. ''But I think they need to
know what is happening.'' (AP)
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