Survivor Stories

JDI has made only minor edits for spelling and clarity. Please note that some of these stories are graphic and may be difficult to read.

  • Valjean Royal is a transgender woman who has survived multiple sexual assaults since she was first detained as a 17-year-old. She has endured sexual abuse in county jails and in state and federal prisons.

     

  • In the summer of 2001, when I was just a teenager, a police officer sexually assaulted me outside my apartment complex in Virginia. As I was walking on the sidewalk with a friend, sometime after 11:00 pm, two white police officers stopped us. Then they frisked us. The officer who was frisking me grabbed my private part. I immediately complained, and he responded by grabbing me by my shirt from behind and choking me. He stopped only after the other police officer told him that somebody across the street was watching.

  • Adam is an openly gay prisoner who was gang raped and sexually assaulted by detainees at the New Orleans Parish Prison over a period of two months in 2009. During those two months, Adam filed repeated emergency grievances and requested protective custody, but was denied. He agreed to have this testimony read at the Department of Justice’s Review Panel on Prisoner Rape in 2011.

  • A member of correctional medical staff sexually abused Policarpio at Kern Valley State Prison in California. The abuse caused him to develop depression and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, but the administration has denied him treatment.

  • Joe is an openly gay man living with HIV. While at a California state prison, he was raped at knifepoint multiple times by his cellmate.