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.

  • After serving 23 years without incident, Rafael encountered a corrections officer who conducted abusive pat searches on inmates. Despite Rafael’s effort to report the officer, nothing was done.

  • 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.

  • A cellmate raped this young gay man. He was detained in a county jail, and he was later gang-raped by a group of prisoners in a Colorado state prison.

  • Zera is a transgender woman who is housed in a men’s prison. She has endured multiple sexual assaults and beatings — and received no help from staff.

     

  • Xandan is a transgender man incarcerated in a Texas state prison for women. For years, he has faced transphobic harassment and has been repeatedly physically and sexually abused.