KEY POINTS
- Homelessness and joblessness make transgender individuals particularly vulnerable to human traffickers.
- If a transgender person is incarcerated, possibly for commercial sale of sex, the prison experience is likely to be exceptionally nightmarish..
- Imprisoned survivors often don't receive the services they need to reintegrate into society.
- Lacking the reintegration services they need, the transgendered end up back in prison.
Source: Adobe Stock Image
Transgender individuals are exceptionally vulnerable to being trafficked. And if they are trafficked, they’re far less likely to receive the services that help the cis-gender population reintegrate into society.
To see how this plays out, take the case of Charlotte. This is not her real name, but she is a real person.
Charlotte fits into the statistics that Polaris, one of the premier anti-trafficking organizations in the United States, has developed. As a trans adult, she’s one of the 30% who have experienced homelessness. And as a transgender person, she’s also found it difficult to get the safe, steady work that would have kept her from becoming homeless.
Homelessness and Joblessness Mean Vulnerability
Human traffickers look for vulnerable people, and Charlotte, as someone unable to get either a job or housing, was truly vulnerable. This led to her being trafficked and then imprisoned for engaging in the commercial sale of sex. She also had three warrants for low-level crimes.Prison is likely to be a bad experience for almost anyone, but for a trans person, it’s likely to be particularly nightmarish. In the case of Charlotte, she identifies and presents as a feminine woman, yet she wasn’t assigned to a woman’s jail.
Prison Can Be Particularly Harsh
As a transgender inmate housed with men, her odds of enduring sexual assault were 13 times greater than for a non-transgender inmate. According to the University of California Irvine Center for Evidence Based Corrections, 59% of transgender inmates report being assaulted while in a California correctional facility.Fortunately for Charlotte, while still in jail, she came to the attention of Maya Simek, Clinical Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University. Professor Simek is not just a legal expert; she is also a licensed social worker.
Source: Adobe Stock
Simek saw that “Charlotte was in a system that refused to acknowledge who she was. She endured unending bullying and trauma. In the men’s jail, she was ‘deadnamed’ (using the name one was assigned at birth that they no longer identify with), and the staff also didn’t use female pronouns.”
Serving Time Wasn’t the End of Her Prison Experience
Charlotte thought that finishing serving her time would be the end of her prison nightmare. It wasn’t.As Simek points out, “It’s a surprise to many, but just because a person has served time for one crime doesn’t mean the slate is wiped clean. Charlotte left prison with open warrants requiring additional time for the other crimes that were on her record.”
Under ideal circumstances, all offenses resulting from any kind of human trafficking would be removed from someone’s record. However, in learning about Charlotte’s case, Simek discovered that in her area of Ohio, men weren’t even allowed on the docket for taking care of these kinds of charges.
Simek worked to get Charlotte’s record cleared, but other problems remained.
Homeless and Jobless Again
As Simek points out, “It was almost impossible for Charlotte to get a regular job. Finding a place to stay was also difficult because even homeless shelters can be problematic for the transgender population.”According to Simek, some of the issues Charlotte faced in homeless shelters included:
- How does one access shower and bathroom facilities?
- Will other residents respect the individual’s name and pronouns?
- Is the staff equipped to deal with these issues?
Once Charlotte was out of jail and her record cleared, she might have had a chance to have a normal life. But it wasn’t to be. “She’s been back in jail four times since we cleared up her warrants,” reports Simek. “Because of trauma and discrimination, she hasn’t been able to get a job or secure housing.”
“This is what it actually looks like for people who are in the transgender community who have experienced human trafficking," Simek summarizes, "Without access to appropriate and sensitive services, it is next to impossible to reintegrate into society.”
Simek and her colleagues are devoting their lives to changing this.
