Arrested justice: When LGBT people land in jail

[im10ashus]

Part one: A frightening odyssey
Patrick Letellier


When Steve Slater was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving in West Hollywood in 2004, he began what was to become the most frightening odyssey of his life -- spending six days in the notorious Los Angeles County Jail.
"It was so horrible, so terrible, I try to forget it ever happened," Slater (a pseudonym) says.

But forgetting does not come easy. Two years after his release, Slater, a 37-year-old gay marketing executive, is still bitterly angry and, at times, deeply ashamed of the abuse he says he endured at the hands of sadistic guards and cruel and uncaring inmates. He recounts the details he'd rather not remember with startling clarity and little emotion.

Marked as gay by jail officials, who require gay and transgender inmates to wear different-color clothing from nongays, Slater was screamed at by guards and inmates alike for being a "cocksucker," a "pussy" and a "faggot." Within days, he was sexually assaulted by an HIV-positive inmate. He spent two days locked in a psych ward, naked, where the walls were smeared with feces and where other inmates -- blurry figures Slater could hardly see because guards had taken away his glasses -- wailed day and night.

"Those guards took something from me, an appreciation of who I am, and made me feel lower than I ever thought I could feel," he says. "I was happier not knowing a place like that existed."

But places like that -- jails and prisons rife with sexual abuse, violence, disease, and the explicit targeting of gay and transgender inmates -- exist in countless cities in every state. Shocking as it may be, Slater's experience is, in fact, the rule rather than the exception for LGBT inmates in America's prisons.

cont'd...
http://www.gay.com/news/roundups/package.html?sernum=1338&from=homepage

[lies and propaganda]

1. pretty sick, but not at all surprising.

i thought alot of the prison in L.A county had completely seperate wards for gay and transgendered people.
I suppose taht too humane though.

[ThomCat]

2. What is the point of singling out GLBT people

with different color uniforms? That's just an invitation for horrible abuse.

And how do they know?

[im10ashus]

3. I found that to be highly suspect myself.

Why not just brand their foreheads with a giant pink triangle?

It's a very disturbing practice.