Daily BrewHuman rights complaint filed over Correctional Service of Canada transgender policy
A human rights complaint has been filed against the Correctional Service of Canada, alleging the service’s policies toward transgender inmates leaves them vulnerable to harassment and sexual violence behind bars.
The West Coast Prison Justice Society filed the complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission earlier this month with an affidavit from Laura Bilyk, an inmate at the medium security Mountain Institution in British Columbia, but the complaint seeks a change in policy for all transgender prisoners in the federal system.
In her affidavit, Bilyk says she came out as transgender in about 2002 and has lived as a woman since beginning hormone treatment in 2008.
“I have experienced bullying and intimidation from male prisoners who demand sex from me,” says Bilyk, a 54-year-old transgender woman who began a life sentence for second-degree murder in 1987, as Larry Donald King.
Bilyk says she has been harassed by both inmates and staff at the various male institutions, including the minimum-security Ferndale Institution in 2009.
“Over the course of a couple of months, two prisoners at Ferndale raped me on a regular basis. On one occasion, one of these men threw me on the bed, pulled my hair, and ripped my stomach open when I was struggling to get away,” she says in the affidavit.
“I could not identify these men to the authorities because ‘ratting’ is contrary to the ‘Con Code,’ and I would put myself in more danger if I identified them. Instead, I told [correctional] staff that I felt suicidal, which was true, so that I would be moved to the Regional Treatment Centre away from these men.”
For much of her prison life, she has been housed in protective custody units with sex offenders because of her vulnerable status.
She describes being doubled bunked with male prisoners, though she is now bunked with another transgender woman prisoner.
Like other transgender inmates, Bilyk has been denied gender-affirming surgery because she cannot fulfill the “real-life test” of living a year outside of prison as a woman.
“She has been transferred to higher security as a result of abuse she suffered in men’s prison. She has had problems accessing female clothing and makeup, she has been double bunked with male prisoners, she has had problems accessing private shower facilities and she has no choice as to who conducts strip searches of her,” says the complaint.
Bilyk’s experience is not unusual, says Jen Metcalfe, a lawyer and executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services, a project of the West Coast Prison Justice Society.
“We want to try and get some systemic remedies,” Metcalfe tells Yahoo Canada News.
A year ago the group and the human rights commission made recommendations to the correctional service on transgender policies.
“All they did was change the language,” she says. “They didn’t make any changes that actually affect people’s lives.”
Although B.C. and Ontario have enacted policies on a provincial level, the federal service has not followed suit.
Former Conservative justice minister Vic Toews announced five years ago that the federal government would no longer pay for gender-affirming surgery.
Metcalfe says her group is hopeful that a change in government may bring a revised policy.
“That’s a really dated way of placing people and it really puts transgender women, in particular, at risk,” she says.
A spokesperson for the Correctional Service says it would be inappropriate for the department to comment on a complaint that’s being processed at this time.
Statistics are not available for the number of transgender inmates in the federal system but Prisoners’ Legal Services says the group has assisted at least eight transgender inmates over the past decade.
The complaint asks the commission to declare the current policies discriminatory and order an end to such discrimination, including the placement of prisoners according to genitalia alone, the limited access to gender-affirming surgery and the double-bunking of transgender inmates with non-transgender prisoners.
