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Trans ex-inmate sues DOC, claims harassment, assault in male prison By Alan J. Keays Dec 5 2018, 6:31 PM | 1 comment Mark Potanas Mark Potanas in the solitary confinement unit at Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield in early 2016, when he was superintendent there. He is a defendant in a lawsuit brought by Cammie Cameron. File photo by Phoebe Sheehan/VTDigger A former Vermont prisoner is suing current and former top-ranking state Department of Corrections officials, claiming that despite being transgender and asking to go to a female facility they placed her in a male prison where she was beat up by another inmate. Cammie Cameron, 35, filed the lawsuit this week in federal court in Burlington seeking more than $350,000 in damages stemming from her incarceration at the Southern State Correctional Facility in 2015. Get all of VTDigger's criminal justice news. You'll never miss our courts and criminal justice coverage with our weekly headlines in your inbox. The Springfield prison is an all-male, 370-bed facility, according to the state Department of Corrections website. The lawsuit names as defendants Lisa Menard, Vermont DOC commissioner; Mark Potanas, former superintendent of the Springfield prison; and Joshua Rutherford, who was DOC chief of security while Cameron was an inmate at the Springfield facility. According to the lawsuit, Cameron was identified by state Department of Corrections officials during intake as a transgender female, and she requested to be lodged with female inmates, but that request was denied. “Defendants knew that Plaintiff was a transgender female but denied her request to be detained in a female facility,” the lawsuit stated. “Despite the known and substantial risks of doing so,” the filing added, “Defendants placed the Plaintiff with male inmates in a male facility, despite having a duty to protect Plaintiff from unreasonable risk of harm while incarcerated.” Lisa Menard Lisa Menard, commissioner of the Department of Corrections. File photo by Elizabeth Hewitt/VTDigger During Cameron’s stay at the Springfield prison, according to the lawsuit, she was “ridiculed, threatened and harassed by male inmates and correctional officers.” She was referred to as “David,” rather than her requested name, “Cammie,” and was subjected to “constant sexual harassment, comments, demands, and threats by male inmates in the presence” of corrections officers, the lawsuit stated. “Despite being aware of the threat inmate Francis Lajoice presented to the Plaintiff,” the filing added, “Defendants Potanas and Rutherford placed Lajoice in the cell immediately adjacent to” Cameron. The lawsuit stated that around 10 a.m. on Dec. 21, 2015, inmate Lajoice attacked Cameron. In the aftermath of the beating, “Cameron was found lying on the ground with ‘blood pouring from her nose and mouth,’ her ‘right eye was swollen shut and purple,’ and she ‘had several bumps and bruises on her forehead and temple areas,” the lawsuit stated. Cameron suffered “multiple contusions” to her forehead, right eye, cheek and jaw, a broken nose, and a “major closed head injury,” all requiring hospitalization, the lawsuit stated. According to the lawsuit, Cameron is no longer incarcerated. Lajoice, who was later convicted of simple assault in connection with the attack on Cameron, remains jailed, according to DOC records. The lawsuit alleges that Menard, Potanas and Rutherford “knew that conditions in the Southern State Correctional Facility constituted a substantial risk of serious harm” to Cameron’s “health and safety.” The complaint also claims that the defendants violated Cameron’s rights under the U.S. Constitution to “reasonable safety and humane conditions of confinement.” In addition, the lawsuit alleges that the defendants: • failed to enforce its classification system for inmates; • failed to house inmates according to gender identity; • failed to properly corrections officers at the Springfield facility; • and, failed to have a staffing plan in place to adequately supervise prisoners. Theodore Kramer, a Brattleboro attorney representing Cameron, declined comment when reached late Wednesday morning, saying he wanted to allow time for the parties he is suing to be served with the paperwork before talking about the lawsuit. Potanas was fired from his job at the Springfield prison in early 2017, according to DOC internal documents, for bullying medical personnel into changing an assessment of a mentally ill inmate to allow him to be kept in solitary confinement. Rutherford is now the superintendent of the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport. Menard, who announced last month she is retiring later this month, said the department would not comment on the recent lawsuit. “As this is a matter of pending litigation it would not be appropriate for me to comment on this case,” she said in an email. Menard, while declining comment Wednesday, did point to a DOC directive titled, “Gender Identification Care, and Custody “that went into effect in February 2015. According to that directive, “DOC can house transgender or intersex inmates according to their gender identity rather than their birth sex.” In deciding whether to assign a transgender inmates to a male or female facility, the directive stated that DOC “will consider on a case-by-case basis whether a placement would ensure the inmate’s health and safety, and whether the placement would present management or security problems.” Those determinations regarding transgender inmates will be made by a management team made up by the department’s director of correctional facilities, health services director, case work director, and “a DOC employee with the ability and knowledge needed to represent LGBTQI interests,” the directive states. Cameron had been convicted of several charges leading to her incarceration, including burglary, heroin possession and providing false information to police, leading to a sentence of two years and six months to three years behind bars, according to DOC records. Following a stint serving time in Springfield, Cameron later was housed from May 18, 2016, to Jan. 14, 2017, at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, DOC records stated. That facility is all-female prison. Document cloud link to lawsuit :
I read the entire article, It never said what was on this persons Birth Certificate! Long list of reasons to be in prison, and no one should be beat up in prison. That should be the story, not where this person was housed, should be housed based on what is on the Birth Certificate, same with bathrooms, although those could be both genders if they lock.
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