By Alan Feuer
In
2012, after falling prey to drug use and depression, an Iraq war
veteran named Jessica Sunderland was arrested in connection with a
string of burglaries on Long Island and found herself locked up in the
Suffolk County jail.
In
her stay of 16 months, she experienced more than the usual ordeals.
Formerly known as Jeremy, Ms. Sunderland was in the middle of
transitioning to female and claimed her jailers had denied her the
hormone treatment that she had been getting under doctors’ orders for
the preceding two years.
Even
though she filed two grievances with jail officials and asked a local
judge to put her back on hormones, she said that did not happen until
after she left Suffolk County in 2014 for the upstate prison where she
served her sentence. Before leaving, she sued the county in a
slow-moving case that will soon have its first major review by a federal
judge. In pursuing litigation, Ms. Sunderland, 31, has joined a growing
list of transgender inmates who have used the courts to challenge what
they have called an unfair lack of medical treatment in the nation’s
prisons and jails.
Click here for the full article.
Source: The New York Times (via The Empire Report)
3 comments:
Hi! I am a Columbia grad student in Journalism. Do you know how i can get in touch with Ms Sunderland?
Hi.
How are you? I hope all is well with you and your loved ones.
My apologies, but I don't have any contact information for Ms. Sunderland. However, what I would do if I were trying to locate her is contact the New York Times and ask to be connected to Alan Feuer, the reporter who wrote the story. I'm sure he'd be happy to assist a Columbia journalism student.(Smiles)
Please don't hesitate to contact me if I can help you going forward. Take care.
"G-Man"
Bogger,
I forgot to mention that you can contact me through my office at FromTheGMan@gmail.com, especially if you want to discuss anything with me in private.
Thank you.
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