A grandmother was forced to spend 10 hours in a jail cell with 40 leering men because a nurse wrongly insisted she was a man.

Fior Pichardo de Veloz, 55, was booked into the Metro West Detention Center in Miami even after a strip-search established that she was a woman.

There, 40 men surrounded her screaming ‘Mami! Mami!,’ leaving Pichardo so terrified to use the bathroom that she ended up wetting herself.

Fior Pichardo de Veloz spent 10 hours in a cell with 40 leering men after a prison nurse insisted she was a man – despite performing a strip search which revealed her true gender (Picture: Miami-Dade Department of Corrections)

Shockingly, the recommendation that she be booked in as a man was made by a jail doctor and nurse, who wrongly claimed Pichardo was transgender, with male genitalia, the Miami Herald reported.




She sued the medics for negligence, with her lawsuit thrown out by a judge – only for a federal appeals court to now reinstate Pichardo’s case against Miami-Dade County Corrections Department.

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Pichardo was arrested in November 2013 after arriving in Miami from the Dominican Republic to witness the birth of her grandchild.

The attorney was taken into custody over an old drug case she did not know was outstanding.

Pichardo was taken to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, where all suspects are booked and initially – correctly – processed as a woman.

The mix-up left Pichardo too terrified to use the bathroom, leaving her to wet herself during the lengthy ordeal (Picture: Facebook)

It was only during a subsequent medical check-up that the grandmother was mis-gendered, after nurse Fatu Kamara Harris noticed she was taking hormone tablets.

Pichardo was popping the pills to combat the symptoms of the menopause, but Harris wrongly assumed she was transgender and taking the drugs in a bid to enhance her breasts.

Harris then grilled Pichardo about her gender, and was told by the suspect that she was a woman.

The nurse is then said to have lied to a jail officer that during a medical exam ‘everything fell out’ – suggesting that Pichardo’s male genitals had been discovered.

Dr Fredesvindo Rodriguez-Garcia accepted Nurse Harris’ claims that Pichardo was a man without checking for himself, the lawsuit claims.

That led to her being processed as ‘transgender, male parts, female tendencies.’

Several corrections officers tried to insist that Pichardo was female, only for Harris to say ‘She’s a man,’ before walking away.

Pichard told another staff member she was female in a bid to avoid being sent to a men’s prison, only for them to say ‘You are a woman.

‘Good luck if you’re alive tomorrow.’

The blunder was finally rectified after Pichardo’s family members rushed to the jail and demanded to know why she had been sent to a men’s prison.

That sparked another strip search, with staff finally realizing the mistake.

Pichardo has sued over cliams she was subjected to ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ in violation of the US Constitution.

She has been granted permission to sue Harris and Rodriguez-Garcia again.