Sonia Doe had long known she was a woman when she began serving a prison sentence in March 2018.

The state of New Jersey knew it, too. For one thing, she says, her driver's license listed her as female.

Yet Doe, who is transgender and has received hormone therapy for more than a decade, claims she spent the past year and a half shuffled from one men’s correctional facility to another, enduring abuse and harassment from inmates and prison staff.

“I am a woman and feel unsafe in a men’s prison,” Doe wrote in a sworn statement filed in court under the pseudonym earlier this month.

State officials on Wednesday, facing a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, agreed to relocate Doe next month to the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women, the one New Jersey prison that houses female inmates.

In graphic detail in her lawsuit, the unnamed prisoner described sexual harassment by male inmates, indifference and outright mockery from prison staff when she asked to be moved and an alleged beat-down by corrections officers after she complained about her treatment.

It’s unclear exactly how many prisoners there are like Sonia Doe, but New Jersey’s corrections system has a formal process for dealing with inmates in her position, according to internal documents reviewed by NJ Advance Media. A special committee is supposed to regularly examine requests from “transgender or intersex” prisoners and place them somewhere safe. That committee approved her relocation this week — after she filed suit, according to Doe’s attorneys.

Spokesmen for the Department of Corrections and the state Attorney General’s Office, which is representing corrections officials in the lawsuit, declined to comment on the allegations.

The decision to relocate the prisoner comes as New Jersey’s government and its law enforcement community is slowly recognizing the rights of transgender people.

Last year, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a new law making it easier for state residents to amend the gender designations on their birth certificates, state education officials overhauled guidelines for how to deal with transgender students, and one of the state’s largest law enforcement agencies, the Newark Police Department, enacted new rules for the treatment of transgender suspects.

But lawyers for the ACLU say Doe’s case reveals a vast chasm between policies meant to protect transgender inmates and the realities they face in prisons around the state.

“Though she tried her best to advocate for herself, she didn’t know that DOC had this policy, and didn’t know she could ask for her housing assignment to be reviewed,” Jeanne LoCicero, the group’s legal director, told NJ Advance Media. “This obviously raises serious questions about what information other transgender prisoners are given, and of course, how they are treated.”

Lawyers for the civil rights group say they are aware of just two transgender inmates currently housed at the women’s prison, alleging the prison system is violating its own policies and state and federal law by assigning transgender inmates “based exclusively on their genital characteristics."

DOCUMENTS ALLEGE ABUSE

Sonia Doe isn't her real name, but court documents reveal details about the path that led her to prison.

Identified as male at birth in 1979, Doe was diagnosed sometime before 2006 with “gender identity disorder,” a medical condition now known as gender dysphoria, and ever since has been prescribed a regimen of estrogen and testosterone blocking medications, taken twice a day.

After her transition, she legally changed her name and her Pennsylvania driver’s license listed her as female, as did her license in New Jersey when she moved to the Garden State, the suit claims. She has worked as an EMT, a suicide prevention counselor and a bail agent, where she chased down fugitives for four years, according to court documents.

Following a car accident and some surgery, she became addicted to painkillers, and ended up with a prison sentence “for offenses stemming from her addiction,” according to her complaint. Her suit does not identify the specific crimes for which she was convicted.

She stands 5 feet, 6 inches tall and weighs about 135 pounds. According to her lawsuit, she “looked, identified as, and indeed was a woman.”

Doe never underwent gender reassignment surgery, and her lawsuit alleges that the prison system ignored her medical diagnosis and gender identity solely because of her genitals.

Typically, female prisoners are sent straight to Edna Mahan — a Hunterdon County facility that houses about 600 prisoners and in recent years has been grappling with its own problems involving sexual abuse of inmates by staff.

But over the course of a year and a half, Doe was moved from the men’s Central Reception and Assignment Facility in Trenton to the South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, Northern State Prison in Newark and then back to South Woods State Prison again.

According to her suit, her prison medical records note her gender dysphoria and the fact that she is entitled to protection as a transgender individual under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, but those records still refer to her with male pronouns. While at South Woods, she claims, a psychologist told her the “unofficial policy” was “if you are anatomically male, male pronouns will be used.”

She claims she faced trouble getting regular access to her hormone medication, was denied bras and tweezers and other items regularly provided to female inmates and put into solitary confinement when she complained about conditions. And she alleges she received catcalls and lurid notes from other prisoners.

When she formally reported the abuse, Doe alleges, things only got worse.

The Corrections Department has an official committee that reviews the cases of inmates like Sonia Doe, but the prisoner claims she only learned about that policy after she began speaking with lawyers from the ACLU. On April 29, Doe and the group filed a request to have her transferred to Edna Mahan.

Less than a month later, she claims, a group of officers at Northern State Prison brought her to an office space outside the view of surveillance cameras and harassed and beat her. When she objected to an invasive search, she claimed, a female officer replied, "You’re a man. You don’t have breasts. This is a male prison. You’re a he. That’s how we do searches. This is Northern State Prison and that’s how we do it here.”

Frustrated with the state’s response, the ACLU filed suit earlier this month. On Wednesday, a lawyer for the state notified the judge in the case that they would relocate the inmate “no later than the week of September 15.”

Tess Borden, a staff attorney for the ACLU, said the case will continue as the group pushes the state to change its policies for handling requests from inmates like Doe.

“Her bravery in asserting her rights, and the DOC’s quick decision to transfer her to the women’s prison, creates momentum for broad-based reforms,” she said.

S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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