She entered the Fontcalent prison in Alicante as a man and, once inside, already serving her sentence, she declared that she perceived herself as a woman and requested that she be transferred to the women’s unit, a request that was granted. She was already admitted to the women’s ward, he began a relationship there with another inmate and she became pregnant.
The facts, reported yesterday by Ok Diario, have been confirmed to this newspaper by prison union sources. The transsexual inmate in question, of Bulgarian origin, was well known in the Alicante Culmplimiento Penitentiary Center – as the Fontcalent prison is officially called – since she was a repeat offender. She had a long history of robbery and crimes against public health, fundamentally, and she had been imprisoned in Fontcalent several times before, always as a man and always occupying a cell in the male module.
She was also assigned there after her last admission, until she stated that she wanted to transition gender, that she felt like a woman -specifically, a woman with a lesbian sexual tendency- and asked that internally she be called by a feminine name. She also requested to be sent to the women’s unit. Her transfer took place but, after finding out in prison that she had impregnated one of the companions with whom she shared the pavilion -the aforementioned sources say-, the prison management returned her again to the men’s pavilion.
The pregnant inmate, a Spanish national, initially considered terminating the pregnancy but finally went ahead with the pregnancy in prison. The trans dam however is currently outside of Fontcalent. “We do not know if she has made the registry change [of sex] or not,” says a source, who asks to remain anonymous due to “the delicate and complex nature of the case.”
The events, he says, occurred in “January or February” last, before the so-called Trans Law came into force on March 2, which allows the change of name and sex in the Civil Registry from the age of 16. without the need to provide a medical report indicating that they suffer from gender dysphoria and without having previously started a hormone treatment, as required before its application.
In Spanish prisons, however, the issues that affect transsexual people, such as the module they must occupy, the change of name or who can carry out the pat-downs, have been regulated since 2006 by instruction 7/2006 on “Prison Integration of Persons Transsexuals».
“The instruction includes that, regardless of whether there has been a change in registration or not, when a person is perceived to be of a different sex from that indicated by their physical attributes, they must go through a psychological study to see which module they are assigned to, even if there is no started the sex change process, whether or not it is being hormonal. But with the Law [Trans], this instruction has declined, “explains the source, well acquainted with the norm.
As when the Fontcalent case occurred, the law was in its final process and this does not require any psychological report, he adds, the transfer to the female module occurred before this person who declared that he perceived himself as a woman was evaluated.
“In prisons we need a regulation so as not to be in legal limbo and know how to act,” he claims. «On the one hand, we have the 2006 instruction that says that we must act according to the inmate’s self-perception, but the Trans Law prevents us from making psychological reports. Where do we enter that person, who caches them? It is a very complex issue », she argues. “Currently, each case is being viewed individually and according to the management criteria of each prison.”
Penitentiary Institutions has not wanted to rule on the matter because it affects “the data protection of an inmate.”
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