I first reported about Ashley Diamond in April when the US Department of Justice intervened in the the Georgia transgender inmate's federal lawsuit against the Georgia Department of Corrections. In Ashley Diamond v. Owens, et. al, Ms. Diamond sought to have the GDC provide her with the hormones that she began taking the age of 17 and had been denied by prison officials and to protect her from being repeatedly sexually assaulted.
Because of the failure to provide hormones, Ashley changed from looking like the first picture below to the appearance she had in the second.
This had a profound physical and emotional impact on Ms. Diamond. Terminating her hormone therapy created painful side effects, including chest pains, heart palpitations, clinically significant depression, and increased thoughts of suicide, hopelessness and anxiety. According to Ms. Diamond, her gender dysphoria is so severe that she has attempted suicide and self-castration on multiple occasions during her incarceration.
Ashley, in prison for theft, probation violation, escape and obstruction of justice, was sentenced to a maximum of 11 years and has since been shuffled from Georgia male prison to Georgia male prison.
Filing the lawsuit earned her a transfer to the Georgia State Prison in retaliation. GSP has had more sexual assaults between 2009 and 2014 than all but one other state prison.
Since her arrival there, Ms. Diamond has survived an attempted rape in a stairwell, dealt with inmates exposing themselves and masturbating in front of her, and faced relentless sexual coercion, she said last week in an emergency motion seeking an immediate transfer to a safer institution.
Ms. Diamond was not scheduled to have a parole hearing until November. But out of the blue
she was paroled on Monday after serving less than a third of her sentence.
In June she claimed to have been sexually assaulted yet again...the eighth time since her incarceration began.
Talking by phone on Monday from her mother’s porch in Rome, Ga., Ms. Diamond said she thought her early release was largely “a way for the department to throw their hands up at my situation and escape responsibility for being a provider of care for me, and as regards to my safety.”
Through a spokesman, Georgia’s parole board said it had the authority to free an offender whose release was “compatible with the welfare of society and public safety, as was the case with this offender.” Ms. Diamond will remain under parole supervision for the rest of her sentence, the board said.
Steve Hayes, the parole board spokesman, described early releases as unusual, but said that Diamond's parole had nothing to do with her lawsuit.
I think we’re seeing a bit of a pattern. Departments of correction nationwide are being dragged kicking and screaming into the future, using early release to avoid making substantive changes that will affect transgender inmates’ lives.
--Chinyere Ezie, SPLC, Ms. Diamond's lawyer
California recently released a transgender inmate, Michelle-Lael Norsworthy, after a federal judge ordered the state to provide gender-reassignment surgery for her. At the same time, California agreed to provide such surgery to another inmate, Shiloh Quine, who is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Last year, Virginia paroled Ophelia De’Lonta while the courts were evaluating her request for gender-reassignment surgery.