Seattle Jail Nurse Quits after Facility Ignores Alleged Sexual Harassment by Trans-Identifying Male Inmates

A female nurse who served Seattle’s incarcerated women for five years is accusing her former facility of ignoring complaints from female inmates about sexual harassment and predation by transgender-identifying male inmates.

Olivia, who is going by a pseudonym to protect her identity, worked as a charge nurse in Seattle’s King County Correctional Facility for several years. Despite receiving many complaints from front-line staff about female inmates’ negative experiences with the transgender housing transfers, the jail administration refused to act, Olivia told IW Features, a new project of the Independent Women’s Forum. Not only did jail leadership refuse to remove the offending male inmates from the facility, they would not even confirm whether they were logging or tracking female inmates’ formal complaints, she said. 

In 2020, the jail committed to change its gender-identification policy to allow transgender-identifying male inmates to live among women, following the example of the Washington Corrections Center for Women, which was the state’s sole women’s-only prison. Though the state Department of Corrections (DOC) insists male inmates must make a compelling case to be reassigned to a female facility, the only prerequisite in practice is that they claim to be women, according to Olivia. Current and former guards at the Washington Corrections Center for Women previously told National Review that their facility has similarly failed to adequately vet male inmates.

The King County’s Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention did not respond to a request for comment from National Review.

Staffing shortages at the King County Correctional Facility made an already fraught gender-inclusive housing process prone to dangerous mistakes. The lack of oversight allowed male offenders with more severe criminal histories to be housed with female inmates with more benign records, Olivia said.

“There were multiple times that I saw males and females housed together in a given unit and the officer on duty had no awareness of this,” Olivia said. “I saw a ‘maximum-security’ male inmate misclassified as ‘medium security’ when housed in a woman’s unit, creating a substantial risk to the females there.”

One male inmate, whom Olivia described as aggressive and who allegedly exposed himself to other male inmates in the men’s unit, was transferred to the woman’s unit after he began identifying as a woman.

He “predictably went on to expose himself to female staff and female inmates in the women’s unit and exhibit violent behavior toward officers,” she said.

Olivia’s colleagues on the health staff recommended that this inmate be moved back to men’s housing, but their plea ultimately went ignored. 

Health staff also strongly objected to the admission of another male inmate who was facing rape charges and other severe infractions against young women, Olivia said. He was allowed into female housing anyway.

Some female inmates also allegedly filed a complaint that a male at the facility had been masturbating in front of them, Olivia said.

Another man was accused of “deliberately watching women in the shower,” Olivia said. 

A major complaint among many female inmates at Purdy is that the shower stalls in the prison bathrooms don’t ensure privacy from the male inmates, who tower above the women. 

“Our shower stalls don’t go up to our heads,” a female inmate at Purdy who chose to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution, told National Review. “And the bathroom stalls, same thing. A bunch of women, when they’re in the showers, these people are just standing there. They don’t have to stand on their tippy toes and look over and see everything. People were so uncomfortable. You feel kind of like you’ve been violated.”

At Purdy, Christopher Williams has repeatedly leered at the women while they’re showering, the inmate said. A female inmate named Mozzy Clark-Sanchez said Williams peered over at her while she was naked taking a shower. On one occasion, he threatened, “I can get you when I want,” she said. 

At King County, none of the documented cases prompted leadership to take action to protect female inmates, Olivia said. 

At one point, jail staff circulated a petition to improve conditions for the women. But the leadership of the jail resisted their efforts, Olivia said. She was investigated by the facility’s HR department following her involvement in advocating for the women, she said. She resigned from her role, exasperated by the administration’s accommodation of the transgender-identifying male offenders at the detriment of the women. 

“Jails and prisons are unlike any community setting,” she told IW Features. “Prisoners have no privacy, no ability to choose their roommates, no self-defense measures other than their own bodily strength. These attributes alone make female prisoners especially vulnerable, but one can imagine how this vulnerability is increased when facility policies allow male prisoners to transfer to female units largely based on their word.”

Female inmates at Purdy have been forced to share a room with male inmates without their input, National Review previously reported. In some cases, they faced sexual intimidation from their male roommates.

 A male child molester currently living at Purdy repeatedly sexually harassed Clark-Sanchez, who is herself a victim of child rape. Clark-Sanchez said Williams made lewd comments toward her such as, “I hate it when it fills up with blood,” referring to his erection. On at least three occasions, Clark-Sanchez woke up to Williams sitting next to her bed. Another time, she woke up to find Williams’s hand under her blanket touching her, she said. A prison guard busted him in the act and scolded him to get back in his bunk. Another time, Williams brought a strap-on dildo into the room and asked her to use it on him, she said. 

“They are prioritizing lawsuit mitigation and threats from ‘trans rights’ advocacy groups,” such as Disability Rights Washington, a nonprofit organization that previously took the Washington DOC to court for being insufficiently “inclusive” of trans-identifying prisoners, Olivia said. “I was told by multiple people in leadership that Disability Rights Washington was actively directing policy, and that the facility was in full compliance with their demands to avoid lawsuits.”

Olivia said the jail leadership urged her to “let the women advocate for themselves.” 

This response, she said, “is not consistent with the principles of justice, trauma-informed care, or a nurse’s ethical duty to advocate for her patients.”