April is Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, a time dedicated to amplifying the voices of survivors and advocating justice. The goal should be not just awareness, but, wherever possible, prevention. As a formerly incarcerated woman, a survivor of sexual abuse, and now the executive director of Woman II Woman, I know that there is one place where women‘s voices are too often silenced and where the prevention of sexual assault is consistently deprioritized: inside the walls of America’s women’s prisons.
Prisons are already spaces of extreme vulnerability. Incarcerated women, who are almost all survivors of childhood abuse, domestic violence, or sex trafficking, are at risk of further victimization at a shockingly high rate. Every woman I met in prison is a survivor of some form of sexual abuse. The trauma doesn’t stop at intake. In too many cases, it continues behind bars at the hands of the very people entrusted with their safety. As if that is not enough, in an additional cruel and unusual punishment, women are now forcibly housed with intact trans-identifying male prisoners, many of whom are registered sex offenders.
