On April 29, 2025, California lawmakers will decide whether to advance a bill introduced by Sen. Shannon Grove that would prohibit any trans-identifying male prisoners with histories of sex offenses from being housed in women’s prisons. This bill would take a significant bite out of Sen. Scott Wiener’s 2021 law SB132 (also known as the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act), which currently allows the entrance of trans-identifying male prisoners into women’s prisons. The bill comes amid ongoing concerns about inmate safety.
Amie, then a prisoner at Central California Women’s Facility, still remembers the day Richard Masbruch was transferred to CCWF. Masbruch, who changed his name to Sherri Lashure, was a sadistic sexual predator who held an elderly mother and daughter at gunpoint and tortured the daughter with electric shocks before brutally raping and sodomizing her.
Amie’s hands trembled as word spread throughout the prison. “Sherri” also had infamously self-castrated himself while in a Texas prison. Despite the loss of his male genitals, he is alleged to have raped female prisoners with objects. His presence made the female population extremely fearful and anxious, as many of the prisoners were survivors of sexual violence.
Under the current California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation policy, there are no bright-line rules; the policy simply requires that every inmate request for a transfer must be considered. Any male inmate who self-identifies as female can request a transfer to women’s prison, regardless of his criminal history, his anatomy, or whether he has undergone any so-called “transition” procedures. According to the CDCR, as of April 2025, there are 45 trans-identifying males housed in the women’s prisons, 208 pending transfers, and 898 requesting to be transferred.
Clearly, CDCR anticipated that wanted or unwanted sexual encounters among the “transgender” males and the females would occur when it distributed condoms to women’s prisons. As early as 2023, the California Office of the Inspector General recognized that female prisoners were fearful of the male prisoners. The other forms of abuse perpetrated by the male transferees included “physical violence and demeaning behavior” toward female prisoners.
Nearly two-thirds of women interviewed reported fearing for their safety around some or all of the male transferees, with over one-quarter reporting negative experiences, including sexual assault. The OIG confirmed that some male transferees allegedly forcibly touched female prisoners or forced the females to touch them, which is undeniably sexual assault. Allegations of rape have also materialized.
In a high-profile case, Tremaine Carroll, a 6-foot-tall male who purports to be a transgender woman, was transferred in 2021 to CCWF, where he impregnated one female prisoner. In 2024 Carroll was accused of raping a female inmate and charged with trying to dissuade a witness to testify. In the rape trial — in an unmitigated affront to the victim — Judge Katherine Rigby has ordered the prosecutor and the alleged victim to refer to Carroll using female pronouns. Carroll’s trial is ongoing.
Carroll has been returned to the male prison and is serving 25 years to life under California’s Three Strikes Law. Ironically prior to the rape charges, the American Civil Liberties Union held Carroll up as the model “safe” transgender prisoner and used him to intervene in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of SB132.
That lawsuit, which was filed by Women’s Liberation Front along with Harmeet Dhillon (who is now the assistant attorney general for civil rights), contends that housing male inmates with female inmates constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and discrimination. The six female prisoner-plaintiffs have experienced childhood violence and sexual abuse and now have violent males housed with them. Plaintiff Krystal Gonzalez was allegedly sexually assaulted by a male prisoner who was transferred to the women’s prison based upon his professed belief in his own femininity. When she reported the assault, it was she who was punished. One plaintiff was a victim of sex trafficking at age 13.
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