Passion Star, U.S.

Laia Abril, On Rape, 2022

Narrator: For years I felt the threat of being sexually assaulted almost daily, especially when I was showering together with 150 other prisoners at the same time. Once I told the staff that I didn’t feel safe around my cellmate, but the guard left me unsupervised and locked me in the cell with him. Eventually, he brandished a knife and raped me. I filed over 30 grievances to try to ensure my safety. The stresses ranged from being called “faggot” to being assaulted or coerced into relationships to protect my own safety. The prison officers consistently show that they believe it’s your fault for being different. They would tell me that I was “having the time of my life”, that “you can’t rape someone who’s gay”. Knowing that you are inherently different from most of the people you are forced to live with in those hyper masculine places means you stick out like a sore thumb. It can be fatal. Being a trans woman or anything outside the cisgender and heterosexual culture of prison means that you are beneath any level of respect or regard from the rest of the prison population. I didn’t have anyone on the outside to help me learn how to speak on my own behalf and grow beyond the trauma. So now that I am that person for other people I feel vindicated, I now get to monitor the system that treated me so poorly, and hopefully, in time, to fix it.