Transgender Child Sex Abuser Savagely Beat Female Inmate Who Thwarted His Rape Attempt, Says Complaint

CR — San José Province, San Rafael Arriba. A child sex abuser who was transferred to women’s prison after claiming to be the target of rapes in men’s prison has most recently been accused of the attempted rape and brutal beating of a female inmate, and of holding the women of the prison in a state of terror.

Nataly Monge Brenes, aged 22, was found guilty of the crime of sexual abuse to the detriment of a minor and sentenced to six years in prison. The convict, who identifies as “a woman locked in the body of a man,” was sent to La Reforma, a men’s prison.

“They raped me every day,” Mr Brenes claimed in a September 2016 interview. “The prison population is not prepared to share spaces with transsexuals.” In addition, he said that other inmates physically abused him, and because they perceived him as a man, mocked his conjugal visits with his partner. For his protection, Mr Brenes was placed in “The Tombs,” one of 44 individual cells, which are known to be dark and to have limited ventilation. He could only leave an hour a day. “It’s unfair that I have to hide so they don’t hurt me,” he said.

Sympathetic national media outlets like Diario Extra, Costa Rica’s bestselling newspaper, and La Nación trumpeted the inmate’s cause, decrying as “double punishment” his confinement “in four walls with men who are difficult to live with,” and heroizing his ability to “fight and stay strong” throughout the ordeal.

Mr Brenes won an appeal to the Board, which authorized him to wear women’s clothing and makeup. He legally registered his feminine name, Nataly. The Judiciary panel granted his request to be transferred to women’s prison.

Problems in the women’s prison, El Buen Pastor (The Good Shepherd), began almost immediately after his January 4, 2019 arrival. Diario Extra broke the story and interviewed his primary alleged victim, who was identified only by her last names, Quesada Hernández.

“We treated him with respect and kindly so he wouldn’t feel discriminated against,” Ms Quesada Hernández said, but he “was brought on Friday night and already on Saturday he was violent.” He walked the halls naked, bathed and changed in front of the women, and on one occasion took off his wig and said he “already felt like a man”:

He boasts that he’s a man and he’s in a women’s prison, so he frightens the prisoners. On one occasion he threw hot coffee at a 69-year-old adult and threatened to beat us and gouge out our eyes. He bribes us to buy cigarettes and drugs. He cuts his wrists in front of the prisoners. We are old ladies between 50 and 75 years old.

Ms Quesada Hernández described an incident during which she says Mr Brenes tried to rape her, and beat her badly with a club when she resisted:

At the time of the visit, he started smoking marijuana. When I went to the bathroom, I encountered him and then he started taking off his clothes. Then he started masturbating in front of me and wanted me to touch his penis.

I grabbed a stick and started calling the officers, but as they arrived, he took it away from me and hit me with it; he busted my arms and legs.

Prison Police placed Mr Brenes in an isolated cell while the incident was investigated.

Ms Quesada Hernández has been left traumatized.

Y también:

First Costa Rican TIM transferred to a women’s prison beat and attempted to rape a woman inmate. Didn’t take that long, huh?https://t.co/zXbseSH9xi

— 🇵🇷🏝Rafa en PR 🏝🇵🇷 (@rdqb80) February 12, 2020

There have been problems in other nations that have placed male inmates in women’s prisons under gender identity policies.

A very similar course of events took place in the nation of Argentina in late 2019. 27-year-old Gabriela Nahir Fernández was convicted of “gender-based” injuries and threats and placed in a women’s prison, where he intimidated the women by strutting about the prison naked. He had illicit encounters with multiple inmates, and “savagely beat” one of the women upon learning that he had impregnated her. The transgender inmate was released from prison to avoid further issues.

In February 2019, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice reexamined its policy of housing men who identify as women with female inmates after public backlash followed reports of transgender inmates sexually attacking female inmates. The most notorious was the case of Karen White. The father-of-one was placed in women’s prison after committing burglary and stabbing a male neighbor. Mr White sexually abused several female inmates within days of arrival, and was transferred to men’s prison.

A transgender inmate in New Zealand was also accused of sexually attacking women while incarcerated in women’s prison.