Trans woman left with broken jaw after guards put her in male prison, lawsuit claims

The attack left her needing surgery and she is now required to wear dentures.

A transgender woman was left badly beaten after being forced to share a jail cell with three men, leaving her with a fractured jaw, according to a lawsuit. Kristina Frost is suing San Diego County and its sheriff’s department for punitive and compensatory damages, accusing them of negligence and failure to protect or deliberate indifference to safety risks and needs. According to the lawsuit, which was filed on November 9, Ms Frost's driving license and other paperwork identified her as a woman, and she had been wearing "feminine" clothes at the time of her booking into the cell. When she first arrived at San Diego Central Jail on November 25, 2020, she was placed alone in a holding cell, according to the lawsuit. But deputies are said to have repeatedly misgendered her both verbally and in official reports, and moved her in a "minimally monitored" cell with three men against her wishes. The lawsuit claims that one of the men in the cell viciously assaulted her in her sleep, breaking her jaw with "closed-fist punches" to the face. She ended up needing two surgeries to her broken jaw and is now required to wear dentures, Insider reports. Related links:

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The man was eventually removed from the cell, but Ms Frost claims that none of the deputies who witnessed the attack "immediately intervened." She also had to wait up to 12 hours for medical attention despite being unable to eat or drink because of her injuries, the lawsuit said. A 2020 investigation from NBC found that transgender people are rarely placed in cells corresponding to their gender identity, and are almost always housed according to the gender assigned to them at birth. The investigation found that out of 4,890 transgender state prisoners tracked in 45 states and Washington, DC, it was able to confirm just 15 cases in which a person was housed according to their lived gender.