Two inmates, who are serving time in New Jersey’s all-women prison, are said to be pregnant. This comes after they had sexual intercourse with a transgender woman inmate.
The two inmates are at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility. They became pregnant after having “consensual sexual relationships with another incarcerated person,” stated the New Jersey Department of Corrections.
Demetrius Minor, 27, has confessed to impregnating the two prisoners. He is currently serving a 30-year sentence for the manslaughter of his foster father. One of the inmates that he impregnated is Latonia Bellamy, 31. She is serving a life sentence after killing a couple after their engagement celebration.
“We found love in a hopeless place,” Bellamy, noted in an online essay, referencing a Rhianna song.
Minor posted online that all three inmates have been placed in solitary confinement.
27 of the 800 inmates in the prison are transgender. It is said that the facility doesn’t make transgender inmates have gender reassignment operations in order to be placed there. Doors are often left open during recreation periods. Thus, it isn’t hard for inmates to go into cells or bathrooms to have sex.
New Jersey inmates are also allowed gender identity preference housing.
The new policy came when a transgender woman won a civil lawsuit against the state. This was after she was made to live in a men’s prison for 18 months.
“When I was forced to live in men’s prisons, I was terrified I wouldn’t make it out alive. Those memories still haunt me,” the transgender woman, ‘Sonia Doe’ said.
But, in 2021, two inmates at Edna Mahan filed a lawsuit to have the guidelines removed. At the time, they had said that transgender prisoners were having sex with cisgender prisoners. However, the policy stayed in place.
