A New Jersey woman incarcerated at a state women’s correctional facility alleges a male transfer who identifies as female assaulted her after several instances of sexual harassment.
Shakira Reed, an inmate at New Jersey’s Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women, told Reduxx in an exclusive report that a trans-identifying male named Jermain Gibson allegedly repeatedly punched Reed in the head, resulting in a broken nose and two black eyes in a scene that witnesses described left “blood everywhere.”
“I was attacked because I didn’t want to have sex with him,” Reed told Reduxx.
Prison authorities transferred Reed to Hunterdon Medical Center, where she received medical care before returning to the correctional facility’s on-site hospital unit. Following the assault, authorities punished both Gibson and Reed in holding cells in a 90-day “lockup” away from other inmates.
Reed said the assault occurred after weeks of sexual harassment from Gibson, including the inmate exposing himself to her as she walked past his cell. She reported the incident to authorities but said Gibson was not punished.
An anonymous female inmate told Reduxx that she witnessed Gibson sexually assaulting Reed.
“I lived on the wing with both of them. Gibson continuously harassed Reed and would often speak in his man voice because he thought it was funny when he was asked not to because it had made the women uncomfortable,” she said, according to the outlet.
“During the days leading up to the actual incident, he kept egging her on. When it actually took place, I could hear it. I didn’t see it, but it was so loud we heard them down the wing, and this took place in the rec room. We could hear Shakira yelling, ‘Stop hitting me!'”
“The recent events here are just unimaginable, and honestly, if I wasn’t living them, I wouldn’t even believe them. People need to know what this has been like for us because no one has ever come to ask us how we feel about them being here. This is misogyny within misogyny.”
Gibson, who is serving a mandatory minimum term of five years in connection with robbery charges, is one of over two dozen men who identify as female that have been transferred into the women’s correctional facility, Reduxx reported.
Multiple women have provided testimony to the outlet detailing ongoing sexual harassment and other related experiences by the male transfers at the women’s only prison.
Last year, another male inmate who identifies as a woman reportedly impregnated two females being held at the women’s only prison.
The double pregnancy occurred less than a year after the state began adopting new radical gender theory practices in its prison system, including placing inmates in the facility based on their gender identification.
Dan Sperrazza, New Jersey’s Department of Correction’s external affairs executive director, told NJ.com last year that “consensual sexual relationships with another incarcerated person” likely led to the two becoming pregnant.
In 2021, the state of New Jersey began enforcing radical gender theory in its correctional system. The change occurred after the state was sued by an anonymous prisoner who was being kept in men’s prisons despite identifying as a female.
Tim Meads contributed to this report.