prison

Male prisoners have physically or psychologically harmed more than 50 female inmates at the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW), multiple organizations report.

Washington’s Transgender Inmate Policy allows prisoners to be housed in facilities consistent with their subjective “gender identity,” rather than their biological sex.

At least three biological men have been housed in WCCW under this dangerous policy, according to research and interviews conducted by the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) and the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), 44 women had filed formal complaints against these male prisoners as of March 2025.

Seven more women had either informally complained or kept quiet for fear of retaliation.

Of the formal complaints:

• Eight reported verbal harassment and threats from male inmates.
• Seven reported being forcibly housed with male inmates.
• Two reported sexual assault.
• One reported voyeurism.
• One reported physical violence.

One of the women forced to live with a male inmate claimed the prison punished her for speaking up; she allegedly spent 30 days in solitary confinement.

AFPI has confronted the Washington Department of Corrections over these findings multiple times, including once last month after Christopher Williams, a 6-foot-4 man, brutally attacked a female inmate in WCCW.   

The department’s answer remains the same: It only grants inmates’ requests to move to opposite-gender facilities after “lengthy and intense scrutiny [by] a multidisciplinary committee.”

Let’s look at the three prisoners that passed this rigorous approval process to shack up at WCCW.

Bryan “Amber” Kim is incarcerated for murdering his parents. He spent time in WCCW sometime before March 2025, when he was transferred back to a male facility after having “consensual” sex with a female inmate at WCCW.

Prisoners cannot legally consent to sexual activity. Under U.S. law, Kim’s actions constitute rape.

The Washington Court of Appeals denied Kim’s petition to transfer back to WCCW on July 8.

Nathan Gonanin, who goes by “Nonnie Lotusflower,” is incarcerated for strangling a 17-year-old girl to death. He was transferred back to a male facility from WCCW on July 14, 2025.

Prior to his transfer, WCCW had placed Gonanin in solitary confinement. The Washington Department of Corrections had assessed he posed an “unmitigated threat to the safety of other incarcerated individuals’ within WCCW.”

According to FAIR, Gonanin was moved to solitary confinement after sexually assaulting at least one female inmate at WCCW.

Christopher Williams is a convicted sex offender incarcerated for first degree assault. His first request to transfer to WCCW was (rightly) denied in 2019 for his “level of past violence toward women.”

Williams allegedly menaced and sexually assaulted his cellmate, Mozzy Clark, just three months after he transferred to WCCW in late 2021. Last month, he brutally beat a female inmate, reportedly punching and kicking her until other inmates dragged him away.

As of September 2, he remains incarcerated at WCCW.

The formal complaints uncovered by FAIR and AFPI square with Clark’s allegations.

Though she repeatedly reported Williams’ escalating harassment, Clark claims officers warned that filing a complaint against Williams could be considered a hate crime and that the 6-foot-4 man might harm her if she reported him.

Clark’s lawsuit also suggests formal complaints against male prisoners don’t begin to capture the pain and fear female inmates experience when housed with men. Though we know of only one complaint filed for voyeurism, Clark claims Williams watched women shower and use the bathroom so frequently that inmates called him the “shower shark.”

In its letter addressing Williams’ most recent assault, AFPI castigated WCCW and the Washington Department of Corrections for allowing men to remain incarcerated at WCCW while women were put in danger.

It concludes:

The Daily Citizen heartily agrees. Incarcerated women have the Constitutional right to safety and privacy. Washington state has a duty to uphold it.

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A 6-foot-4 man beat-up a female inmate at the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW) earlier this month.

The brutal assault illustrates the dangerous incoherence of Washington’s Transgender Inmate Policy, which allows some prisoners to live in facilities consistent with their subjective “gender identity” rather than their biological sex.

Christopher Williams, a man who “identifies” as a woman, attacked a female WCCW inmate on August 7. He reportedly punched her in the face, knocked her down and kicked her repeatedly before several inmates dragged him away.

In an interview with America First Policy Institute (AFPI), the victim said the assault occurred in front of a female officer who was reportedly too scared to intervene.

Listen to her full testimony:

Williams transferred to WCCW in late 2021 under the Transgender Inmate Policy, despite a long history of violence and sexual deviancy.

Williams began a 28-year sentence for first degree assault in 2010. He served almost nine years in a male prison before documents obtained by The Daily Caller suggest he began “identifying” as a woman in March 2019.

Later that year, a committee denied Williams’ first request to transfer to a women’s prison, citing his “level of past violence toward women.” He had pled guilty to the “third-degree assault with sexual motivation” of his nine-year-old sister in 2005.  

By the time he entered WCCW, Williams had racked up more than 60 infractions, including for fighting, sexual harassment, assault, possession of sexually explicit material and “providing false information in a sexual misconduct investigation.”

Surprise, surprise: Just three months later, Williams reportedly assaulted his female cellmate.

Mozzy Clark alleges Williams menaced and repeatedly assaulted her in January and February 2022. In an ongoing lawsuit against Washington state, WDOC and WCCW, Clark claims she reported the escalating abuse several times.

According to Clark, prison staff did nothing — ostensibly to protect her from Williams’ wrath.  

Her complaint reads, in part,

In a scathing letter to WCCW and WDOC, AFPI demands they revoke the policy that allowed Williams to infiltrate a women’s prison, writing:

It continues:

The disturbing case of Christian Williams only proves the point.

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A violent Illinois inmate conned his way into a women’s prison in 2019 by declaring himself “transgender.” Now, he’s refusing transgender medical interventions — but prison officials still aren’t allowed to transfer him to a men’s facility.

The women he’s housed with are paying the price.

Andre Patterson entered the Illinois prison system in 2005. The 36-year-old will serve at least 18 more years for several violent crimes, including murdering his cellmate in 2006.

In 2019, Patterson joined an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit pressuring the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) to provide transgender medical interventions to transgender-identified inmates.

IDOC subsequently transferred Patterson, now calling himself “Janiah Monroe,” to Logan Correctional Center — a woman’s prison.

In court, Patterson claimed conditions in the men’s prison, including his lack of access to women’s undergarments and sufficient hair removal methods, had caused him to harm himself. He believed moving to a women’s facility would alleviate his distress.

“At Logan Correctional Center, I hope to be subject to less violence and harassment, and to have the opportunity to live more consistently with my gender identity,” he wrote in his testimony for the ACLU.

But his desire to peacefully coexist with “other women” apparently waned upon entering Logan. On June 18, 2019, Patterson allegedly raped a woman in his housing unit. In a  lawsuit filed a year later, lawyers described the victim’s fear of Patterson:

IDOC officials transferred the victim to an entirely different prison just four days after Patterson assaulted her.

IDOC tried to transfer Patterson back to a men’s facility in 2024, when he started refusing his opposite-sex hormone treatments.

His legal team objected, assuring a judge he still “identified” as a woman.

“We know [Patterson’s] position on gender-affirming care has changed multiple times, recently, not necessarily because [his] identity has changed, or not because [he’s] not ‘trans,’ but because of conditions and how things have been at Logan,” Reduxx quotes Patterson’s attorney.

The IDOC presented evidence showing Patterson had not only asked to discontinue opposite-sex hormones but even agreed to voluntarily return to a men’s prison.

“Both of those things are now not true,” Patterson’s lawyer responded.

The judge sided with Patterson, requiring IDOC give him at least two-weeks’ notice of any transfer to “give an opportunity for Patterson to challenge [it].”

The order effectively allows Patterson’s attorneys to indefinitely postpone his transfer to a men’s prison.

The fluidity of “transgenderism” shields obvious incongruencies in Patterson’s testimony and behavior.

In his statement for the ACLU, Patterson claimed, in part, that he’d “always known” he’d been a girl and began opposite-sex hormones at just 12 years old. He said the IDOC finally resumed his opposite-sex hormone therapy in 2012 after he repeatedly tried to harm himself.

It’s unclear which parts, if any, of his statement are true. He wrote, for instance, that he entered the Illinois prison system in 2008. But his IDOC profile says he was first incarcerated in December 2005. He remained incarcerated after he murdered his cellmate the following year.

It’s also apparent that Patterson’s pathology does not stem from confusion over his sexual identity. He would not refuse “gender-affirming” treatments if they assuaged his mental discomfort. He would not allegedly rape a female inmate if he desired to live among women in peace.

President Trump’s executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” requires federal detention centers to segregate prisoners by sex. It also prevents the federal Bureau of Prisons from spending tax dollars on prisoners’ transgender hormonal or surgical interventions.

But Congress has not yet codified these provisions into law, which means future presidential administrations could remove them.

The order also doesn’t apply to state-controlled prison systems like IDOC.

Politicians and judges in Illinois have created state-level incentives for men like Patterson to infiltrate women’s prisons.

In December 2019, the ACLU won its case against the IDOC, with a federal judge ordering the department to provide transgender-identified prisoners with “medically necessary hormone therapy, access to clinicians qualified to treat gender dysphoria and the ability to socially transition.”

Patterson “socially transitioned,” in part, by moving to a female prison. The court’s ruling effectively gives the hundred other transgender-identified Illinois prisoners represented by the ACLU the opportunity to do the same.

In 2020, the inmate Patterson raped filed a lawsuit alleging employees at Logan punished her for reporting his conduct. After coercing her to call the assault “consensual,” a statement she later retracted, the victim claims correctional officers accused her of filing a false report.

The suit speculates prison employees covered up Patterson’s conduct to justify transferring him to a women’s prison:

A judge dismissed the victim’s complaint in 2022 because she lacked evidence against specific employees. But that doesn’t mean her allegations are false. Illinois prisons have undeniable incentive to keep transgender-identified prisoners’ crimes quiet — it’s the only way to simultaneously pacify the powers-that-be and keep the public off their backs.

Every part of Patterson’s case, and the Pandora’s box it unlocked, is unacceptable. It’s long past time for states to make prisons single sex again.

Additional Articles and Resources

Taxpayers Will Fund Violent Inmate’s Transgender Surgery, Judge Rules

Activist Group WPATH Influences Judgement in Case of Prisoner Receiving Trans Surgery

Suicidal or Stable? WPATH Activist’s Contradictory Evaluation Secures Felon Transgender Surgery

Judge up for Promotion Moved Serial Rapist and Pedophile into Female Prison

New Docuseries Paints Chilling Picture of Women Forced to Live with Men in Prison

Female Prisoners Beg for Help in Light of California Law That Lets Men Who Identify as Women into Women-Only Prisons

Lawsuit Filed Against California for Allowing Men Into Women’s Prisons

‘Transgender Means Many Different Things’ — And Nothing

Rape Victims Must Refer to Male Rapist in Court with ‘She/Her’ Pronouns

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