Reports are that two female inmates at New Jersey’s Edna Mahan Correctional Facility have been impregnated by a transgender inmate.
This was disclosed by Dan Sperrazza, the external affairs executive director at the New Jersey Department of Corrections who spoke to the media.
Although he did not disclose the identities of the persons, he indicated that became pregnant from “consensual sexual relationships with another incarcerated person.”
An investigation has begun at the facility which is the only female prison in New Jersey.
In June 2021, New Jersey adopted a policy that requires state prisons to house transgender people based on their gender identity rather than their sex assigned at birth.
The women were not identified, but are housed at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, in Clinton, which New Jersey Governor announced plans to close last year, according to the Daily Mail.
The sex was consensual, but it isn’t known if they both had sex with the same transgender inmate, or with two different inmates. Edna Mahan houses 27 transgender prisoners, and over 800 women, according to the report.
Edna Mahan began to house transgender women — including those that have yet to undergo gender reassignment surgery — last year following a lawsuit brought forward by a trans woman and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.
The facility has already come under fire with 10 prison guards facing criminal charges stemming from an alleged assault on inmates, including a transgender woman, in January 2020, according to reports.
Several corrections officers at the prison have pleaded guilty or been convicted of sexual abuse and misconduct.
