This is the first of three stories that chronicles the stories of transgender women who say they were abused by the prison system, as well as difficulties they face when reentering society. Part two covers their reentry in-depth, and part three illuminates their successes and potential solutions to that reentry cycle.
Content Warning: This story mentions sexual assault.
They were once just girls desperate to survive.
Aaliyah Straite, 37, became homeless at 18. Neither her biological family nor former foster parents accepted her for being transgender, she says. So she was on the streets, on her own.
Mohagany Foster, 47, was kicked out by her family at 18 for the same reasons.
And Toyia Dockery, 40, says she fled home at 19 under similar circumstances. She then spent the next 16 years in and out of state prisons, stealing, she says, just to survive.
"I ain't got no other choice," she said.
Her story is one with which other trans women can identify.
Like 28% of North Carolina's formerly-incarcerated residents and nearly 40% of the country's trans youth, Dockery repeatedly battled homelessness. In the early 2000s, being trans meant she "couldn't even get a job at a fast food restaurant," and was often denied housing, she says. Studies, including from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, find transgender women face outsized violence, rejection from work, and barriers to accessing social services and homeless shelters.
So, to meet her basic needs, Dockery stole, which landed her in prison. Foster and Straite detailed similar backstories — stealing to survive, then ending up behind bars.
Then, inside those prison walls, they say they faced major abuses. Together, their stories detail a Catch-22: no matter what they chose, they could not escape torment.
The Women
Straite, Foster, and Dockery are three very different women.
Straite is a "supernova," in her own words — passionate, and a big nerd. She self-educated through NPR and studies history at community college. She loves reading fantasy-romance novels. She talks at 100 miles per minute.
Foster is a prim-postured woman with a warm smile. She moves with regality. Behind her watery brown eyes, she dreams big.
And Dockery is a "quiet homebody," in her words — she likes cooking soul food, getting her nails done, pampering herself. And she's a meticulous, vivid storyteller, with a steel-trap memory.
But they have a few things in common.
They all knew they were trans at a young age. They all faced abuse for that. They felt — still feel — pained that they had to steal to survive. When they discussed those pasts, all three cried. Despite this, they stay determined.
"I'm a bad bitch," Straite said. "Even though I'm going through my trials and tribulations right now, I'm still grinding, and I'm still focusing, and I'm still looking pretty doing it." Foster and Dockery echoed that sentiment: They're trans, they're proud of it, and they love who they've become because of it.
Amidst tumultuous lives, that determined sense of self is why they're still alive. When pushed down, these women get back up again.
There are currently 260 trans women in North Carolina prisons, according to N.C. Department of Adult Corrections spokesman Keith Acree. All 260 are housed in male facilities. Although they make up just 0.8% of the total prison population, research finds that, nationally, they are more vulnerable to assault.
Acree said that the department "is committed to ensuring the safety of all persons housed in our facilities and routinely considers safety related requests for various accommodations made by offenders, including transgender offenders."
Acree further emphasized that "NCDAC takes allegations of abuse extremely seriously. Offenders and staff that are alleged to have engaged in such behavior are investigated where those allegations are made known to the appropriate authorities." He added that prison personnel in contact with inmates receive training on how to "communicate effectively and professionally with the diverse offender population."
Despite this, these women say they experienced abuse.
Many trans women say they face solitary confinement as a way of protection
Multiple major national surveys have found similar results: Transgender people are up to 10 times more likely to experience sexual violence during their stay in prison than their cisgender counterparts.
Trans women, Mohagany Foster explained, are particularly vulnerable. All three of the women interviewed for this story were on hormone replacement therapy for years while incarcerated (a historically difficult process in N.C. prisons). On estrogen, they develop secondary female sexual characteristics, like breasts for example, but are typically housed in men's prisons. North Carolina Department of Corrections has a policy by which a transgender prisoner may request special accommodations, including a private shower. But the review process can be time consuming and include "evaluations from medical and behavioral health providers," according to a Division of Institutions Policy and Procedure Manual. As such, transgender women frequently shower with men, where they can become a target of sexual violence.
"You have guys in there who may not have been attracted to the guys, but now (start thinking), 'I'm seeing this trans woman that looks like a woman, she has breasts and she has hips, and and I'm getting angry because I feel this way, and I'm just going to take it out on them, because they shouldn't be looking like this,'" Foster said.
While prisoners can request private shower accommodations, these women say those requests were often denied. And following President Trump's executive order redefining gender to exclude trans Americans, federal prison inspectors no longer follow rape-eliminating standards for transgender inmates, according to NPR. So prisons are now under less pressure to grant those accommodations.
Toyia Dockey outlines a cycle of abuse she faced. It would start with a man harassing her.
"I kept complaining about men touching on me, and looking at me, and following me," she said. "I had a man that stalked me … for months … He was sitting in front of my block and masturbating, looking at me or waiting on me to walk by, and he (would) pull out his privates and masturbate."
She repeatedly filed complaints. "I reported him and reported him," she said. But she says the prison offered only two clear solutions: Lock her up in solitary confinement — "segregation," is the official term — or lock him up in solitary confinement. Either way, it was temporary.
United Nations experts have lambasted the extensive use of solitary confinement as torturous. Studies have connected it to brain damage and induced psychosis, with one researcher calling it "strikingly toxic to mental functioning."
"It's terrible," Dockery said. "You locked up in a little cell just enough to hold a little twin bed. You don't have no walking space. You can't come outside. … You (in) there like a dog. You feel dehumanized." But leaving solitary could put her back in danger — back, naked, in front of the same men who she says sexually assaulted and harassed her. Regardless, she says, she didn't really have a choice.
"If you go to solitary confinement and you don't come out — you tell them you still don't feel safe — they'll write you up," she said. "They force you out." This, in spite of the fact that they would tell her, "if you don't feel safe, go to the hole," she says.
So she would leave solitary and return to general housing, where, she says, men would continue to harass and assault her, grabbing her private regions in her sleep, or touching her in the shower.
Her final option — writing up the perpetrator and sending him to solitary — could be just as precarious. The assailants were eventually released, she says, and when they were, she might be labeled a "snitch" and targeted by the perpetrator's friends or gang members.
'Vats of acid'
WUNC tried to independently verify allegations of sexual and other assault. Nearly all of the claims Dockery makes could have been verified by inspecting her prison record. She said she constantly filed grievances. Certain events she described were purportedly caught on camera. But without a lawsuit, inmates cannot access even their own grievances, and, in North Carolina, camera footage is destroyed — sometimes by fire or "vats of acid" — after 30 days. Most other documents are destroyed three years after their date of transfer or release.
Dockery was released in 2022.
When WUNC sought more specific information, N.C. Department of Adult Corrections spokesman Keith Acree responded: "Due to the confidential nature of offender records, we are not able to respond to specifics of any particular case."
But the environment described by Dockery is echoed by Mohagany Foster and Aaliyah Straite's own, independent narratives. Combined, the three women spent nearly 50 years in more than a dozen of the state's prisons. Straite said she was stabbed twice in the face after rejecting a male inmate's romantic advances. Foster expressed constant fear of violence, and noted that she engaged in survival sex to stay safe or access food. She found herself and others falling into that same cycle and Catch-22 Dockery outlined.
Broader surveys support these stories. A 2024 survey of 280 trans people across 31 states found that 90% of them had spent time in solitary confinement. Many reported it was the "only option" for escaping harm from other inmates. And more than half of those same respondents reported experiencing some form of sexual violence while in prison.
Who's in Charge
The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, amended in 2012, includes provisions designed to keep queer and trans inmates safe. Among them: regulations on solitary confinement, access to private showers for trans inmates, and an option to be assessed for different housing options.
While federal enforcement of these standards halted under the Trump Administration, inmates say they have struggled to get the act adequately effectuated for years.
Dockery says she was not granted private showers at Harnet Correctional. "They was letting those men look at me, look at me, look at me, and that's what led up to somebody touching me."
All three interviewed women say they experienced negligence and harassment from correctional officers, who the women say repeatedly referred to them by the wrong gender or name.
According to a letter Straite penned while still incarcerated, one officer told her to "Shut the fuck up faggot" while dragging her outside into the rain. There, another officer said "rip his bra off, he ain't no real woman," and peppersprayed her bare breasts.
When asked specifically about this allegation, Acree, the Department spokesman, responded that an investigation of the events found that "reasonable force" was used.
"Straite was uncooperative, made numerous verbal threats to staff and spat in a staff member's face. Staff responded with pepper spray, in accordance with their training. There was no other use of force," according to Acree. He did not comment on the claimed use of derogatory language.
Acree added that "NCDAC is committed to the safety of all people housed in our facilities."
Straite and Dockery said they filed complaints, but little came of them. "I grieved about it, I grieved about it, I grieved about it. And nothing was never, never, never, never done," Dockery said.
The Road to Solutions
Advocates say one solution is to simply house transgender women in women's prisons. But that has been met with heavy resistance. Of the roughly 1,500 trans women incarcerated in federal facilities, only about two dozen are housed in women's facilities, according to a report in The New York Times.
Recently, the North Carolina Court of Appeals overturned a Wake County judge's ruling to transfer Ashlee Inscoe, a transgender woman, to a woman's prison. North Carolina did make national headlines in 2019 when it transferred Kanautica Zayre-Brown to a women's prison. She was released in 2024.
Detractors claim that if trans women are placed in women's prisons, they will harm other inmates. The state used this argument to oppose the transfer of Inscoe, pointing to her pre-incarceration conviction for sexual assault against a teenager. However, reviews of prison violence rates show it's transgender women who are more likely to be victims than perpetrators.
Another option would be to house trans women in a men's prison but on a separate, trans-only block or section.
According to one landmark survey, only about two-thirds of incarcerated trans women would like to be transferred to a women's prison — a larger percentage, nearly four out of every five respondents, preferred to live in a trans-only unit.
Following a series of lawsuits, Colorado created first-of-their-kind, trans-only blocks in both the women and men's facilities. The system is now under investigation by the Department of Justice.
One roadblock to separate housing units being used more commonly is a rule actually intended to protect transgender inmates. The Prison Rape Elimination Act, usually referred to by its acronym PREA, stipulates that transgender prisoners should not be placed in dedicated facilities "solely on the basis" of their gender identification. However, the rule does allow placement in a dedicated facility "in connection with a consent decree, legal settlement, or legal judgment for the purpose of protecting such inmates."
Regardless, the N.C. Department of Adult Correction has not indicated any intent to implement a segregated housing system in men's prisons, or move trans women to a female prison. For the foreseeable future, trans women are likely going to stay housed with men.
Read part two of this story, about the re-entry process, tomorrow.
