Sienna
Content Warning: These stories are about violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation and may include references to suicide or self-harming behaviours. They may contain graphic descriptions and strong language and may be distressing. Some narratives may be about First Nations people who have passed away. If you need support, please see Contact & support.
‘The ignorance surrounding gender dysphoria is the biggest problem I’ve come across in … correctional facilities and in society in general.’
Sienna is a transgender woman. She has Asperger’s syndrome and ‘a number of mental illnesses’, including post-traumatic stress disorder.
Sienna told the Royal Commission that when she was a baby she was taken from her birth mother who was a First Nations woman, and raised by an evangelical Christian woman. ‘All throughout my childhood I was a girly little boy and I got bashed for it and I got bullied for it.’
Under this woman’s care, Sienna was physically abused, molested and starved. She sustained multiple injuries including broken ribs, broken bones and head injuries.
When she was in her 20s Sienna witnessed her own child being abused by this woman. In a fit of rage, she told us, she unintentionally harmed her.
Sienna was sent to a male prison and was confronted by prisoners with ‘their genitals out, stroking erect penises’.
‘I was afraid. I’d never been in prison before. I was afraid of getting raped. I was afraid of getting killed.’
Desperate to be transferred Sienna threatened to kill herself. She was placed in an observation unit but treated like a hassle. She said, ‘all they want to do is get you back into circulation’.
‘There’s no counselling, there’s no trauma support, there’s no mental health support.’
Prison staff have accused Sienna of using dysphoria to get attention and tell her to ‘act like a normal bloke’. A lot of them believe she chooses to be transgender and try to bully it out of her.
‘The gender transition was not to get attention or a lifestyle choice … I am a female, I wear female underwear as a necessity, I have a female figure, I wear
makeup and I have legally taken on a female name. Why would I choose to do this in a male prison full of predators if it’s a lifestyle choice?’
Sienna has had breakdowns in prison, been raped times and is constantly sexually harassed. One time the prison guards witnessed an attack but didn’t intervene. They told Sienna, ‘she brought it upon herself’.
She has heard prison staff make jokes about transgender prisoners ‘getting raped … getting gangbanged to straighten them out’.
Sienna said she can’t report the sexual harassment to the staff. ‘If you do that in here you’ll get killed’.
She wants prison staff to have training around dysphoria and mental health, and to call out and punish sexual assault and harassment.
Sienna had to fight to be given hormone replacement therapy which she has been taking for almost five years.
Ideally she’d like to be transferred to a female prison even though she’s aware women prisoners can be violent.
‘They’ve got to stop putting first time offenders with a gentle personality in with violent offenders’.
‘You people out there have absolutely no idea what goes on in here. The misconception is that a lot of people in prison are violent criminals and have a criminal mentality. And I’m sorry that’s wrong.’
Disclaimer: This is the story of a person who shared their personal experience with the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability through a submission or private session. The names in this story are pseudonyms. The person who shared this experience was not a witness and their account is not evidence. They did not take an oath or affirmation before providing the story. Nothing in this story constitutes a finding of the Royal Commission. Any views expressed are those of the person who shared their experience, not of the Royal Commission.