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Trangendered Prisoner Allowed to sue the state for surgery
Taken from the NY Post, July 18, 2003
About two dozen prison inmates are receiving the same controversial estrogen treatment a convicted killer is seeking in his sex-change suit against New York state, authorities said yesterday.
Mark Brooks, who now calls himself Jessica Lewis, wants taxpayers to pay for his sex change so he can serve out his remaining time — about 37 years — in a women's prison.
If he wins, he'd be the first inmate to get one in state history.
Corrections spokesman Jim Flateau said there are about two dozen inmates receiving hormone treatments out of the 66,003 prisoners currently locked up.
The costs of the prison treatments weren't available, but hormone therapy typically runs anywhere between $300 to $7,000 a year, depending on the type of drugs involved.
Actual sex-change operations, which cost between $10,000 and $15,000, have never been done for an inmate in New York state, Flateau said.
Albany federal court Judge Lawrence Kahn is allowing Brooks' $500,000 lawsuit to proceed, and says the state should at least let him see a doctor to recommend treatment for what the prisoner says is a case of "gender identity disorder."
Brooks, 34, who says he "believes that she has the gender identity of a female," is hoping the state will provide him electrolysis, "voice modulation," hormone therapy, breast implant surgery and "genital reassignment."
Under current state Department of Correction rules, only inmates who were on hormone therapy before being locked up can get the estrogen treatments in prison.
Transsexuals who haven't had complete sex changes but are on hormone therapy are typically left in the general prison population, Flateau said.
If "the effects are obvious and the individual can be victim-prone as a result," the person can be placed in a more secure area of the prison.
Some imprisoned transsexuals have had to improvise to look feminine — two of them in a federal penitentiary reportedly used red M&Ms for lipstick, pen ink for eyeliner and baby powder mixed with Kool-Aid for blush.
Kahn's ruling, which was released earlier this week, opens the door for prisoners suffering from medically recognized gender identity disorder to start their hormone treatments while incarcerated.
Brooks is serving 50 years in prison for the cold-blooded July 1989 murder of Hofstra student Dean Lockshiss. Brooks and another man had duped Lockshiss into stopping to help them on a dark road in Putnam County by pretending they were having car problems, then robbed him of his $4 and shot him to death.
The 5-foot-9 Brooks maintains he's been aware of his "female identity since childhood," he didn't find out about gender identity disorder until he read about it in prison.
"After immersing himself in literature on GID, plaintiff became convinced that he is a transsexual," Kahn's decision says.
He decided he needed treatment in 1998, but said prison and state officials ignored his pleas for help, which led him to file suit.
The state Attorney General's Office says it's considering an appeal.
Photo:Killer Mark Brooks wants to begin estrogen treatments, like about 25 people in state prisons are getting.
