Sexual Injustice In Prisons

John Doe was sentenced to a minimum of three, maximum of twenty years in prison after being convicted of armed robbery. He was sent to Richard A. Handlon Correctional Facility in Michigan at the age of seventeen. After spending a relatively uneventful first week in jail, John was moved to a new cell. His new cellmate had served one year out of his minimum eight. “One night after the last count before bed, . . . his cellmate suddenly attacked him, pulling down both of their pants and wrestling him onto the bottom bunk.” John was raped countless times by his cellmate. He was also sold by against his will by his cellmate to other inmates in exchange for food and other luxuries (Chammah n.p).
Unfortunately, John’s story is all too common a tale in prison. Over 60,000 men are raped in prison each year (Capers 1261). This number is absolutely staggering. Even worse is the fact that nothing is actively being done about the situation. This is due to the fact male sexual assault is rarely discussed in today’s society in any meaningful way. When the term “rape” was first coined it was defined as “vaginal intercourse. . . between a man and a woman who is not his wife. . . achieved by force or a threat of severe …show more content…
After refusing to post bail on religious and moral grounds he was placed in jail for two days. During that time, he was raped approximately sixty times. When he was released from jail, Donaldson became one of the first people to speak out about sexual assaults in prison. He also began the program Stop Prisoner Rape, “a nonprofit organization that advocates for the protection of inmates from sexual assault and offers support to victims.” Before being able to see the impacts of his work, he died at the age of forty-nine due to “infections complicated by AIDS after he contracted HIV through prisoner rape” (Man and Cronan