Woman Wrongly Classified as Man by Fla. Jailers Files $5M Lawsuit

A Dominican woman wrongly classified as a man and held with male inmates for 10 hours in a Miami prison three years ago has filed a civil rights lawsuit.

Fior Pichardo de Veloz was arrested at a Miami airport in November of 2013 on what lawyers say was a decades-old drug charge that was eventually dismissed.

She was initially booked as a female but medical staff reclassified her as a male because they said she had “non-traditional male characteristics.”

“After a ‘review’ by a nurse employed by Miami-Dade County, it was then determined that Pichardo had male reproductive organs and she was sent to a male-only facility,” read the lawsuit obtained by the Daily News. “This identification was outrageously incorrect.”

The $5 million lawsuit names the Miami-Dade Corrections Department as a defendant.

“It’s inconceivable how something like this could have happened,” her lawyer David Kubiliun told the Daily News on Wednesday.

Pichardo, married with three children, was placed with 40 male inmates in an open cell where she was allegedly taunted and sexually harassed. She was 50 years old at the time.

She was so in fear of going to the bathroom, which was in an open area, she “urinated on herself,” her lawyer said.

“She was threatened and sexually harassed,” Kubiliun told The News. “She was debased and humiliated.”

Kubiliun said his client suffers from PTSD and continues to be under psychiatric care because of the incident. They filed the lawsuit because they “want to get some answers,” he said.

He claims that it seems unlikely that jail officials did a proper examination on her when she entered the facility and believes they are lying when they say they did.

To make matters worse, jailers eventually moved Pichardo to isolation and took photos of her private parts, Kubiliun said.

Pichardo, a former local government official in the Dominican Republican, had traveled to Miami in 2013 for the birth of her third grandchild and had previously visited the U.S. without incident.

“This is a very well-respected professional woman,” her lawyer told The News. “She didn’t run for re-election because of the humiliation. She doesn’t want this to happen to anybody, not just in our country, but anywhere in the world.”

For more information visit the source link below.

Source: www.nydailynews.com www.nydailynews.com

Be the first to comment on "Woman Wrongly Classified as Man by Fla. Jailers Files $5M Lawsuit"

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published.


*