Kanautica Zayre-Brown is being housed at Anson Correctional Institution in Polkton. 
                                 Contributed Photo

Kanautica Zayre-Brown is being housed at Anson Correctional Institution in Polkton.

Contributed Photo

<p>Transgender woman Kanautica Zayre-Brown is demanding justice for her mistreatment while being incarcerated at Anson Correctional Institution.</p>
                                 <p>Contributed Photo</p>

Transgender woman Kanautica Zayre-Brown is demanding justice for her mistreatment while being incarcerated at Anson Correctional Institution.

Contributed Photo

POLKTON — After fighting to get transferred from a men’s correctional facility to a women’s facility in 2019, Kanautica Zayre-Brown, who is transgender, says she continues to be misgendered, deadnamed — meaning intentionally being called by her former name — and has not been able to receive her hormone treatments at Anson Correctional Institution.

When Zayre-Brown was convicted on her most recent charges of two felony counts each of insurance fraud and obtaining property by false pretenses, and one felony count of being a habitual felon in 2017, she was housed at a men’s facility after a judge refused to list her gender as female and use her legal name, Kanautica, on the judgement and commitment paperwork.

“I was housed at the male facility for one year, 10 months and five days until negotiation informally negotiation, … public pressure and kind of knocking on Governor (Roy) Cooper’s door, I finally was moved to a female prison,” Zayre-Brown said.

She hoped to feel safer in a female facility, but since being at Anson Correctional Institution, Zayre-Brown said she has never felt worse. Since moving into the facility there has been continuous issues with people misgendering her and calling her by her deadname, Kevin Chestnut, her birth name, which she had legally changed in 2012.

One lieutenant in particular is spearheading her issues.

“He has just made my life really, really bad since I’ve been here,” Zayre-Brown said. “I had gotten infractions that I know I was not supposed to have, and he was the person behind it.”

According to a Policy and Procedure document from NCDPS, issued in August of 2019, all new and current employees are to receive training specific to the care and custody of LGBTI offenders, including sexual abuse and harassment, the Prison Rape Elimination Act Understanding the LGBTI Offender, multicultural awareness, professional ethics in the workplace and safe search practices.

The NCDPS Policy and Procedure document also states “staff interacting with transgender offenders are to use either gender preferred or gender-neutral communication” which could be the offender’s legal last name, and intentional misuse of gender pronouns is prohibited.

On top of these abuses, Zayre-Brown has not been allowed to continue her hormone treatment, which she was undergoing at the time of her incarceration. She currently has no active prescription for hormones and she is not receiving any hormone therapy.

According to the NCDPS document, there should be a continuation of hormone therapy if immediately prior to incarceration, the hormone therapy was prescribed in the community by a licensed provider and the treatment should be continued.

“Interruption in hormone therapy should be avoided unless otherwise clinically indicated,” the document states.

The last time she received hormone therapy was over 300 days ago, according to Zayre-Brown.

Zayre-Brown had her gender affirming surgery before prison, but is still waiting on her bilateral orchiectomy surgery. The North Carolina Department of Public Safety (DPS) approved the surgery while Zayre-Brown has been incarcerated, but she said DPS has since taken back the approval three separate times citing that the surgery is considered elective, and thus there is not enough staff to meet her post-surgery needs.

“Nobody’s transition is ever going to be the same,” Zayre-Brown said. “But alleviation is the goal for everyone. So if one person gets alleviated, why can’t you alleviate the goal for everybody else?”

She is at an “acute” stage of her gender dysphoria, meaning it is no longer chronic, which has been documented. Zayre-Brown said the stress of being mistreated by jail staff and denied her hormone treatment has lead her down a dark path, resulting in multiple instances of her hurting herself.

She was not expecting the women’s facility to give her a difficult time. Zayre-Brown was told that DPS staff was trained on how to handle transgender inmates.

“I expected things to be a certain way,” Zayre-Brown said. “But when I got here, it wasn’t. It just had been going down and within the last year it’s been getting worse. The last 6 months I’ve gotten so worse, I have gotten put on medications to help me cope with the issue of waking up every day and say, ‘Do I really want to live or do I really want to hurt myself?’”

The ACLU of North Carolina, a state affiliate of the national American Civil Liberties Union, has been working with Zayre-Brown throughout her incarceration. The ACLU is a nonprofit organization working in the courts, General Assembly and communities to protect the civil rights for all North Carolinians.

In March of 2019, ACLU sent a demand letter for Zayre-Brown to be transferred to a women’s facility in which DPS agreed to move her by the summer.

Now, ACLU is assisting her again with a set of demands to get her fair treatment. Zayre-Brown said ACLU sent the demands to DPS with a deadline of May 28 to respond, but by June 2, there was no response.

“Right now I asked in the demand letter, ACLU asked them to have me transferred from Anson to a different female facility, which the only other female facility is in Raleigh,” Zayre-Brown said. “But DPS always tells me that Raleigh isn’t equipped to house me.”

The Director of Communications for ACLU of NC Dustin Chicurel-Bayard said the specific demand letter could not be shared at the time and none of the attorneys were available for comment by press time.

Zayre-Brown said the letter also describes the mistreatment from the specific lieutenant and how he has been using his authority to cause issues with her stay. She also said if negotiations move forward with DPS, ACLU will request for her to go home on extended or compassionate release so she can take care of her medical needs.

Friends, family and supporters are also coming to her side through The House of Kanautica. There was a “phone zap” on May 27 and 28 in which her supporters called NCDPS, the Director of Behavioral Health and Anson Correctional.

Organizers wanted people to call these places to overwhelm them in hopes of receiving justice for Zayre-Brown. There was a sample phone script and email script people could use, stating how Zayre-Brown is not receiving gender-affirming healthcare and the violence must end.

“It brightens my day to know that every day I can say, ‘they can treat me wrong here but I can pick up the phone an somebody is on the outside trying to make it better,’” Zayre-Brown said.

When demands were sent out on her behalf in 2019, it gained media attention as she was the first transgender female to be moved from a male facility to a female facility in the state. She has become a figure for the transgender community as supporters from around the world write to her.

“People have written me letters all the way from Iceland,” Zayre-Brown said. “I get letters every day, all day…I get people saying, ‘We see you. We hear you. You’re brave. Your resilience matters.’”

Zayre-Brown feels frustrated because people in other countries can see the mistreatment, but she doesn’t understand how DPS cannot see it.

“I do not feel that on the outside in society that you get treated anyway here as you do in prison,” Zayre-Brown said. “Anson, this prison here, compared to say if I was in a Raleigh prison, it’s a geographical thing. A lot of people here that work here are not really culturalized…they are not really seeing things and they bring it to work and cause a lot of issues here.”

Nothing in her life has compared to anything she has experience while at Anson Correctional Institution, even as she looks back at getting bullied in school.

Zayre-Brown has served four years out of her seven years and four months to nine years and 11 months sentencing.

“I know I committed a crime and I have to do my time,” Zayre-Brown said. “I just want fairness. I’m in DPS custody and I just ask that they give me the medically necessary care that I need.”

Reach Liz O’Connell at 704-994-5471 or [email protected].