Mick Hartley

And still it goes on. From Genevieve Gluck at Reduxx:

A female inmate in Maine’s only women’s prison has filed a lawsuit alleging harassment and assault committed against her by a trans-identified male transfer. Katie Mountain has filed the lawsuit against two prison officials and her former cellmate, a double-murderer named Andrew Balcer, who now goes by the feminine name “Andrea.” Balcer is serving a 40-year prison sentence in the women’s prison at Windham for the grisly murder of his parents, a crime that was defended in court on the basis of Balcer’s self-declared “gender identity.”

Mountain is a 41-year-old married Baptist woman from Dexter, and is currently serving a 10-month sentence for a probation violation. On April 3, Mountain filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of housing males with female inmates in Maine.

Mountain first went public with her allegations against Balcer last month by sending a letter to a local news outlet detailing the abuse she had faced while housed with Balcer. Mountain claimed that he sexually assaulted her and had been a “terrorizer” who targeted female inmates.

“She’s shoved me against the bathroom wall and tried to force me to kiss her,” Mountain wrote in her letter, using feminine pronouns for the convicted killer. “I would wake up to her just staring at me and then making comments like: ‘If you don’t wake up, it’s because I smothered you with a pillow.’”

Mountain said she went to her sergeant “six times” and her unit manager at least twice in an effort to be moved, and that correctional staff did not offer her a new arrangement until she physically refused to re-enter the cell with Balcer.

Now, Mountain’s lawsuit is seeking to challenge a state policy which requires inmates to be housed according to a self-declared “gender” rather than by their biological sex.

“Female inmates at the MCC face two horrific choices: bunk with Andrew Balcer—a violent, ‘intact’ male—and endure sexual assault and harassment, or face discipline and segregation for complaining,” reads the complaint.

“Katie Mountain, who is 5 feet 2 inches tall, was forced to bunk with Balcer, a 6-foot, 310-pound male,” the lawsuit states. “While bunking together, Balcer subjected Mountain to graphic sexual stories, trapped her in a bathroom to forcibly kiss her, and made repeated threats of rape and impregnation. Balcer talked disturbingly about putting a baby in her, and pointing to his crotch said, ‘look at my ten-man tent’ and ‘we can’t go for a ride, but you can ride me.’”

Insane.