Gay People "Are Looked Down on as Lesser People" in Alabama Prisons

Prisoner in Bullock Prison Discusses How Gay People are Sexually Enslaved, Raped/Abused, Traded, and Discriminated Against in Alabama Prisons

In another interview in late January, the prisoner in Bullock referred to as “Zach” in these articles discusses the treatment of gay prisoners in the Alabama prison system.

“I did want to mention something,” Zach tells me at the top of the interview. “I’m a part of the, I guess, gay community in here. So, it puts me in a group, I guess, of real mean treatment in here.”

He elaborates, “At first, it was by choice. I was spending time with mostly good people. And in the past, I’ve had situations where I’ve been claimed — ‘You’re mine now, do as I say or else’ type situations — and that’s even been here [in Bullock]. I’m just minding my own business, doing my own thing, and some big bully type guy will come around and start putting down on you, and taking your store, and possibly feeding you drugs and keeping you strung out so that you become dependent.”

He adds, “I’ve been fortunate enough to be with a couple of good folks, but I’ve been in some other situations too where I’ve been raped and stuff like that.”

Describing one of the previous situations in which he was claimed and raped, “Another prisoner was putting down on me pretty hard or whatever, and I tried to get away,” Zach recalls. “I went to the police and moved to a different dorm. Well, he showed up [in that dorm] and started threatening me with knives and to keep robbing me, and he had some other friends in that dorm who pulled a knife on me. And then this other guy was like, ‘I will help you if you do this.’ So, I ended up getting in a situation where I was looking for help, but he didn’t have a dog in the fight, this other guy, so he made me do some things I didn’t want to do in order to try and get out of that situation,” in other words, in exchange for the protection from the first person who was going to rape and abuse him.

The abuse from that prisoner “thankfully only lasted two weeks, maybe a week and a half,” says Zach.

He got out of that situation only after “a homeboy I did some time with in county jail,” who was then placed in Bullock around the time this was happening, “found out I was in that situation and found another gay guy to hook me up with, and he was more of one of the nice guys, I guess, so we connected right away,” says Zach.

The friend from county jail also “helped me pay to get out of my situation and helped take care of me for a while,” he adds.

Prior to his friend facilitating this new arrangement, Zach experienced oral and anal rape multiple times, as well as other physical and emotional abuse, he tells me.

In general, in addition to the physical and sexual abuse gay people are subjected to in an Alabama prison, “They’re just looked down on as lesser people,” says Zach. For example, he elaborates, “You’re not allowed to go in the ice chest. You don’t know if you’ll get to use the microwave. You can’t touch anything that they touch.”

He explains that in the prisons where the showers aren’t sectioned off, “You have to face the wall. You can’t turn around and look at anybody, because they might assume that you as a gay person are looking at them in a sexual manner, and they’re not gay, so they’ll get upset and then it could become a violent situation just because you accidentally turned around in the shower to rinse your hair off or whatever. So, there’s a lot of old prison laws and oppression in this world and in the gay community.

“It has its upsides too, when you connect with a likeminded individual, or someone that shows that they care, or pretends that they care, whatever the case may be,” he continues. “So, it’s got its upsides, but the general vibe is that, ‘You’re a fuck boy, punk ass…’ It could be anything. It could be like, ‘Your money is no good here.’ If you try and sell some of your food off your tray or whatever, they don’t want you touching the tray or anything like that, a bunch of little kind of BS stuff that adds up to add to the stress of the stressful environment.”

Zach says he knows numerous prisoners who have tried to submit PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) cases that were “completely just ignored” in Bullock.

As noted by an NPR report, “The DOJ has […] found that Alabama was ‘deliberately indifferent’ to pervasive prisoner-on-prisoner attacks and sexual abuse, and failed to maintain facilities that are "sanitary, safe, or secure."

The report further quotes Governor Kay Ivey responding to the DOJ reports:

Republican Governor Kay Ivey calls the report an "expected follow-up" and says her administration will be "carefully reviewing these serious allegations" and working with the federal government to resolve the issues.

"I am as committed as ever to improving prison safety through necessary infrastructure investment, increased correctional staffing, comprehensive mental-health care services, and effective rehabilitation programs," Ivey says. "We all desire an effective, Alabama solution to this Alabama problem."

That report is from 2020. Governor Ivey is still in power. The violence has continued to get worse since.

I should also note that, as I’ve written previously about Bullock, prisoners who contract HIV who are heterosexual are nonetheless assumed to be gay and often mistreated, harassed, and discriminated against as part of the gay community as well.