In 2015 I was transferred from Tomoka Correctional in Daytona Beach, Florida, to Zephyrhills Correctional in Zepherhills. I had been at Tomoka for three years and met and befriended a lot of other trans girls over that time. I’ve been in prison the majority of my life [see note at bottom], and out of all the institutions I’ve been, Tomoka had the biggest trans population I’d ever seen on a compound. The joke at the time was that Tomoka’s new name was “Tamika.” Even though we still have the daily struggles and dangers that t-girls naturally face in male facilities, there was something empowering and comforting in the numbers we had in our circle there.
As you can imagine I was sad and upset about my seemingly random transfer to this new prison. There’s really no way to explain the anxiety and intensity a trans woman feels stepping off of a bus or van at a new facility. You can feel and sense and a lot of times see the hatred and tension aimed in your direction. It comes from both fellow convicts and police all the same. Then to make an uncomfortable situation even worse, the very first thing they do is a strip search as a group!
The compound at Zephyrhills was super small. For the first few days, I was just doing my best to fly under the radar. My first night in my cell, my celly had informed me that there was no other trans women on the compound. That was hard for me to believe since that was a first for me. I mean, I’d been to county jails with no other girls, but never a state prison. Guess there’s a first time for everything.
I end up with a work detail cleaning up the yard with a group of 10 or 15 other inmates. But the boss man wasn’t happy that I was on his crew, so he called me over to him and said that he didn’t want “something” like me messing up his crew and distracting his guys. He told me my new job was to clearn up in front of F Block where I’d be by myself and “not a problem.”
Long story short, F Block was the discipline block. All the violent and higher security people were housed there. The yard was full of plastic baggies, cigarette butts, batteries . . . I saw a skeleton of what had once been a “garden” maybe? AKA, my new refuge. . . .
Every day I’d show up, makeup on, pink shorts and white T. And I ignored all the comments and sneers and whistles. I just worked and cleaned and fixed up the whole area. I got the garden all the way together. I had sea shells from the yard, a little pond. The cops began to comment. The inmates began to say hello and smile. Then a month after it all began, the same C.O. [corrections officer or guard] that vanquished me to F Block called me over and told me how sorry he was for judging me. And how much I had changed the energy of F Block. Then he offered to take me around the library and admin building and let me dig up the exclusive plants and shrubbery and transplant them in my area. Within a month, F Block still had a lot going on, but it wasn’t such a dark and lonely place. . . . The power and beauty in a woman’s femininity, even in the hardest of blocks, is an undeniable aspect of living as a trans woman in a man’s prison.
Additional info
About Victoria Drain
If you would like to know more about Victoria’s life, she has let us know that the most complete and accurate narrative about her life can be found in the merit brief for her case that is currently under consideration at the Ohio Supreme Court. Scroll through the front material to the “Statement of Facts.”
If Drain is the fire, the system is the gasoline.
—Victoria’s legal team in their “Statement of Facts”
