The Washington Corrections Center for Women, formerly Washington State's only women-only prison, is sponsoring gender-reconstructive surgery for male inmates who claim to identify as female, some of whom have violent criminal records. Meanwhile, the newly admitted male inmates continue to rape females within the facility, a current guard at the prison told National Review.

The corrections officer, who chose to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution, told National Review that the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) recently paid for breast implants for inmate Nathan Goninan, a man who now identifies as a woman and, according to a 2019 court filing, has changed his name to "Nonnie Lotusflower."

Goninan is incarcerated for the second-degree manslaughter of a 17-year-old girl, whose cause of death was determined to be strangulation and whose post-mortem examination showed evidence of sexual assault. He has many other prior convictions, including assault and possession of weapons, and a prior prison discipline record, including assault of other offenders, threatening to assault and “kill” staff, and destroying prison property.

Prison guards "took him to get the surgery with an escort" and to at least one preliminary medical visit within the last two months, said the officer.

Goninan had to have "three members from our specialty emergency response team take him to Spokane for an appointment prior to surgery and then back to Gig Harbor," the guard said. "One of the members told me they drove hours for a ten-minute appointment. Then they had to take him again for his surgery and he recovered at Airway Heights Correction Center."

Fernando Chirinos, another male inmate at the prison who claims to identify as a woman, has been approved for “top” and “bottom” surgery, which the Department of Corrections will pay for, according to a former corrections officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Chirinos is serving time for theft.

On October 27, 2017, Goninan filed a civil-rights complaint alleging that the DOC’s failure to provide him with gender-reassignment surgery violated the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits imposing unduly harsh penalties on criminal defendants, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits denial of due process.

In March 2018, the DOC revised its Offender Health Plan (OHP) to allow inmates to undergo surgical interventions for gender dysphoria if the procedure is found to be medically necessary. However, the DOC responded to Goninan that it still prohibits “elective or cosmetic surgical procedures for the purpose of reassignment.”

As for what qualifies as “medically necessary,” the DOC told National Review that it mimics “the Apple Health Medicaid criteria for determining ‘medical necessity’. . .” The question of medical necessity is ultimately adjudicated by the DOC’s facility medical directors and gender-affirming review committee.

Under the Apple Health guidelines, to undergo transition surgery, the inmate must have been on hormone therapy for a minimum of twelve months before surgery, although it is not required to receive a mastectomy or reduction mammoplasty (chest masculinization).

The inmate must also live in a gender role that matches their gender identity for a minimum of twelve months before surgery, with an exception for personal safety concerns. However, procedures including a mastectomy, reduction mammoplasty, orchiectomy (testicle removal), and hysterectomy (uterus removal) do not require the inmate to have lived in his desired gender for twelve months.

For “top” surgery, the inmate needs a referral to a surgeon from a primary-care provider (PCP) and a comprehensive evaluation by an agency-approved “center of excellence” mental-health professional who can “demonstrate some type of training, experience, or expertise in providing transgender healthcare.”

For “bottom” surgery, the inmate needs a referral to a surgeon from a PCP, a comprehensive evaluation by two agency-approved mental-health professionals, and a pre-surgical consultation by an agency-approved surgeon.

While Goninan has asserted that he is a woman, and has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the guard confirmed that he still has his male reproductive anatomy and regularly has sexual contact with his "girlfriend," a female inmate in WCCW named Breanna Yost.

The guard, who has worked in corrections in other states, noted that the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) protocol, which deems all sexual interaction within the prison apparatus nonconsensual, is barely enforced at the Washington's women's facility. PREA prohibits sexual misconduct including "offender-on-offender sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and consensual sex acts."

"In the Washington prison system, infractions would be cited as if sex was consensual," the guard alleged, adding that this applies to all residents, whether they are women, transgender women, or transgender men.

When asked for comment, the DOC doubled down on its lax treatment of “consensual” sex cases, which it categorizes under a lesser Washington Administrative Code (WAC) violation, rather than punishing the act as inherently nonconsensual under the PREA protocol.

The media office said in a statement:

It is important to know that consensual sex between incarcerated individuals is a WAC violation. When individuals are caught in a situation that is confirmed to be sexual contact an investigation occurs to determine the nature of the contact. Individuals are held accountable according to the findings. In the case of sexual assault local law enforcement would be notified. In the case of consensual sex both parties will be infracted. Due process will follow that includes any evidence and testimony of both parties.

The guard claimed that Goninan told her that it's unfair that he gets in trouble for having sex with his girlfriend "just because he has a penis," when there are other transgender inmates who do the same and aren't penalized. He accused another transgender male inmate of engaging in sexual intercourse with multiple inmates in the unit, according to the guard. Goninan accused the prison of discriminating against him, the guard said.

Some fed-up corrections officers have surrendered to the fact that sexual misconduct is rampant within the women's facility because of the transgender transfers, the guard said.

In the close custody unit (CCU) in which Goninan now lives, which allows inmates more freedom but still keeps them under tight supervision, there are two people per cell and inmates can request specific roommates, the guard said. Correctional-unit supervisors "have been sick of all the PREA investigations from inmates submitting fake claims to manipulate where they can live," she claimed. So, to avoid wasting time with pointless PREA probes, supervisors have been granting requests for transgender prisoners to be housed with their girlfriends, she said.

Asked about how its housing policy is applied to transgender inmates, the DOC insisted that the safety of inmates is prioritized when their roommate placements are made.

"Due to the robust intake screening process and subsequent evaluations that occur, the department makes every effort to ensure individuals are not placed in housing assignments where they would be a danger to others or where others would be a danger to them,” the DOC said in a statement. “Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) Statistics tell us that people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender face a substantially higher risk of sexual victimization in confinement."

Many of the transgender inmates at WCCW are violent convicted male felons. The former corrections officer said there were “ten to twelve men” at the prison when he left in late 2021. While it’s unclear how many transgender inmates are currently housed there, nor how many are violent, the current guard said she hasn’t “heard of any transgenders in our prison that are here for theft.”

One transgender inmate currently at WCCW named Bryan Kim, who reportedly goes by “Amber,” is serving out a life sentence for murdering his parents. "Instead of shooting his dad with a gun he decided to beat and stab him, and he strangled his mom to death," she said.

When he transferred from the male facility, Goninan was in the intensive management unit (IMU), designated for inmates who are repeatedly destructive "because he was so problematic," the guard says. Just the other day he "threw a fit" and "was kicking the cell door screaming" because his cell-phone time had expired, she claims.

"They were trying to input him on permanent intensive management unit set status. He would be on lockdown 23 hours of the day. It's because he is aggressive and has a long history of violence, especially when he doesn't get his way," she added.

"This is one of the most unsafe things they can do, having males in a female prison. Biologically they're stronger and they have an assaultive nature," she added.

When Goninan entered the female facility, he complained about being separated from the general population, so the prison took him off IMU status and assimilated him with the vulnerable women, the guard claims.

"I've never seen anyone move so fast through the process from being received at our facility to being put into general population in the yard," she says. "He was in segregation immediately, he had a tantrum, they brought him to receiving and they processed him to be put into CCU, the close custody unit."

"I felt that they shuffled him through, trying to accommodate him. If he complains they cater to him to make him behave better," she notes.

The guard also claimed that many transfer applicants have exploited the new gender-inclusive prison policies so they can be in close quarters with at-risk women.

"It's being woke. It's dangerous for the women. A lot of these guys are pretending to be trans. They're growing their hair out, wearing lipstick in the male facility because they want to come to the female facility. A lot of them are rapists, sex offenders, etc.," she says.

The higher-ups have mandated that staff tiptoe around the transgender inmates at the expense of the women residents' security and worker morale, the guard said.

"It's confusing in the prison. You get written up if you don't use the proper pronouns, but you're not allowed to ask them for their pronouns because of HIPPA. If you misgender them you get a penalty, a warning in the supervisory file," she said.