Transgender woman who was jailed in male prison was 'beaten and raped more than 2,000 times'

Australia: A transgender woman claims she was beaten and raped more than 2,000 times during her four year prison sentence, it's reported.

The woman, known as the fake name 'Mary', was sent to a notorious men’s prison after she was convicted of stealing a car in the 1990s.

Mary says she was preyed on and raped once a day - sometimes more - and if she didn't she would be beaten, news.com.au reported.

She said her ordeal began before she had even been placed in her cell at Boggo Road prison in Queensland, Australia, when she was strip searched.

Word quickly spread that she was transgender and within minutes of arriving at her cell she was approached by men.

“You are basically set upon with conversations about being protected in return for sex,” she said.

“They are either trying to manipulate you or threaten you into some sort of sexual contact and then, once you perform the requested threat of sex, you are then an easy target as others want their share of sex with you, which is more like rape than consensual sex."

Mary said she didn't want to have sex with the prisoners and doing so made her "feel sick" but she did it to save herself getting beaten up.

“It was rape and yes I was flogged and bashed to the point where I knew I had to do it in order to survive, but survival was basically for other prisoners’ pleasure,” she said.

She claims at one point she was put in a cell for prisoners who needed protection and even there she was allegedly assaulted by sex offenders.

Mary described her experience as "hell on Earth" and claimed that it was as if she had died and this was her punishment.

During her jail term, in which she was moved to several prisons, she was forced to have her long hair cut off and also denied her hormone pills, and began to grow facial hair again.

And Mary, who has breasts but has not had gender reassignment surgery, is not the only person who has faced problems being a transgender woman in prison.

Last year, Tara Hudson , 26, was moved from all-male Bristol jail to female Eastwood Park, Glos, after 140,000 people signed a petition supporting her.

And Vicky Thompson was sent to Leeds Prison after convictions for theft but was found dead last year.

Her partner, Robert Steele, said she had been placed on a sex offenders wing and was subjected to abuse: “People were saying things to her because she was obviously dressing as a female.

"She didn’t want to be there. She wanted to be in a female prison.”