Transgender Woman Sues After Alleged Assault By Officers
When Makyyla Holland was arrested and brought to a New York jail, she told corrections officers she was a transgender woman and feared being housed with men. The 23-year-old training nurse’s assistant in Binghamton also disclosed to the jailers that she had trauma from being sexually assaulted by a man when she was young.
But the day she arrived at the Broome County Jail in January 2021, jailers allegedly didn’t heed her concerns. Instead, Holland claims, officers repeatedly punched and kicked her, breaking her tooth and giving her a head injury that resulted in migraine headaches, and refused to provide her medications including hormone treatments. They also placed her in a men’s unit, where she spent most of her stay in a glass-walled medical “segregation” cell and was visible to other inmates at all times including while using the toilet.
On Tuesday, Holland detailed her accusations in a federal lawsuit against the county, its sheriff, jail administrator and multiple corrections officers.