THE $20,000 PRISON PUSSY

From ALLHEADLINENEWS:

Prisoner Wants Tax-Payers To Pay For His Sex-Change

I didn't know that Flotilla Debarge was 58!


Tomasz Filipczak - AHN

Boston, MA (AHN) - Convicted killer Robert Kosilek, who legally has changed his name to Michelle, is fighting in federal courts to have a sex-change operation.

The trial, which opened a year ago, has become mired in Boston federal courts and has cost taxpayers more than $52,000, according to the Associated Press.

Hundreds of hours of testimony have been offered up in court, including that of 10 medical specialists who have been paid tens of thousands of dollars. Even the judge had to hire an expert to help him make sense of the complicated case.

The cost of the trial overshadows the cost of the surgery (about $20,000) but allowing the surgery to go forward would set precedent for possible hundreds of other cases similar to this one.

"They are prisoners. They are there because they've broken the law," said Republican state Sen. Scott Brown, who unsuccessfully introduced a bill to ban sex-change surgery for inmates. "Other folks, people who want to get these types of surgeries, they have to go through their insurance carrier or save up for it and do it independently. Yet if you are in prison, you can do it for nothing? That doesn't make a lot of sense."

Kosilek, 58, was convicted of strangling his wife in 1990. He claimed he killed her in self-defense after she spilled boiling tea on his genitals.

In some cases sex-change surgery can be necessary, experts said. In the case of Kosilek, who has twice attempted suicide, advocates say it is necessary. "I would not want to continue existing like this," Kosilek testified.

Former Commissioner Kathleen Dennehy said prison officials cannot be influenced by Kosilek's talk of suicide. "The department does not negotiate or respond to threats of harm or suicide in an effort to barter," she said. "You couldn't run a prison with that kind of leveraging going on."