At least four trans-identified male convicts were transferred into an Illinois women’s prison after being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Now, the ACLU is requesting that the court issue an order prohibiting those men from being transferred to Menard Correctional Center, the state’s largest maximum security male facility, and demanding that an additional group of men in Menard be offered a transfer to a women’s prison.
For nearly a decade, the Illinois ACLU has acted as legal counsel on behalf of a group of male criminals who claim to be transgender, of whom at least four have been confirmed by Reduxx to be currently housed at Logan Correctional Center – a women’s facility.
In January 2018, the ACLU filed a class-action lawsuit against Department of Corrections (DOC) officials on behalf of six male inmates requesting a transfer to a women’s prison. In legal documents, all of the men were identified by a feminine alias: Andre C. Patterson, or “Janiah Monroe”; Eric D. Padilla, or “Lydia Helena Vision”; Diego R. Melendez, or “Marilyn”; Jordan Kuykendall, or “Sora”; Fadell Reed, or “Sasha”; and Gregory Stamps, or “Ebony.”
The initial suit, Monroe v. Rauner, accused then-mayor Bruce Rauner and DOC Director John Baldwin of “cruel and unusual punishment,” an eighth amendment violation, for not providing the convicted criminals with feminizing hormones.
The complaint argues that “the IDOC systematically fails to provide necessary medical treatment for gender dysphoria… Among other common and medically necessary treatments, IDOC routinely fails to provide adequate hormone therapy and to accommodate social transition so that a prisoner can live consistently with his or her gender identity.”
It continues: “And while gender affirming [genital] surgery also is medically necessary for some patients with gender dysphoria, IDOC has adopted a policy that such surgery can be approved only in ‘extraordinary circumstances,’ which in practice means that IDOC never has approved any prisoner for surgical gender dysphoria treatment.”
The suit has been ongoing for the past eight years. Earlier this year, the ACLU filed a preliminary injunction seeking to prevent the DOC from ever transferring Padilla, Patterson, Kuykendall, Melendez, or Reed from being transferred to male prison Menard.
Additionally, the motion requests that the DOC be required to “offer a transfer for all class members to [women’s prison] Logan.” The class-action lawsuit refers to “at least eleven” men whose names have been redacted in court documents.
“There are currently at least eleven class members living at Menard, a male facility. Not a single class member feels safe at Menard, and none of them are receiving constitutionally adequate care for their gender dysphoria,” reads the motion.
“Nearly all of the class members at Menard report being raped or sexually assaulted by guards and other inmates. All of them feel targeted and retaliated against by virtue of their gender dysphoria and mere affiliation with this lawsuit,” it continues. “At Menard, there is a documented pattern and practice of physical and sexual assault by male guards and inmates alike against class members that reside there. Class members are beaten, raped, and suffer relentless abuse and misgendering by staff and others at Menard.”
Despite the ACLU’s claims, Warden Anthony Wills testified that he has not been made aware of an alleged pattern of harassment of transgender inmates at Menard. Wills also revealed that sixteen men at Menard are claiming to be transgender women. The men are held in single cells together in the West House, an area of Menard which lacks security cameras.
Wills stated that he had repeatedly requested the installation of security cameras in that area since 2021, but his requests were ignored. During that time, he learned of between 50 to 100 reports filed by trans-identified male inmates complaining of “feeling unsafe” or physical assault. However, he noted that no investigation into alleged assaults of trans-identified inmates by DOC staff had ever found the complaints to be substantiated.
In its court filings, the ACLU repeatedly refers to the men as “female,” and lists several alleged incidents of rape, “hostility,” and “misgendering.”
At Menard, “cross-gender strip searches are the norm,” says the ACLU. “Female class members are double-celled with cis-gender men who assault and threaten them because they are transgender, while others are consigned to segregation or protective custody, but even then, these women still share space with angry and violent inmates… the Court should require Defendants to demonstrate why any transgender woman and other class members who want to live in a facility consistent with their gender identity should not reside at Logan.”
The motion was granted in September by Judge Nancy Rosenstengel, and a further evidentiary hearing is scheduled to take place December 8.
When granting the motion, Judge Rosenstengel ordered the DOC to “transfer every class member now housed at Menard to another facility no later than October 15, 2025,” and added that DOC Director Latoya Hughes “shall take into consideration the individual’s preference(s) as to the location of the transfer.” The order for injunctive relief further specifies that the names of the men to be transferred will remain redacted or censored.
Of the five men who are named in the ongoing lawsuit, four are currently at a women’s prison as a result of the litigation: Patterson, Padilla, Melendez, and Kuykendall.
Reed is listed as being in male prison Centralia.
Reed was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2012 on charges of aggravated sexual assault of a victim over the age of 60. The ACLU states that Reed began claiming to be transgender “during the intake process at Stateville Correctional Center.”
Referring to Reed with feminine pronouns, the ACLU argued that “because of her untreated gender dysphoria, Sasha tried to harm herself while housed there, including a suicide attempt.” The complaint notes that in 2015, Reed was transferred to male facility Menard.
The other four men named in the ongoing litigation are already being held at Logan, having been quietly transferred in beginning in 2019. This is despite their recorded sex listed as “male” in DOC records.
Kuykendall, who is a registered sex offender, is serving a 40-year sentence for the 2013 stabbing murder of his former girlfriend, high school student Erin Schneider. The 17 year-old was found dead just hours before the two were expected to appear in court, as Schneider’s mother had filed for an emergency protection order against him.
In November 2014, Kuykendall pleaded guilty but mentally ill to first degree murder. Just months prior, while awaiting trial, he began claiming to be transgender.
According to the ACLU complaint, Kuykendall began referring to himself as “Sora” during intake at Menard Correctional Center.
“Within her first week of incarceration, Sora asked for hormones and explained that she wanted to transition,” reads the complaint. “IDOC did not evaluate Sora for gender dysphoria and did not provide any treatment. As a result, and after becoming disturbed by the fact that she was for the first time growing facial hair, Sora attempted to castrate herself by tying her testicles in order to stop the flow of testosterone.”
As part of the initial class-action lawsuit, lawyers for Kuykendall attempted to have his sentence reduced while using his self-declared gender identity as the rationale. Attorneys claimed that Kuykendall was not in a mental state to fully understand the consequences of his guilty plea due to the emotional distress of being transgender.
Patterson is serving time for multiple violent felonies, including murder, attempted murder, and aggravated assault, with a criminal record dating back to 2005. In November 2010, Patterson pleaded guilty to murdering his cellmate by strangling him to death.
In June of 2019, just two months after being transferred into Logan, a woman who was made to share a housing unit with Monroe filed a Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) report alleging that he had raped her. Under the protection of anonymity, “Jane Doe” also accused prison officials of attempting to coerce her to lie about her ordeal, which she would later reveal the details of in a February 2020 lawsuit.
Padilla, who is six feet tall and 237 pounds, is serving a 23-year sentence for attempted first-degree murder after he stabbed Frenaz Lyles repeatedly in the abdomen. On the evening of March 25, 2003, Padilla, who is Mexican, bumped into the victim and demanded an apology from him. When Lyles did not apologize, Padilla kicked him in the knees before pulling a knife from his back pocket and stabbing the man three times.
The attempted murder, according to prosecutors, was racially motivated. According to reports of the trial, Padilla “showed no emotion when the verdict was read.”
In a sworn declaration by Padilla filed in 2019, he states: “I am a 39-year-old woman… From a young age, I knew that I was a girl. I felt like a girl on the inside and expressed myself in a feminine way. When I was a child, I attempted to cut off my penis. My family used to tell me that I needed to ‘man up’ and ‘act more masculine.’ Because of my family’s lack of support, I hid my femininity and transgender identity until years later.”
Padilla began claiming to be transgender in 2015 while incarcerated at Danville. “At that time, I began requesting treatment for gender dysphoria, including hormone therapy, female clothing such as a bra and female underwear, and gender-affirming grooming items,” Padilla said. “Despite my diagnosis, IDOC repeatedly denied these requests.”
He continued: “Because I am in a male facility, when IDOC searches me I get searched by a man. If I were in a women’s facility I believe that these kinds of searches would be performed by women. To have a male touch me makes me feel sick—my anxiety goes through the roof and I have no way to control it. I have to dissociate myself. If I allowed myself to feel I would be crying all day because I am a woman in stuck in a male facility.”
Melendez, a registered sex offender serving a combined sentence of 35 years for murder and aggravated battery with a firearm began claiming to be transgender in 2015, six years into his prison sentence.
A declaration by Melendez filed by the ACLU states: “From a young age, I knew that I was a girl. As a child, I often went into my mother’s room and tried on her clothes and makeup. I attempted to pierce my own ears. When my mother asked me whether I preferred to play with toys for boys or girls, I always chose the ones I thought were the girls’ toys.”
As a result of ACLU litigation, convicted pedophile James Blessent was sent to serve his sentence at Logan upon his conviction in 2024. Blessent, who calls himself Michelle, is currently being housed at the facility after being found guilty of raping his two children. As previously reported by Reduxx, Blessent, 35, was initially arrested in April of 2023 in a case which included five counts of predatory criminal sexual assault of a victim under 13.
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