A trans-identified male currently serving a sentence of 15 years to life for murder has filed a lawsuit against the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC) seeking a transfer to a female prison. Ricardo Janel Taborn claims to have amputated his testicles while incarcerated in a correctional institution for men, and is now legally recognized as a “female” named Riicara Janel Dior.
Taborn initially began filing lawsuits in March of this year, in both the Northern and the Southern District Courts of Ohio. In his original complaint, Taborn named multiple corrections officers and physicians as defendants before demanding tax-payer funded breast implants and a compensatory payout totaling $2 million.
The case was transferred to the Ohio Supreme Court in June, where it is currently pending.
According to the complaint, filed against the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC), Taborn has been incarcerated since 1991, and was found guilty in 1992 of murder. Taborn was handed a sentence of 15 years to life for the crime, and he has been detained in correctional facilities for men since that time.
Taborn alleges that he began taking feminizing hormones in 2020 after acquiring a diagnosis of “gender dysphoria,” presumably from medical professionals employed by the ODRC.
The lawsuit further alleges that Taborn committed an act of self-castration in March of 2022, when, “in the midst of suffering from a mental health crisis,” Taborn “removed her own testicles.” Following this incident, the state of Ohio permitted Taborn to alter his birth certificate in 2024, changing both his name and his recorded sex.
In accordance with his new “female” birth certificate, the convicted killer is demanding to be transferred to the Northeast Reintegration Center (NERC) for women, a minimum security facility in Cleveland with a focus on reintegration, education, and community involvement.
“[Taborn] is legally a woman based upon the official government records in the state of Ohio… [and] has repeatedly sought … to be transferred to an appropriate women’s prison commensurate with her legal gender, and been repeatedly refused,” states the complaint. “[Taborn] asserts she has a clear legal right to be housed … in accordance with ODRC Policy 53-CLS-01 (VI)(F)(5)(a), which provides that ‘All Level 1 female prisoners are eligible to be housed at NERC.'”
Taborn claims that he “has suffered and will continue to suffer substantial physical, mental and emotional harm from the refusal of the [ODRC] to transfer her to an appropriate women’s prison facility commensurate with her gender, despite acknowledging that she is a woman.” In his complaint lodged in March, Taborn claims that he had been “raped by male inmates … on multiple occasions” in March 2024, and that as a result, he had lodged a formal PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) complaint.
Taborn has been requesting transfer to a women’s facility since 2023, even before he obtained an alteration to his birth certificate in 2024 declaring his sex to be “female,” but, as his lawsuit reveals, the ODRC has repeatedly denied his requests. Initially Taborn had sought to be placed at the Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW).
Over the past three years, Taborn’s demands have escalated, and he has filed several grievances against prison officials. In one recent grievance from early 2024, Taborn complains that the lack of programs for women at the men’s facility, Grafton Correctional Institution (GCI), constitutes a form of discrimination against him.
“GCI does not offer ANY programs that address any of my needs and issues as a woman in there institution which would also assist me in my preparation for reentry back into society like they do for their male population. Programs such as: Moms & Kids Day (ORW), Women of Worth (NERC), Achieving Baby Care Success (ORW) that’s offered to females at their appropriate institutions are not available to me in any male prison. I’m being discriminated against on the basis of my gender and this discrimination puts me at a disadvantage by depriving/denying me the skills, tools knowledge necessary to compete, survive and thrive upon my release,” Taborn wrote in his grievance.
Documents within the suit reveal that Taborn had attended two meetings with members of a PREA Accommodation Strategy Team in 2023. At the time, he had complained of having a “horrible” experience while detained at the Allen Oakwood Correctional Institution (AOCI), which he stated was a result of being “a woman in a man’s prison.” Taborn had requested to have strip searches conducted by female staff, in addition to a transfer to a women’s prison, and “access to feminine grooming products,” all of which were denied by prison officials.
At an unknown date between 2023 and 2024, Taborn was transferred to Grafton Correctional Institution, where he was held with other male prisoners. In response to his ongoing complaints, PREA Coordinator Amy Fitzgerald informed Taborn that he would be housed in a single cell, and that no other inmates would be permitted to enter his cell at any time.
However, since having been transferred to Grafton, Taborn has continued to lodge formal complaints in 2024, with ODRC officials referring to him as “Ms. Dior” in their responses declining his demands.
Reduxx has learned that in 2020, Taborn requested to be released, citing an alleged HIV diagnosis and his creation of an LGBTQIA program while incarcerated, which he named GEMS (Giving Everybody Meaningful Support).
In a motion for judicial release, Taborn argues that the gang-related murder he committed in 1991 was a crime that was motivated by his feelings of gender dysphoria.
“I, in trying to hide my truth ever since I can consciously remember, went out of my way to cause pain to other people, the pain and shame I was feeling,” Taborn wrote. “That pain and shame led me to taking a precious life.”
“I don’t want anyone else to have to learn at the expense of taking a life, no matter if that life is there [sic] own, which is an ugly reality for the transgender community being that 41 percent attempt suicide compared to just 1 percent of heterosexuals,” he added.
Just shortly after his 2020 motion for release was denied, Taborn began demanding a transfer to a woman’s prison, secured the alterations to his birth certificate declaring him a female, and, in 2024, he began filing PREA complaints alleging he had been raped.
“I told OCM Fitzgerald and Investigator Wishar I got raped last night the 6th! Tried to give them evidence of my rapist [sic] semen in my panties and on my blanket, they didn’t collect it nor was an anatomical done until the 13th, several days later!” Taborn wrote in one report filed March 31, 2024.
“Also I read that R.C 5120.01 delegates authority to ODRC to assign inmates to particular institutions, including by SEX, not anatomy! Well I’m a woman my birth certificate says female like every woman’s birth certificate in Ohio… Please transfer me where I’m supposed to be? The policy says case by case, we have policy, the law, a court order / ruling declaring me a woman on 1/31/24, the hormonal and biological reassignment from male to female! What more has to happen to me?”
On July 7, Taborn was sympathetically profiled by Ideastream Public Media.
“I’m a woman. I’m real demure, ladylike. I’m a girl’s girl, so I want to be acknowledged as that,” Taborn told Ideastream. “There’s no way possible you can keep a woman safe in a man’s prison. That’s just not even logical.”
Curiously, in another report filed by Taborn that year, he demonstrates knowledge of a male inmate who was transferred to a woman’s prison in Ohio. The inmate, Michael Cole, had previously been held at AOCI during a period when Taborn was also detained there.
“By illegally and discriminatorily [sic] housing me in a mans [sic] prison, I’m being treated differently than all other women incarcerated in ODRC… This discrimination is detrimental to my safety and health by subjecting me to a culture that victimizes me, sexually objectifys [sic] and assaults me, harasses me misgenders me… In 2019 ODRC transferred Michael Cole, a woman, for the exact same reason from AOCI [Allen Oakwood Correctional Institution] to a woman’s institution, how and why am I being discriminated against and tested [sic] differently then [sic] her!”
As previously reported by Reduxx, convicted killer Michael Cole successfully petitioned for transfer to a female facility in Ohio some time between 2018 and 2020.
Cole, who adopted the feminine name Michelle, was convicted for the 2016 murder of another trans-identified male Cole had met through a “transgender support group” on Facebook. The victim’s body was found dumped in the driveway of a residence in Cleveland’s east side, and was described as “wearing only underwear and had white plastic bags covering [his] head and both hands,” according to police reports.
Cole was later accused of sexually assaulting a female inmate while housed in women’s pre-trial detention, but he was later cleared of any wrongdoing.
Cole was then sentenced in 2018 to serve six years in prison for the charges of tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice, and gross abuse of a corpse. The charges for aggravated murder and two felonious assaults were nullified. Presiding judge Pamela Barker referred to Cole with “his/her” pronouns and stated that the “defendant is a transgender individual,” but official court documents still listed his gender as male and he was initially sent to serve his sentence at Lorain Correctional Institution for men.
Reduxx found that a 2020 letter from Cuyahoga County Court denying Cole’s motion for judicial release was addressed to the Dayton Correctional Institution, a facility which houses female inmates. After the allegations that Cole had raped a female detainee while in a Hamilton County jail, he was relocated to the Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW), another female facility.
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