A trans-identified male inmate appears to have been transferred back to a men’s prison after being charged with rape while in custody at a women’s prison. Tremaine “Tremayne” Deon Carroll, a male who identifies as a woman, was housed at the Central California Women’s Facility when the sexual assault took place but has since been moved to Kern Valley State Prison.
Carroll’s criminal history dates back to 1988, when he began participating in organized crime at just 15 years old. In 1990, Carroll would be convicted for his participation in an armed robbery where he and several other men broke into an apartment occupied by two women. The women were kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and held under demand of ransom.
Despite being only 17 years old, the brutality of the crime resulted in Carroll being charged as an adult with three counts of kidnapping for ransom, two counts of robbery, and three counts of oral copulation by force. However, a hung jury along with a number of other technical issues during the trial process resulted in the need for a retrial. Carroll ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts of kidnapping in an effort to avoid a retrial on all of the charges.
In 1998, Carroll committed his third violent felony, but while in prison awaiting trial he was found in possession of a metal wire shank he had crafted with the intention of stabbing someone.
Because of his extensive criminal history, Carroll was ultimately sentenced to 25-to-life under California’s Three Strikes Law. The law dramatically increases punishment for persons convicted of a felony who have previously been convicted of one or more “serious” or “violent” felonies.
While in the custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), Carroll filed dozens of legal complaints alleging mistreatment, discrimination, and even sexual abuse at the hands of CDCR officials and prison staff, along with demanding his conviction under the Three Strikes Law be overturned. But Carroll was a problem inmate, and between 2001 and 2015, he received over a dozen Rules Violation Reports, one of which was related to filing false reports against a Peace Officer.
In a 2019 legal complaint, Carroll revealed he had been moved around within CDCR facilities over 200 times since 2009, something he claimed was “retaliation” for his allegations of employee misconduct. But many of those moves appear to have been to or from medical centers, where Carroll had been receiving treatment for mental health episodes.
In an earlier legal complaint, Carroll referred to himself as “mentally disturbed” and stated he was on high doses of anti-psychotic medication.
In another filing, an unnamed witness called upon by Carroll to provide a statement in support of his claim alleges that Carroll suffers from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, PTSD, and Rubinstein–Taybi Syndrome, a genetic condition characterized by physical and developmental issues.
In the vast majority of his complaints, Carroll refers to himself by “he/him” pronouns, and does not mention his gender identity or sexuality.
But in a case filed in March of 2021, Carroll suddenly invoked SB-132, also known as the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act. The law had been implemented just three months prior, and formally established the ability of inmates to be housed on the basis of their gender identity in California.
By August of that year, Carroll had been moved to the Central California Women’s Facility, and began fully utilizing his transgender identity to bolster the long-held claims of victimhood he had always forwarded.
In March of 2022, Carroll penned an article for the San Francisco Bay View, a newspaper serving the African-American community in the Bay Area. In the article, Carroll referred to himself as a “trans woman” and portrayed himself as the victim of systemic discrimination by the criminal justice system. He also claimed he was in prison for “non-violent” offenses, in contradiction of his criminal history.
The next year, Carroll was profiled by the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, who featured him as being “an incarcerated transgender woman instrumental in several prison lawsuits.”
Madera County court records obtained by Reduxx show that the District Attorney filed multiple charges against Carroll, including two counts of rape, and one count of dissuading a witness from testifying.
The incident is said to have occurred in January of 2024, and would have occurred while Carroll was incarcerated at the women’s prison. While the complaint by the District Attorney refers to the victim as “Jane Doe,” it is unconfirmed if she was a female inmate or a female member of the prison’s staff.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s inmate locator now shows that Carroll is housed at Kern Valley State Prison, a male-only facility almost two hours away from CCWF.
While CDCR did not respond to Reduxx‘s inquiry on the exact date of Carroll’s move, the transfer appears to have occurred after the rape charges were filed, as court records confirm that Carroll was still addressed at CCWF in late 2023.
Ironically, Carroll is one of the trans-identified males intervening in a lawsuit that seeks to prevent males from being housed in women’s prisons in California. The lawsuit, launched against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, includes four female inmates who all stated they had been victimized by trans-identified male transfers.
In 2022, the ACLU intervened in the case, suggesting that the state of California could not adequately fight the lawsuit and represent the interests of trans-identified males.
In his sworn testimony collected by the ACLU for the case, Carroll declared: “I know what it feels like to live in fear and to carry the weight of the past abuse by men. But I am not a threat [to women]. I strongly believe that everyone here at CCWF would benefit from more structured interaction — opportunities to sit and talk with each other and realize that we’re all in the same boat.”
Speaking to Reduxx on Carroll’s charges, Amie Ichikawa – a former inmate and advocate for incarcerated women in California – said she had personal interactions with Carroll that left her fearful for the safety of the women at CCWF.
“Tremaine Carroll fit the description of everything I feared for women in prison when I learned about Senator Scott Wiener’s SB-132,” Ichikawa said. “I was face to face with Tremaine when I went inside CCWF last year. We shared enough correspondence for me to know that even having almost 10 years of freedom from prison and 5 years free from narcissistic abuse was not enough to qualify me as a woman beyond his reach.”
Ichikawa is the co-founder of WomanIIWoman Inc., a Christian charity that focuses on supporting both incarcerated women and former female inmates. The organization has campaigned extensively against SB-132 and the transfer of male inmates to the state’s female correctional institutions.
Ichikawa adds that assaults on female inmates extend far beyond the immediate victims, and impact the general female population due to the close bonds incarcerated women often form.
“The domestic violence that ensued did not only impact the women walking around bloodied and bruised. It impacts the entire population, because when you hurt one woman in prison it hurts all of us. We move collectively and work like a unit,” she says.
“One woman breaking down and moving backwards affects the ability of the power they had to move forward. Now they’re stuck and there’s not going to be forward motion in their growth or rehabilitation until this stops.”
UPDATE 5/20/24: This article has been edited to include comment from Amie Ichikawa.
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