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When Melissa Loman was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison, she knew she would lose the right to move freely, communicate with her loved ones on the outside regularly, and make many other basic decisions for herself and her life. That was the expected cost of her crime.

What Loman didn’t expect was to also lose her right to physical safety once behind bars, as well as the right to be heard by the prison officials charged with her well-being. 

The result for Loman has been a years-long battle against the federal prison system to receive appropriate medical attention — and against the gender ideology-driven policies that contributed to the harm she allegedly suffered. 

Loman, who was imprisoned for one count of using a minor to produce child pornography, said her battle began in late 2021 when a trans-identified female inmate (a woman identifying as a man) began to abuse her. The alleged abuser, identified as Dianne Winn, lived in the same unit as Loman in Federal Medical Center, Carswell, a federal prison for female inmates in Fort Worth, Texas. The two became friends after meeting in a Bible study, Loman said.

However, Winn quickly became “controlling,” Loman alleged in an interview with IW Features. Winn allegedly demanded that Loman cater to her every want, making Loman cook and clean for her and treating her like a “slave.” 

If Loman refused one of Winn’s requests, Winn threatened not only her own physical safety, but her family’s as well, Loman alleged. At one point, Winn allegedly discovered the area where Loman’s oldest daughter lived and told Loman she would make sure her daughter was “sold into sex slavery,” Loman said. 

Making matters worse, Winn had undergone several sex-change interventions while in prison because of her “gender identity,” including regular testosterone injections, according to Loman. These injections made Winn’s temper even more volatile, Loman said, to the point where she knew Winn’s “rage would be at its highest point” after she received testosterone.

The abuse culminated in November 2021 when Winn allegedly sexually assaulted Loman, injuring her severely. Loman said Winn held her down on a cell bed while one of Winn’s friends “kept look out,” stuffed socks in her mouth to stifle her screams, and used a homemade dildo with a sharpened pencil sticking out of it to rape her vaginally and anally. Loman said she tried to fight back, but Winn overpowered her completely — a likely consequence of the testosterone injections Winn allegedly had been receiving. 

Afterwards, Winn threatened Loman that if she reported the assault, Winn would beat her “black and blue,” Loman alleged. Terrified of being attacked again, and distrustful that prison staff would support her even if she did report the assault, Loman said she remained quiet about it — even as she began to suffer serious physical effects in her vaginal and rectal area. 

Loman tried to report these effects, which included persistent pain and difficulty with her bowel movements, to medical staff in Carswell but was ignored, according to a friend of Loman’s.

“She would go to the clinic every morning when she was able to get away and do it and try to get on the call-out list to go see the doctors, and they would look at her like she had two heads. They wouldn’t respond to her,” Loman’s friend alleged.

All the while, Winn’s emotional and sexual abuse only continued, Loman alleged. In December 2021, two weeks after the first alleged assault, Winn allegedly tried to rape Loman again, hitting her repeatedly and telling her she was going to use an even bigger dildo “because I didn’t learn my lesson last time,” Loman said. 

Loman said a fellow inmate heard the attack and intervened, urging Loman to report the assault to prison officials. When Loman hesitated — still terrified that Winn would find out and retaliate against her — the fellow inmate went to prison authorities on her behalf, prompting Loman to finally make an official report.

After reporting the assault, Loman said Carswell officials transferred Winn to “the hole,” a segregated housing area where inmates are placed for disciplinary or security reasons, and sent Loman to John Peter Smith Hospital in Forth Worth for a medical evaluation. 

Medical records reviewed by IW Features show Loman reported both assaults to the doctors, who confirmed she had suffered “blunt trauma” to her chest and arm from the second attack and prescribed her pain medication. 

Federal Bureau of Prisons records also confirm that the sexual assault against Loman was investigated and substantiated by prison officials.

However, even after this hospital visit, Loman continued to have an increasingly difficult time using the restroom and reported having to use her fingers to manually stimulate her bowels, medical records show. Prison staff reportedly prescribed her laxatives to make bowel movements easier, but refused to send Loman in for additional medical treatment. As a result, the underlying cause of Loman’s incontinence — the damage caused to her vagina and rectum by Winn’s first alleged assault — went untreated for nearly a year.

During that time, Loman reportedly developed a massive scar tissue mass near her rectum that doctors later found to be benign and removed. She continued to experience serious discomfort and had difficulty even sitting down. 

Loman was not sent in for another medical evaluation until 2022, which is when doctors diagnosed her with stress urinary incontinence, cystocele, and rectocele, both of which are types of pelvic organ prolapse, medical records show.  

Loman’s doctors recommended surgically reconstructing the affected areas so she could regain normal urinary and bowel functions, but Carswell denied coverage for the procedures, according to medical records. What’s more, Carswell officials did not give Loman or her doctors a specific reason for the denial.

It was not until family members and friends of Loman began publicly advocating for her, including during a meeting with high-ranking Texas officials, that Carswell officials finally granted Loman coverage for surgical reconstruction in early 2023. The timing of this approval was not a coincidence, according to Loman’s friend.

“Days after we talked with Texas officials, they finally allowed her to go to the hospital to have the surgery to try and correct this,” Loman’s friend said. “It was only after we began to make it known what had happened.”

Unfortunately, Loman said she still has difficulty urinating and fears she may never regain full control over her bladder and rectum.

But the physical consequences of the alleged assault are just one part of the battle for Loman. She said she is still wrestling with the mental and emotional trauma of Winn’s alleged abuse, which reportedly continued even after Winn was released from Carswell in December 2023. 

As recently as last year, Winn sent Loman several threatening messages through another inmate, which included images that were reviewed by IW Features, to dissuade Loman from pursuing further legal action against her over Winn’s alleged attacks. Winn also allegedly threatened last year to track down Loman’s family members and hurt them now that she’s “on the outside,” Loman’s friend said.

The way Loman sees it, this years-long alleged abuse was made possible by federal policies that not only allowed Winn to access testosterone injections in the first place, but incentivized prison officials to look the other way when it came to the injections’ adverse side effects. 

Indeed, Loman argued there is a culture of silence when it comes to trans-identifying inmates in general. She said Carswell houses multiple trans-identifying female inmates, as well as at least one trans-identifying male inmate, and alleged prisoners are expected to tolerate their presence without complaint — even though the trans-identifying inmates, both male and female, are far more likely to exhibit behavioral issues. 

“I feel like people focus on just the men identifying as women instead of the women who identify as men. But the female-to-male is where the biggest issue is [in Carswell], because nine out of 10 of [these women] already have anger issues, and the testosterone that they receive makes that rage come to surface,” Loman told IW Features. “I asked that night that they were taking me to the hospital why they were being housed with us. The answer I received was ‘It’s for their safety.’ But when I asked, ‘What about our safety?’, there was not an answer.”

The Federal Bureau of Prisons routinely approves hormonal treatments for trans-identifying inmates in federal prisons under the guise of “gender-affirming care.” An executive order signed by President Donald Trump earlier this year, however, instructed federal prisons to end all such interventions and treat inmates according to their sex, not their “gender identity.”

In February, a federal judge blocked Trump’s order, ruling it likely violates the Eighth Amendment’s clause prohibiting “cruel and unusual punishment.” The Trump administration has since appealed the decision.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons did not respond to a request for comment.

According to Loman, the only inmates who are being forced to suffer cruel and unusual punishment are women like her who are forced to share close and vulnerable spaces with unstable trans-identifying individuals. 

For example, Loman alleged she is not the only one who has been attacked by a trans-identifying female inmate with access to testosterone injections. In fact, Loman said that shortly after Winn was moved out of her unit following her report of the alleged assault in 2022, yet another trans-identifying female was moved into Loman’s unit. That individual went on to attack another woman in Loman’s unit, Loman alleged.

Moreover, Loman alleged the trans-identifying male inmate being held in Carswell has been sexually active, and that some women in the facility have been given pregnancy tests as a result. 

Prison officials’ response to these problems, however, is to “just turn the other cheek and go on about their day,” Loman alleged. “There are some staff, though, that do care. But they are few and far between.”

“What I want people to understand about what I experienced is just because we are in prison does not mean that we are protected,” Loman said.