National LGBT agency Lambda Legal filed a complaint last week with the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, charging that staff at a local youth facility harassed and discriminated against a teenage transgender girl in its care.
The complaint, filed Oct. 27, alleges that the Department of Human Services and its Youth Study Center violated the city’s Fair Practices Ordinance, which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Named as defendants in the complaint are the city, Mayor Nutter, YSC and nine of its staffers and administrators, DHS and several of its officials.
The complainant, identified as L.P. in the motion, is now 17 and was a resident at YSC, a juvenile-detention facility, from November 2007 to February 2009.
Rue Landau, executive director of the commission, which investigates claims of discrimination, said the agency was “reviewing all of the documents to frame the charge and to get a chronological statement of the particulars that detail the events that allegedly occurred.”
According to the complaint, in January 2008, the complainant, who had been in foster care since age 11, received a medical evaluation from Mazzoni Center, during which time a Mazzoni adolescent specialist determined that the teen met the criteria for gender-identity disorder.
The following month, as part of a dependency proceeding, a family-court judge issued a Treatment Order that required DHS to provide the youth with GID medical treatment, including hormone therapy to delay puberty in advance of possible future sexual-reassignment surgery. The judge also directed DHS workers to respect the teen’s gender identity by using her preferred name and referring to her with female pronouns.
The complainant was permitted to undergo hormone therapy but contends the YSC staff ignored the rest of the treatment order.
The teen was housed in the male unit of YSC but, after repeated requests, was allowed to sleep in the female unit, albeit only for one night before a staffer decided the youth did not belong with the girls the complaint alleges. The complainant was required to use shower and bathroom facilities for males.
According to the complaint, L.P. was repeatedly intimidated, threatened and harassed by boys in her unit and feared for her safety.
The complaint states that other residents often called her a “faggot,” “gay” and “wannabe girl” and that, while YSC staff instructed the youth not to call each other names, they did not follow up with any other reprimands.
“Given the inadequate response by YSC staff, the YSC residents not only continued but escalated the harassment,” the complaint states. “YSC staff allowed [the] complainant to be subjected to ridicule and cruel and degrading verbal treatment on a daily basis,” which the complaint said escalated to “physical assaults.”
The teen reported bruising and scratching as a result of physical altercations.
“At the time she was at the facility, she lived in fear,” said Flor Bermudez, the Lambda Legal attorney handling the case. “She became depressed and wasn’t able to take advantage of the rehabilitation or school services that they provide there. She was constantly anxious and depressed as a result of the treatment she received.”
L.P. asserted that staff members refused to call her by her female name and continued to refer to her using male pronouns, despite the judge’s order, and would not make the same allowances for her that the female residents received, such as the option to wear female undergarments.
The complaint states that several staff members also made gay slurs and that one threatened to physically harm the teen. L.P. filed numerous incident reports based on these interactions but according to the complaint, “YSC administrators failed to discipline or reprimand staff for having engaged in conduct that was harassing, discriminatory and in violation of the court’s Treatment Order.”
Representatives of DHS did not return calls for comment in time for publication.
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].