Female Inmate Who Says She Was Attacked by Male Felon Sues Washington State over Trans Prison Policy

A female inmate who said she was attacked by a male felon sued the Washington State prison system on Monday over their so-called gender-inclusive housing policy.

Faith Booher-Smith, a co-plaintiff in the case alongside the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, which received legal support from the Trump-backed America First Policy Institute, alleges that the Washington State Department of Corrections endangered her safety and health with the policy. The lawsuit alleges that the state’s policy of allowing male inmates to be housed with women violates the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, and the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law.

Booher-Smith said she was attacked by male prisoner Christopher Williams, a convicted child molester who is notorious at the Washington Corrections Center for Women for his intimidation of and voyeuristic behavior toward female inmates, as National Review previously reported. Williams was transferred out of WCCW in June 2025 and is currently housed at the exclusively male Stafford Creek Corrections Center,  according to the Washington Department of Corrections.

“This lawsuit is so important to protecting our rights,” Booher-Smith told National Review in a comment. “We deserve to serve out our sentences with safety — without being locked up with and beaten up by men.”

In 2024, National Review reported that Williams had repeatedly sexually harassed a female inmate who was herself a victim of child rape before she ended up in prison. The woman, Mozzy Clark-Sanchez, filed a case under the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2022, alleging that Williams engaged in sexual misconduct against her. Prison officials told her that her claims of sexual harassment were substantiated.

At 16 years old, Williams sexually assaulted his nine-year-old sister by rubbing her buttocks and vaginal area over her clothing. Williams was arrested and originally charged with first-degree child molestation in 2006. He pleaded guilty to third-degree assault with sexual motivation, according to police reports obtained by National Review.

The AFPI lawsuit argues that physical and sexual assaults and harassment are an obvious byproduct of the state’s allowing transgender-identifying men to invade women’s protected space. Many of the transgender-identifying men who move into the women’s facility exploit the lax transfer process, which merely requires that a male felon claim to be a female, to gain access to and exploit vulnerable women, National Review previously reported.

“In the prison setting, where inmates cannot escape state-imposed conditions, females are forced to live every waking moment at a dangerous disadvantage,” the FAIR lawsuit said.

Asked for a response to the allegations in the lawsuit, the Washington Department of Corrections said it does not comment on pending litigation.

Before moving to WCCW, Williams was at a men’s corrections center, where, in September 2012, he allegedly assaulted a male prison officer to the point that the officer was rendered unconscious, according to a declaration of probable cause obtained by National Review. Williams admitted to the confrontation, in which he used his fists and elbows to strike the officer multiple times, leaving blood all over him and a gash in his head.

“Williams stopped when he heard [the officer] ‘screaming like a little baby,’” the report said. “He described [Officer] Barrett’s screams ‘like a death scream.’”

The officer’s injuries included damage to his ear, which had to be cut open to relieve swelling, broken bones under his right eye, a gash on the right cheek needing extensive stitching, a knocked-out tooth, and a nose so severely damaged it required emergency surgery to reconstruct. For that crime, Williams was convicted of second-degree assault.

“FAIR isn’t asking the Washington Department of Corrections to do anything extraordinary,” Monica  Harris, executive director of FAIR, told National Review. “We’re asking it to fulfill one of the most basic obligations the state owes to anyone in its custody: keeping them safe. When the state fails that test, repeatedly and knowingly, courts must intervene on behalf of people who have no other recourse.”

“FAIR joined this case because these women have no voice in the ordinary sense,” she added. “They can’t organize, they can’t speak to the press, they can’t walk away. What they can do is have an organization stand with them in court, and that’s what we’re doing.”