A woman visiting an inmate at a privately run Tennessee prison says guards forced her to expose her genitals to prove she was menstruating when she tried to take a sanitary napkin into the facility, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.
The woman, identified only as Jane Doe in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Nashville, said she had already cleared one security checkpoint at the prison about 85 miles southwest of Nashville on April 20 when guards noticed a menstrual pad sticking out of her pocket.
The lawsuit says that when the guards told her she would need to prove that she was menstruating, she offered to leave the prison or leave the pad behind. She also offered to show guards her used menstrual pad.
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The woman has asked the court to let her proceed anonymously because of the embarrassing details of the claims. The lawsuit seeks damages for the woman’s humiliation and asks that the prison’s policy on such searches be banned because it’s unconstitutional.
“Plaintiff should not be forced to make the intolerable choice between abstaining from visiting an inmate in prison because she is on her period and visiting the prison with the risk of being subjected to another humiliating and degrading search of her exposed genitalia,” the lawsuit says.
