TDoR 2009 / 2009 / March / 16 / Veronica Baxter


Veronica Baxter

Age 34

16 Mar 2009
Sydney, New South Wales (Australia)
Died in custody

Veronica Baxter
Veronica Baxter [photo: www.queerty.com]

After being arrested for drug offences Veronica was incarcerated in a male prison in Sydney despite having transitioned 15 years earlier. On 16th March, she was found hanging in her cell.

Veronica, an aboriginal from Cunnamulla county, in the south-west of Queensland, had been living as a woman since 1994 when she was 19.

In March 2009, three days after the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, she was arrested in a police sting in Redfern, Sydney, and charged with supplying a prohibited drug, and held at the NSW Silverwater Metropolitan Reception and Remand Centre, a maximum security jail for men. She was not offered the opportunity of solitary confinement in a women's jail instead, that by law should be offered to non-op trans women. She was in the general male population of the prison. She had not been checked for 14 hours – a contravention of policy – when she was found hanging in her cell from a 1.5m (5 foot) bunk despite being 1.98m (6'5'') tall.

Veronica Baxter, a MTF transgender inmate who was housed in a male prison in Sydney, hanged herself in her cell back in March 2009. But lest you think the Department of Corrective Services is somehow at fault for having a female prisoner in a male facility, the coroner has decided to clear prison officials of any wrongdoing.

Deputy State Coroner Paul MacMahon said there was nothing to suggest any failure by the department contributed to the death of Veronica Baxter, who was found dead in her cell while on remand at Sydney’s Silverwater Correctional Centre in March 2009. Ms Baxter, formerly known as [deadname], underwent three separate assessments after her arrest on serious drug offences. On each occasion, she was asked about suicidal tendencies but she denied having any such thoughts. One counsellor described her as “smiling, happy and talking”, the coroner said on Monday at the NSW Coroner’s Court at Glebe.

She was held in the cells at the Sydney Police Centre in Surry Hills for five days before being transferred to the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre, a male facility at Silverwater. Two days later, the 34-year-old pre-operative transgender male-to-female prisoner used a bed sheet to hang herself from a top bunk bed in her cell while awaiting classification.

During a previous incarceration, Baxter actually put in a request to be transferred to a female facility in 2001 before withdrawing it.

But the coroner’s conclusion isn’t likely to sit well with Baxter’s loved ones. From a report last year:

On March 10, 2009, three days after Mardi Gras, Veronica Baxter was arrested by Redfern police and held on remand at the all-male NSW Silverwater Metropolitan Reception and Remand Centre. Six days later, after a 14-hour break between checking her cell, she was found dead, hanging in her single cell. Veronica Baxter was an Aboriginal woman from the Cunnamulla country, south-west of Queensland. She dressed, appeared, and had identified as a woman for 15 years and was known by family and friends as a woman. Yet she was placed in an all-male jail. Was Veronica Baxter killed in custody by transphobic guards or inmates? No-one knows, the only way we will find out is if there is a full, open inquiry.

And no wonder: Baxter, despite what prison officials claim, was not the happy-go-lucky inmate officials are making her out to be:

Ten inmates who were interviewed by a police investigator about Baxter’s mental state indicated that she “appeared to be angry about something [but] there were no indications that suggested that she intended to kill herself”. Baxter had made a number of calls to prison staff using the emergency ‘knock-up box’ in her cell while locked into her cell but no one at the prison could remember who had answered them or what she had wanted.

But don’t worry: Now that she’s dead, prison officials are totally gonna fix their mistakes.

Veronica's death was not recorded on the official TDoR list released by Transgender Europe (TGEU).

https://www.queerty.com/trans-prisoner-veronica-baxter-repeatedly-called-for-help-when-her-jail-was-opened-she-was-hanging-20110407

https://zagria.blogspot.com/2014/03/veronica-paris-baxter-1975-2009.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20100422230009/http://www.thescavenger.net/glbsgdq/another-black-trans-death-in-custody-36578.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20130419221006/http://www.coroners.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/agdbasev7wr/_assets/coroners/m401601l3/10_findings&recommendationsdrury-baxter.pdf

Report added: 16 Mar 2019. Last updated: 4 Apr 2019

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