My relationships with them and my siblings to this day lack connection … Being in the system was being so alone,” Morgan said.
“I knew my parents loved me and they were doing what they thought was the best for me, but I felt alone. When she was teen, her parents agreed with juvenile court officials that they should relinquish and make her a ward of the state. She once spent 18 consecutive months in solitary confinement.
She has a series of arrests for assault, disorderly conduct and other charges behind her. Morgan, who lives in Brooklyn, shares with young LGBTQ people her own backstory. She was reflecting on the years she spent, starting at age 12, cycling in and out of juvenile and adult prisons.
And they were not trained to address how to rebuild my connection with my family and siblings upon re-entry. “It was a revelation that the system was so unprepared to deal with the needs of LGBTQ people. LGBTQ people were twice as likely to be arrested and detained, as examples, for such status offenses as running away and truancy, prostitution and probation violations, according to that federal office.įormerly incarcerated Dominique Morgan is the executive director of Omaha, Neb.-based Black & Pink National, which advocates abolishing prisons and on behalf of justice-involved LGBTQ people and those with HIV. LGBTQ people represented 5% to 7% of the nation’s youth population but up to 15% of those in juvenile facilities, according to studies in 20, respectively, that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has cited. Disproportionately, LGBTQ people are juvenile defendants Before, I used to not care what would happen to me and now I think, ‘Is it worth my freedom?’” said Amiya, who, since 2019, has been in and out of detention centers for fighting and destroying public property. In addition to counseling and advising justice-involved youth on her agency’s roster, Quijada Salazar oversees their participation in a three-year pilot program, launched last October, enrolling them in six-week-long paid internships.Īmiya said JustUs, where she signed on nine months ago, is helping her to build a new life.
“Showing up to this work every day feels like an opportunity to work towards creating a world where folks are free to be themselves,” said social worker Helianis Quijada Salazar, the director of JustUs, who identifies as queer. The differences that LGBTQ people confront are reflected, as examples, in some police and corrections officers’ refusal to address them according to their preferred gender identity harassment at school and in the community and homelessness prompted by some relatives’ objections to their sexuality and gender identity.
Tailor-made services are important for many justice-involved LGBTQ youth and young adults their advocates contend, because those individuals’ encounters with law enforcement, courts, correctional and other agencies often are in stark contrast to how their heterosexual peers navigate the justice system and society in general. Their organization aims to keep justice-involved girls and LGBTQ youth out of incarceration by providing them with mental and behavioral health counseling and education, employment and other support services tailored toward them. offices of JustUs, while that nonprofit agency’s directors listened. That case later was dismissed, she explained across a telephone line from the Brooklyn, N.Y. I let my anger get the better of me,” said Amiya, now 18, asking that her last name not be published, fearing reprisal from her harassers.įor pummeling the kid she said bullied her, Amiya was arrested and charged with assault. One day, inflamed by insults Amiya calls too hurtful to repeat, she punched the worst of the bullies in the face. One among those girls was especially intent on ridiculing her for being bisexual, Amiya said. Stranger things x child reader wattpad.Amiya still remembers the sting of being called “different” and “not like them” by the other girls in her group home.