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| Mass. Doesn't Have to Pay for Inmate's Sex Change |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 09/09/2002 |
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A federal judge on August 28 rejected a bid by a male inmate to force the state to pay for a sex change operation and hormone therapy to allow him to live as a woman. Judge Mark Wolf did order the state to get a medical evaluation and recommendation for appropriate treatment for Michelle Kosilek, who was known as Robert Kosilek before legally changing his name. Kosilek, who was convicted in 1993 of strangling his wife, claimed he was being denied adequate medical care in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment and prohibits unnecessary infliction of pain on a prisoner. His lawsuit against the Department of Correction was heard in federal court during a non-jury trial in February. Wolf ruled that although Kosilek had proven he has a serious medical condition that has not been adequately treated gender identity disorder he had not proven that Correction Commissioner Michael Maloney had shown ''deliberate indifference.'' Wolf ordered Maloney to allow medical professionals to recommend treatment for Kosilek, including, at a minimum, psychotherapy. If therapy does not appear to alleviate Kosilek's depression, Maloney should also consider allowing Kosilek to receive female hormones, he said. The judge left the door open to Kosilek possible receiving an operation in the future if it were deemed medically necessary by experts. A court would have to determine again whether Kosilek's Eighth Amendment rights had been violated before making that decision. Kosilek, 53, first began asking the state correction department for treatment in 1990, after he was arrested in the killing of his 36-year-old wife, Cheryl. A jury convicted Kosilek in 1993, finding that he strangled his wife and left her body in the back of a car parked at a Massachusetts mall. |
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