DelawareOnline.com – By Sean O’Sullivan, The News Journal
Wilmington ? Court officials fretted today about how to deal with a transgender inmate who is HIV positive.
Tanya Bowie, 33, of Philadelphia looks like a woman but has male genitals. Bowie underwent half a sex-change operation, according to court officials.
Bowie pleaded guilty earlier this year to passing some 300 counterfeit checks and was released. She later was caught passing 50 more bad checks.
Pending sentencing, Bowie was held at Wilmington?s Howard Young Correctional Institution with male inmates, according to defense attorney Scott O?Keefe.
However, he said, Bowie was harassed and ?teased? so much that officials transferred her to a federal prison in Philadelphia where Bowie was kept in solitary confinement.
?They don?t know what to do with her,? O?Keefe said. ?I don?t know if they have a place for her in the system.?