A trans-identified male currently serving a sentence of 15 years to life for murder has filed a lawsuit against the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC) seeking a transfer to a female prison. Ricardo Janel Taborn claims to have amputated his testicles while incarcerated in a correctional institution for men, and is now legally recognized as a “female” named Riicara Janel Dior.
According to the complaint, filed against the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC), Taborn has been incarcerated since 1991, and was found guilty in 1992 of murder. Taborn was handed a sentence of 15 years to life for the crime, and he has been detained in correctional facilities for men since that time.
Taborn alleges that he began taking feminizing hormones in 2020 after acquiring a diagnosis of “gender dysphoria,” presumably from medical professionals employed by the ODRC.
On July 7, Taborn was sympathetically profiled by Ideastream Public Media.
“I’m a woman. I’m real demure, ladylike. I’m a girl’s girl, so I want to be acknowledged as that,” Taborn told Ideastream. “There’s no way possible you can keep a woman safe in a man’s prison. That’s just not even logical.”
Curiously, in another report filed by Taborn that year, he demonstrates knowledge of a male inmate who was transferred to a woman’s prison in Ohio. The inmate, Michael Cole, had previously been held at AOCI during a period when Taborn was also detained there.
As previously reported by Reduxx, convicted killer Michael Cole successfully petitioned for transfer to a female facility in Ohio some time between 2018 and 2020.
Cole, who adopted the feminine name Michelle, was convicted for the 2016 murder of another trans-identified male Cole had met through a “transgender support group” on Facebook. The victim’s body was found dumped in the driveway of a residence in Cleveland’s east side, and was described as “wearing only underwear and had white plastic bags covering [his] head and both hands,” according to police reports.
Cole was later accused of sexually assaulting a female inmate while housed in women’s pre-trial detention, but he was later cleared of any wrongdoing.
After the allegations that Cole had raped a female detainee while in a Hamilton County jail, he was relocated to the Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW), another female facility.