A prominent Fresno charity, homeless women, and the transgender community all say they’re experiencing a nightmare come true.
Nine women homeless women signed on to a lawsuit against Naomi’s House and its parent company, the Poverello House, saying the last place they could go to feel safe is now dangerous because they’re forced to shower with a transgender woman.
The Naomi House bills itself as a gentle haven of healing and a safe haven for single, homeless women, but a new lawsuit says it put a lot of women in harm’s way in a very vulnerable spot — the shower.
It says the shelter requires them to shower in groups, and it opened its doors to a person who identified themself as a transgender woman who made lewd and sexually inappropriate comments, and leered at them while they were naked.
Poverello House administrators tell Action News federal law says they have to treat a person identifying as a woman as a woman — and there’s no way to test whether it’s true.
The women say they repeatedly complained to staff members, but were told if they didn’t respect the person’s decision to identify as a woman, and if they refused to take showers at the same time, they’d get kicked out of the shelter.
http://abc30.com/homeless-women-harassed-in-shower-lawsuit-says/3514544/