Cathleen Quinn: Domestic Abuse Survivor Forced To Live With Violent Men
Meet the newest plaintiffs in WoLF’s groundbreaking prison lawsuit, Chandler v. CDCR
Cathleen Quinn is a woman in custody at the California Correctional Women’s Facility (CCWF). Like the overwhelming majority of incarcerated women, her involvement in the justice system is a direct result of her experience with trauma and male violence. Now, she is forced to live with abusive men from whom she can not escape. She’s experienced harassment from these men and retaliation from the prison for reporting them.
WoLF is suing California on behalf of Cathleen and five other incarcerated women to GET MEN OUT.
Cathleen’s life has been marred by domestic abuse and mental illness since she was a teenager.
Her victimization started at the outset of her marriage, at just 18 years old. Reeling from depression after the death of her brother, Cathleen entered marriage vulnerable; her husband quickly exploited this to become physically and sexually abusive. After Cathleen gave birth to their daughter, her husband began controlling every part of her finances, effectively making it impossible for her to escape the abusive marriage.
When Cathleen told her husband she wanted to leave, he attempted to drown her in a toilet and threatened to kill her if she tried to leave with their daughter. She has been in prison since 2004 for his murder.
Her past as a survivor of abuse still has a direct impact on her. Being forced to live in prison with men, many of whom are violent and abusive themselves, has left her feeling hopeless.
Cathleen joined WoLF’s landmark lawsuit against SB 132 in July 2024.
In 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 132 (SB 132) into law. This legislation was enacted in January 2021 and is titled the “Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act.” This law allows men to “self-identify” as transgender, nonbinary, or intersex and be housed in women’s facilities. Michael Contreras, who also goes by “Eva Reeves,” is one of those men.
On two separate occasions in February 2022, Cathleen discovered Contreras was peeping at her while she was using the bathroom and naked from the waist down. This behavior was caught on video, and Cathleen filed reports to the prison.
CCWF did not take action against Contreras for this sexual harassment but instead retaliated against Cathleen and other witnesses. She and both witnesses were put in solitary confinement “for their safety” despite this being against prison policy.
Most disturbingly, though, CDCR stripped Cathleen of her long-awaited freedom in retaliation for reporting the harassment she experienced. Shortly after she was found suitable for parole, CCWF issued a retaliatory Rules Violation Report (“RVR”) against Cathleen for reporting the harassment, alleging that she had done so due to “bias” against this man, leading to her parole grant being vacated. At the time of the revocation, she was roughly four months away from freedom.
The next year, Cathleen appealed the RVR and, after 11 months, was exonerated and found not guilty. Stripped of its reason to keep Cathleen in prison, CCWF’s parole board created new pretextual reasons to continue to block her parole eligibility for an additional five years, this time by arbitrarily finding her guilty of an ambiguous violation of “institutional misconduct.” CCWF did not even hide its bias against Cathleen. The Commissioner overseeing Cathleen’s parole hearing told her she “should have been quiet” about her victimization so she could have “gone home.”
Tomiekia Johnson, another of our plaintiffs, also filed reports and faced similar retaliation.
Michael Contreras (“Eva Reeves”) is a large man who dresses and grooms masculinely and is not interested in making any effort to present effeminately. He is serving life for murder, including murdering another man - a heinous act committed while in prison.
According to the Independent Women’s Forum, he is known as “Oso” (Spanish for “bear”) due to his large and intimidating presence. When he was moved to CCWF, his female roommates complained and were told by the prison there was essentially nothing they could do.
Despite his violence and anti-woman behavior in prison, Contreras has become a poster child for the trans movement. He has been featured in multiple publications, pretending he is not a threat to women and playing the victim. He also goes by the pseudonym “Suyakami” and calls himself a “transspiritual political activist.”
“There's a deep culture of patriarchy here… I am learning so much about female-female interaction, a lot of what being female is all about,” he wrote in the California Coalition for Women Prisoners newsletter.
In another publication, he describes his roommates' fear of him and the risk of pregnancy: “There were five natal women of different races in my assigned room... I was asked what prison I came from and if I’ve had SRS (Sex Reassignment Surgery). I explained that my genitals are private. One roommate asked if I was capable of getting her pregnant. I advised that that was not going to happen, nor anything else of a sexual nature.”
Yet later, in the very same article, he demanded the right to have sex with female prisoners and attacked WoLF for our work to protect women from men like him.
“For being a feminist organization, WOLF degrades and sexualizes women,” he wrote. “For WOLF, it is all about sex and pregnancies. But what about love? Certainly, love relationships exist between some transwomen and natal women at the prison.”
Support our work!
WoLF is the only feminist organization bringing lawsuits to overturn bills like SB 132 and get men like Michael Contreras out of women’s prisons. We rely entirely on our generous donors to make this resource-intensive legal work possible.
Please consider donating today to support this case and the brave women like Cathleen fighting for their civil rights inside California’s mixed-sex prisons. Even small amounts, like $5 or $25, help WoLF continue this critical legal work!
Note: Many of our supporters choose to give from their assets — stock gifts, grants from Donor-Advised funds, or Qualified Charitable Distributions from their IRAs. Please consider whether these “tax-smart” methods work better for you!
