Toni Fly is ready to tell her story, which will follow in subsequent posts. Fly, 56, is intersex. She provided Frank Rreport with her medical records to confirm her intersex status.
In 2018, Fly entered a plea agreement and pleaded guilty to violating the Mann Act by transporting a female across state lines for criminal sexual acts. Fly claims the plea deal was coerced and she is innocent.
The court sentenced her to ten years, followed by a lifetime supervised release, which includes adherence to the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act.
An Intersex Person in Male Prisons
The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) classified her as male and assigned her to male prisons. Fly has noticeable breasts, long hair, and a feminine presence.
As Fly walked past the cells, prisoners would catcall and make lewd remarks. It was common for prisoners to pull down their trousers and blatantly exhibit their lascivious desires. It was likely more a result of what prisoners lacked than what they desired. In a crowd of rough men and stern faces, an intersex person with a feminine presentation appeared as an oasis.
Keith Raniere, her future cellmate, had a penchant for nicknames. He called her OVA, which stood for Only Vagina Around.
Keith Raniere mug shots
Prison Rape and the Failure of PREA
In all BOP facilities, sex is prohibited, at least on paper. However, a certain percentage of inmates at each BOP facility engage in sexual activities. Some of it is consensual, and some of it is rape.
Fly told Frank Report, “In the female facilities, they can mess around. In the male facilities, the men screw around with their cellies. But if you’re an intersex woman, trans woman, or any kind of woman in a male facility, things will happen. If you don’t want it to happen, they rape you.”
She would have been comparatively safe if she had been in a female facility. But in a male facilty, she was not safe. It might seem implausible to believe her claim of being raped 89 times in prison.
You might think it fiction until you understand the dynamics of prison rape and how poorly the BOP enforces the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
The BOP’s Strategy: A Weapon and a Problem
During her nine years of incarceration, the BOP relocated her more than 20 times to different male facilities.
She claims she was raped at each facility. With each transfer, she requested placement in a female facility. She initiated federal lawsuits.
Fly went to the following facilities, several of them more than once:
USP Lompoc,
USP Victorville,
USP and FCI #1,
FCI Tallahassee,
FCI Marianna,
USP Yazoo,
FCI Englewood,
USP Yazoo,
MDC Brooklyn,
FCI Fairton,
FCI Pekin,
FCI Florence,
FCI Oklahoma City,
USP Tucson,
USP Terre Haute,
USP Coleman #2,
FC Tallahassee,
USP Atlanta,
FCI Petersburg,
USP Lewisburg,
In 2022, the BOP had another problem prisoner, Keith Alan Raniere. He was pressing a case of FBI tampering, which the media ignored, but evidence shows is likely true.
He also commenced a lawsuit against the BOP and his prison warden at USP Tucson.
An inmate, Maurice Adonis Withers, violently attacked Raniere. That gave the prison the pretext to put him in the SHU, first for participating in a fight and later for his “protection.”
Fly’s actions against the BOP coincided with Raniere’s lawsuits.
The SHU, Keith Raniere, and an Experiment
A typical two-person cell in the SHU
Prison officials assigned Fly to the SHU. Normally, SHU cells house one prisoner. But Tucson has two-person cells.
From on or about September 8, 2022, to on or about March 10, 2023 – about six months, Fly and Raniere shared a cell in the SHU at USP Tucson.
Only the most naive would fail to realize that it was not coincidental or for any known penological purpose.
Fly was known to make reports if she was raped. This time, they would take her seriously. If Fly claimed Raniere raped her, they would believe her this time.
Then they could justify keeping him in the SHU or sending him off to another prison, maybe even a supermax. In the SHU, pursuing your case is hard. In the supermax, it is impossible.
So of all the brilliant ideas in the penological world, they put an intersex person, a human who wore a bra and had a vagina, into an eight by 12-foot cell with the alleged leader of a sex cult.
To add to the plan, the prison psychologist diagnosed Fly with borderline personality disorder. Then prison officials handed her a book that mentions Keith Raniere as a person who could try to manipulate someone like her into killing herself, or killing someone for him.
After diagnosing Toni Fly with borderline personality disorder, the BOP gifted Fly with this book, which warns about Keith Raniere, whom the BOP planned to make her new cellmate.
In the glossary of the book, Keith Raniere is mentioned on page 45. Perhaps it was a coincidence that the BOP happened to gift to Fly a book that mentions the cellmate officials planned to cage her with.
Fly was prescribed medications for her heart, hormone balance, and trauma. However, when they decided to put her in the SHU with Raniere, officials also decided to stop her prescriptions. This sudden cessation of medications would cause pain, confusion and paranoia, while locked in a cell 24 hours a day with a man they had previously warned her was dangerous.
If luck came the way of those who made this plan, Raniere would rape Fly.
Fly would certainly report it. Ideally, Fly would either kill Raniere or herself. It almost succeeded.
A former broadcast journalist, Fly currently lives in a halfway house in North Dakota. She is articulate and has a deep understanding of the events that unfolded. Now, she is finally ready to tell her story.
To be continued…
