WASHINGTON, D.C. – Independent Women Features (IW Features), the grassroots storytelling and original journalism arm of Independent Women, today spotlights the harrowing story of Danielle Laurenti, a Massachusetts correctional officer who endured punishment for refusing to conduct strip searches on male inmates. Her story is part of IW Features’ popular series, Cruel & Unusual Punishment: The Male Takeover of Female Prisons. Laurenti says she was retaliated against after she objected to a radical gender policy.

“I don’t want any woman to ever go through what I did,” Laurenti said. “We deserve better. And we deserve the right to say no.”

Laurenti began her job with the Massachusetts Department of Corrections hoping to build a better life for herself and her son. She served in the investigations unit, working to track down drugs and weapons inside the prison. But her job took a turn for the worse in 2018, however, when Massachusetts passed a criminal justice reform bill mandating that prisoners be treated according to their “gender identity”—not their biological sex.

Read Laurenti’s IW Features profile here.

As a result of the bill, female correctional officers were legally obligated to strip-search trans-identifying male inmates: men who identified as women.

In an exclusive interview with IW Features, Laurenti shared about how being forced to strip-search males brought back her trauma from a prior sexual assault. As a survivor, Laurenti said, “I felt worthless. Completely betrayed. It was like I didn’t matter anymore.”

In 2023, Laurenti and eight fellow female officers filed a class-action grievance, arguing that the policy violated the DOC’s own sexual harassment policy. Still, an arbitrator ruled against the women in April 2025. 

Laurenti told IW Features she has been excluded from promotional opportunities since she was the first to defy the radical gender policies in Massachusetts, and she still has to conduct strip searches on male inmates, often breaking down in the process. 

“We’re not robots,” Laurenti said. “We’re mothers. Daughters. Sisters. Every time a woman walks into that room and is forced to do that [strip search], it’s a government-sanctioned sexual assault.”

Despite the hostility and trauma she endures at her job, Laurenti decided to stay and fight, hoping to change the system and protect the next generation of female correctional officers and prisoners.

Andrea Mew, IW Features managing editor, said: “Here I thought consent was supposed to be sacred post-#MeToo, but when Danielle Laurenti refused to strip-search a man, the system punished her. We were told boundaries mattered—until male inmates adopting ‘trans’ identities began demanding that female correctional officers strip-search them. Her story proves that in today’s backwards institutions, women’s right to say no and their very real trauma take a backseat to gender ideology.”

Beth Parlato, Independent Women’s Law Center senior legal advisor, said: “No one should be compelled, under threat of discipline or termination, to violate their conscience or perform duties that infringe upon their bodily autonomy and moral convictions. This constitutes a clear conflict between state law and the rights of public employees. Massachusetts DOC has disregarded established principles of workplace safety, the right to earn a livelihood, and moral accommodation. It is not a matter of inclusion, but of coercion, and it sets a dangerous precedent where the rights of one group are elevated at the expense of another’s freedoms. Forcing Danielle to conduct strip searches on male inmates against her will is a clear violation of her safety, dignity, and fundamental rights.”

Amie Ichikawa, Independent Women ambassador, former inmate, and founder of Woman II Woman, a support group for incarcerated women, said: “What gender ideology has done to prisons across the nation is the most underreported female human rights crisis in our history. Every single kind of woman is negatively impacted by this movement. The prisons are the front lines in the battle to stop female erasure.”

Read more stories about the male takeover of female prisons, as told in IW Features’ “Cruel and Unusual Punishment” series here.

Direct media inquiries and booking requests to [email protected]. 

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