WASHINGTON, D.C. – Reckless blue-state policies have forced incarcerated women to share their female-only spaces with men who identify as women, leading to dangerous and devastating consequences. Faith Booher-Smith, a 28-year-old female inmate at the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW), says Christopher Williams, a trans-identifying male and convicted child molester, ambushed and beat her on August 7, 2025.
“I saw Christopher Williams. He had me by my hair and threw me on the ground and was punching me and kicking me repeatedly,” she told Independent Women’s Features (IW Features), the grassroots storytelling and original journalism arm of Independent Women, in a new article released today. “If you put an animal in a cage like that with us, he’s going to attack. It’s like releasing a lion into a field of deer.”
While Booher-Smith attempted to fight back during the August attack, the strength of Williams, who is 6’4”, was unmatched. Booher-Smith recalled to IW Features that she “was completely, utterly terrified.” Booher-Smith shared that Williams has a documented record of stalking, harassment, and sexual assault against female inmates.
Booher-Smith’s story is the latest profile in IW Features’ series, “Cruel & Unusual Punishment: The Male Takeover of Female Prisons.”
Andrea Mew, Independent Women’s Features managing editor and profile author, said: “Washington’s Department of Corrections already knew Christopher Williams was dangerous. After all, he had been removed from the women’s prison once for assault, and yet they transferred him back anyway. Now, he has brutalized another woman in full view of officers who did nothing. How many more women must be sacrificed before policymakers admit that reckless gender self-identification policies put ideology above safety? Women behind bars may have lost their freedom, but surely they shouldn’t have to forfeit their right to basic protection from violent male offenders.”
Amie Ichikawa, Independent Women ambassador, former inmate, and founder of Woman II Woman, a support group for incarcerated women, said: “Unfortunately, this is not the first or the last time a woman will be subjected to this level of violence and deliberate indifference by prison staff. Departments are so afraid of being sued by the ACLU and the other high-powered, trans-centered law firms that they will not defend women. With each incident, more and more women inside are giving up, which is why we absolutely have to make this stop.”
Booher-Smith wants to hold WCCW accountable. This isn’t the first time IW Features has documented the fallout of Washington’s reckless policies allowing trans-identifying males into women’s prisons. A Muslim inmate at WCCW shared with IW Features how these policies violate her religious freedom, and a jail nurse in Seattle described how the gutting of women’s safety led her to quit. Independent Women fellow and IW Features contributor Caroline Downey last year documented in National Review how a trans-identifying male prisoner incarcerated for double murder, Bryan Kim, was removed from WCCW after being caught having sex with a vulnerable woman. The list goes on.
Washington state has failed to uphold even the most basic responsibility to protect women in its custody––and policymakers and the public cannot ignore this reality any longer. Attorneys with America First Policy Institute sent a formal letter on August 13 to the Washington Department of Corrections condemning the state’s Transgender Inmate Policy as the direct cause of Williams’s assault on Booher-Smith and demanded that all biological males be immediately removed from women’s prisons.
Read Faith Booher-Smith’s full profile here: Female Inmate Brutally Attacked by Convicted Male Sex Offender Housed in Washington Women’s Prison
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