STANFIELD
ADVANCES
IN FIRST
ROUND
WEEKEND EDITION
‘HACKSAW RIDGE’ STORMS DEMOCRATS COULD LOSE
SUPERMAJORITY OREGON/10A
INTO THEATERS REVIEW/3C
FOOTBALL/1B
NOVEMBER 5-6, 2016
141st Year, No. 15
$1.50
WINNER OF THE 2016 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
Trapped inside
Transgender inmates
report harassment,
isolation behind bars
Reed
Former
Herald
owner
dies at
age 81
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
Born a boy, Michale James Wright
realized early on that a physical body some-
times doesn’t correctly depict the gender of
the person inside. He felt he was really a
she — with a bad wrapping job.
Wright wrestled with how to change her
male body to match her true self and started
dressing in female clothing. As a teen,
she fell into drugs and alcohol to dim her
depression and fi nally committed a crime.
In prison, Wright alleges she became the
target of bullying and harassment from
other inmates and sometimes even prison
staff.
Wright, who goes by Michelle and is
incarcerated at the Two Rivers Correctional
Institution in Umatilla, recently fi led suit
against the Oregon Department of Correc-
tions. Represented by the American Civil
Liberties Union of Oregon Foundation,
Wright, 25, says the state is withholding
critical medical treatment. The denial
of treatment, according to the formal
complaint, violates the inmate’s right under
the Eighth Amendment to be free from cruel
and unusual punishment.
According to the complaint, a prison
physician diagnosed Wright in 2014 with
gender dysphoria — when gender identity
doesn’t match gender assigned at birth —
but no hormone therapy was prescribed.
Wright requested medical help nearly 100
times.
Wright, in prison for attempted robbery,
became increasingly discouraged and
suicidal during the last couple of years. She
slashed her wrist. She swallowed 14 pieces
of a razor blade. She tried to self-castrate
several times using a string from her
mattress, a rubber band that was left in place
fi ve days and fi nally a razor blade. She
wrote “I am female” on her cell wall with
her own blood. Prison staff, the complaint
says, mocked her and told her to “man up.”
“I have been aware for quite some time
that I am a female inside, but quite clearly
my insides aren’t really matched to my
exterior,” she recently told ACLU legal
director Mat Dos Santos during a video
interview from prison.
Dos Santos said the DOC is denying
life-saving care. He describes Wright’s
condition as a widely accepted medical
diagnosis that has offi cial standards of
care that weren’t met in Wright’s case.
The standards, he said, are accepted by the
American Medical Association, American
Psychiatric Association, U.S. Department
of Justice National Institute of Corrections
and others.
BY JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
Gerald Michael “Jerry”
Reed, 81, former owner and
publisher of the Hermiston
Herald, died Friday morning
in Hermiston.
Reed, who bought a
minority ownership stake in
the paper in 1969, became the
sole owner in 1974, building
the Herald’s staff, coverage
and page count and garnering
multiple awards, until selling
the paper to Western Commu-
nication Inc. of Bend in 1992.
He was a past president
of the Oregon Newspaper
Publishers
Association
and American Newspaper
Representatives and was one
of the charter members of
the Hermiston Development
Corporation, which attracted
employers and jobs to Herm-
iston throughout the 1970s
and 1980s.
Around 1978 Reed brought
the Hermiston Herald into a
merger with Dick Nafsinger
of the Hood River News and
Denny Smith of the Blue-
Mountain Eagle Newspaper
Company, forming Eagle
Newspapers Inc. Reed served
as vice president of Eagle
See REED/12A
TRAVIS EYNON
OF UMATILLA
Enjoy a free double scoop
of Tillamook ice cream
at the SAGE Center
See PRISON/12A
Legislators support
clawback of bad
energy tax credits
By CLAIRE WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Members
of a legislative committee
assessing the future of the
state’s energy department
agreed Friday that they
would “encourage” the
Oregon Department of
Justice to fi nd ways to
recoup money lost to
renewable energy projects
that may have improperly
received tax credits.
The Business Energy Tax
Credit program, referred
to by its acronym, BETC,
has become the bane of the
Department of Energy in
recent years, after allega-
tions that the program was
improperly administered.
All in all, about $1 billion
worth of tax credits were
issued to scores of wind,
solar and other renewable
energy projects, and more
than $300 million worth
of credits have been
called into question after
auditors labeled scores of
projects “suspicious” or
“concerning.”
Although auditors hired to
inspect the program this year
See CREDITS/12A
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Hammer out the details
Jane Rodriguez, a fashion designer from Port Orchard, Wash., uses a maul
and leather tool to work on a piece of leather art Friday at the Pendleton
Leather Show. The leather show will continue Saturday from 9 a.m to 5p.m.
at the Pendleton Convention Center.